Solicitor Anna Cargan wasn’t expecting to swap legal briefs for secondhand clothes permanently when she launched Buildabundle from her living room in 2018. The Cumbrian mum of three had started selling her children’s outgrown clothes on eBay to make some extra money, and friends and family members started giving her their children’s old clothes to sell too. “I could see there was a market of people who wanted to sell things but didn’t have time to do it,” she says. “And I thought there could be a business in there somewhere.”
Children can outgrow seven clothing sizes in their first two years and there are an estimated 183m items of outgrown baby clothes in British homes, according to research by Mothercare and the environmental charity Hubbub. While a lot is handed down, a third of parents say they’ve thrown clothes in the bin because they didn’t know what to do with them. But with rising awareness of the environmental impact of the fashion industry, the popularity of secondhand shopping is booming. The apparel resale market is expected to grow 16 times faster than the traditional clothing sector by 2026.
