Ditch your Sunday Bazaar for Rekinza

What happens when a lawyer, an MBA and a chartered accountant join hands? The answer is Rekinza.The gap in the “re-used” apparel space led to the birth of Rekinza launched on 8th March, 2015, by its three female co-founders, Stuti Bhangeria, Nirali Vasisht and Vidisha Pasari. The start-up’s goal is to provide consumers with a convenient, eco-friendly method to sell and buy the latest fashion from each other. Users at Rekinza can browse thousands of like-new clothing and accessory items, which have been hand-selected and certified for quality and are discounted versions of some of the most coveted brands in the world.Retailer Media spoke to Nirali Vasisht and got introduced to Rekinza, the theory behind re-commerce, the selection and pricing requisites, and why the co-founders think that women will never have enough to wear.

Sounds interesting, but do you think there’d be any takers for ‘used’ clothes?

Indians have become more accepting of re-used goods over the past few years. Re-commerce already stands at a scale of over Rs. 22,000 crore per annum with the likes of OLX and Quikr dominating this segment. However, when it comes to second hand fashion, the market is still untapped with no player/brand being synonymous with the concept of second hand fashion. With genuine concerns on the buyer side regarding cloth quality, hygiene and level of usage, this market problem had not yet been tackled.Keeping this in mind, we launched Rekinza, an online portal for women to buy and sell pre-owned fashion from each other. What sets us apart from a P2P platform such as OLX, is that being a niche focussing solely on fashion, quality is controlled by us. Every item sold on Rekinza is inspected by our quality control team, and is only uploaded on the website once it passes the test.

Who and how are they deciding on the price of items listed on the website?

The price of all the items on the website is decided by our in-house team. We understand that not all our sellers would remember the price of the items they want to sell and might not retain the receipts. Hence, to make the selling process absolutely hassle-free for them, and to ensure consistent and fair pricing, we price all items up on the website.As for how, we have developed a pricing database that helps us determine the current retail value of each item based on its style, brand and material. Then based on the condition of the item and its resale value, we apply discounts up to 80 per cent off its original price. But again, that depends on the kinds of product we are getting.

Internet is today flooded with apparel e-commerce players, how are you different and why should people visit your website?

Women have only two big problems: nothing to wear, and no space to store their clothes. At Rekinza, we finally cracked the code of solving these seemingly paradoxical problems in one go. Shopping with Rekinza isn’t like shopping with any of the other apparel e-commerce players, it is a completely brand new way to shop, where women get access to closets of other women across India, at unbeatable prices; and at the same time, promote a sustainable way to shop. We believe that fashion shouldn’t come at a price - for our wallets or the planet.

For sellers, they want to sell their stuff because they don’t have the space, or to gain a passive source of income. In addition, we give our sellers an opportunity to do some good by giving them an option to donate their items that were unfit for selling, to our charity partner Prayas. So far, our sellers have donated over 500 items of clothes, bags and shoes to Prayas already - with some of them sending items specially earmarked for donation. Some of our sellers have also chosen to donate their earnings to Prayas.

Why is your portal only for women and why not for men?

Fast moving fashion is something that women are more influenced with when compared to men, and consequently, want their wardrobes to change as fast as the trends. So, to start with, we decided to establish ourselves in the women’s fashion market before approaching menswear. We are definitely planning to enter the menswear market in the future.

How has been the response so far?

We are growing on a monthly basis. At an average, we get around 100-150 orders a month. Around 15 per cent of current orders come from repeat customers. We launched with approximately 250 items and 20 sellers on our website in March. Given the scale of logistics involved in doing reverse pickups for sellers for the first two months, we kept our seller pickups restricted to NCR-Delhi.In April end, we expanded our seller pick-ups across India and the response was overwhelming. At an average, we now schedule 2-3 seller pickups a day and we’ve processed over 2,000 inventory items! Getting more and more customers everyday - both buyers and sellers has been very motivating.

What's next on the agenda?

We plan to expand into various new product categories in the coming 6-months. We also plan to expand our customer base by adding kids wear and menswear soon.

Are the deliveries free all across the country...in which all states have you launched the operations so far?

We provide both delivery and pickup across all states in India. Delivery charges are free on orders above Rs.1000.On orders below Rs.1000, we charge Rs.100 as shipping charge. Seller pickups across India are free. We have customers ranging from Varanasi to Chennai, and from Surat to Gangtok.

Who's your delivery partner, what are the terms and conditions that go behind returning a product?

We are currently working with various delivery partners such as Delivery, NuvoEx and FedEx. We offer a free 3-day return policy. A buyer can return their purchase, no questions asked by informing us within 3 days of the delivery. We make the process as simple as filling a simple return form. Once we receive their return items, we refund the customer within 2-4 days. Customers can choose between bank transfer, Kinza points or donation of their refund amount.

Rekinza is an unusual name for a business, isn’t it?

We would like to talk a little bit about the story behind the name ‘Rekinza’, as it’s something we get routinely asked. After researching relevant words in almost all languages, we stumbled across “kinza”. Kinza means hidden treasure in Arabic. We added “Re” to it as short form of rediscover. So ‘Rekinza’ means rediscovering hidden treasures. It was exactly the concept we wanted to promote because we want to give the unused or underused part of your closet another chance by helping someone rediscover these items. We’re starting a shopping revolution in India with Rekinza, and hope to see more people and mindsets changing with us.