Exclusive: Béis is launching a resale program
Béis, the luggage brand founded by actress Shay Mitchell, is giving bags an upgrade with its new resale program called Second Béis.
The program, which officially launches this week on Béis’s website, lets customers shop a selection of recently returned weekenders, rollers, backpacks, totes and duffles. All items are first come, first serve and list for 30% off their regular retail value. Béis worked with Trove, a branded resale platform, to get Second Béis up and running.
Selling suitcases secondhand is new for Béis, which launched in 2018 as a direct-to-consumer brand but now sells via Nordstrom. It’s also an emerging space for the luggage sector. While some luxury players like Rimowa offer branded resale, many other higher-end players do not. Instead, shoppers looking for secondhand luggage often find themselves turning to Poshmark, The RealReal or other resale platforms. “We’re leading the charge for brands in our space to offer a program like this,” Liz Money, svp of brand and creative at Béis, told Modern Retail.
Today, more brands are launching resale programs, although many focus on apparel and accessories, not travel goods. In fact, Béis is the first standalone luggage brand in Trove’s portfolio, which also includes Levi, Patagonia and Arc’teryx. It’s a change in direction for Trove, which launched in 2016. “We’re now attracting brands in travel, home and accessories, expanding consumer access and fostering lasting customer loyalty,” Terry Boyle, CEO of Trove, said in a statement to Modern Retail.
Most of the items sold via Second Béis will be bestsellers, Money said. Many times, she explained, customers buy Béis products only to swap them out for a different size or color. The items that are returned tend to be gently used, but some may have dust on the wheels or lack original packaging. Others may have missing tags or be limited-edition products.
Under normal circumstances, these aren’t products that Béis returns to the floor. Instead, Béis typically resells them through virtual warehouse sales. It also holds in-person warehouse sales via 3PL partners in Los Angeles. Still, only having IRL sales in Los Angeles “was a roadblock for a lot of consumers to enter into the brand,” Money explained. A program like Second Béis opens up more opportunities for the brand to bring shoppers into the fold, she said.
“This is big, bulky product,” she said. “It’s a lot to ship back and forth, but [resale] is, to us, a better way to treat a product and give it a second life. And the consumer that might be slightly price-sensitive or really cares about making sure that products have that circularity, we want to give them the opportunity to purchase into our brand.”
In normal retail channels, Béis’s roller bags run from $148 to $348, while its duffles run from $58 to $308. Béis offers a limited warranty on some products, although its terms and conditions say the policy doesn’t apply to “luggage sold as-is, used, returned or previously owned.”
While some shoppers prefer to buy their luggage new due to concerns like wear and tear, secondhand luggage is growing in popularity, experts told Modern Retail. Béis already has a contingent of customers who buy, swap and sell merchandise online, with one Facebook group called “Béis Community Buy/Sell/Trade/Chat” racking up 17,400 members.
More broadly, there are thousands of luggage pieces up for sale via Facebook Marketplace, eBay and Mercari. REI also sells gently-used backpacks and other accessories from The North Face, Osprey and Cotopaxi, while Patagonia and Fjällräven have branded resale programs. Online, Rimowa has a secondhand service called Re-Crafted, although a visit to the page results in the message: “We’re unable to locate any merchandise that meets your refinement selections at this time.”
Darpan Seth, CEO of Nextuple, an omnichannel order management advisory and software firm, told Modern Retail that travel gear tends to be quite durable, making it a suitable category for resale. “While resale programs are more common in the apparel industry, moving to luggage is a really smart move,” he said. He added that he believes demand for pre-owned items is “absolutely likely to increase” as consumers watch their budgets. “If automobiles can be resold, why not luggage?” he asked.
Similarly, Michael Prendergast, managing director in the consumer and retail group of Alvarez & Marsal, believes there’s an abundance of opportunity in the secondhand travel accessories space. “The real question is how to handle the magnitude of the SKU count in an efficient, profitable operation,” he told Modern Retail. “That will be the key to unlock success. Demand will be there, but can these companies service it profitably?”
To that point, Béis is taking the time to build up Second Béis in its current iteration before moving into any other channels, Money said. It does hope, though, to launch trade-in and peer-to-peer offerings in the future. The brand does not have a timeline for these. But, Money said, “The hope is that we can introduce this program into a more full integration.”