Teoh Wei Ean will attest to that. As an undergraduate at Taylor’s University here, the 22-year-old is a frequent shopper on Instagram thrift stores for everything from secondhand clothes to trinkets.
However, the time-consuming process of shopping at such stores is frustrating, so Teoh set out to find a solution.
“(I was looking for) a sort of Zalora for sustainable fashion, a way to connect with (a range of) vendors of secondhand clothes,” she told FMT Business.
She reached out to her senior, Tan Jiajun, a 23-year-old masters of business information systems student, who then roped in 23-year-old computer science graduate Un Kai Wen of Monash University.
They put together a plan that would eventually lead to the formation of Kita, a start-up with the sole purpose of making “thrifting” as easily accessible as fast-fashion.
With a modest seed funding from Sunway LaunchX, a start-up incubation programme for Sunway Education Group, they began work on an e-commerce platform that would later make Kita a reality. That was in August 2021.
An uphill battle
Teoh and her partners were up against big players in the business of selling secondhand goods, especially clothes.
Those already big in the game at that time were Jalan Jalan Japan, 2nd Street and Baden Bundle.
Fortunately, for the Kita team, these still largely operated out of brick-and-mortar stores, leaving a gap in the online space.
But rather than try to sell the same items, albeit on a different platform, Teoh and her partners realised that a better strategy was to open the way for smaller brick-and-mortar stores to sell their products online.
“While we are also working in this space, we all have our own niche. (On Kita), we focus more on the (small) vendors, which (have) so much to show,” she said.
The Kita team introduced what they refer to as a “freemium” model that enables vendors to display their products on the Kita website at no cost.
The plan going forward is to offer higher-tier features, such as a customised storefront, for which Kita could start charging a fee.
In the longer term, Teoh said, Kita will also launch a mobile app on which vendors can also display their products.
Nonetheless, a lot is still up in the air but the team is cautiously optimistic about getting tangible results in a year or two.
“When people think about thrifting (we hope) they will think of Kita,” Teoh said.
Fighting fast fashion
For Teoh and her partners, there is more to thrifting than getting by on a tight budget.
As she pointed out, a total of 193,000 tonnes of textile wastes were generated in Malaysia alone in 2019.
According to a report on the European Parliament website, waste from the fashion industry is responsible for 10% of global carbon emissions.
They realised that apart from giving old clothes a new life, secondhand fashion can also help to ease the strain on the environment.
“The greatest threat to planet Earth is the assumption that someone else will do it (take the necessary measures to protect the environment),” she pointed out.
She urged consumers to make a conscious choice to thrift instead of supporting a harmful fast-fashion industry.
But the team’s campaign to boost thrifting is not without its challenges. As tech lead Un noted, it is not easy to fight fast-fashion brands such as H&M or Zara.
Nonetheless, for those surviving on a tight budget, thrifting may just be the way to go. Where else can one get a shirt, slack or dress for RM5 each?
There is no need to compromise quality in favour of price. If one has the patience, he might even fish out a shirt or dress of a high-end brand in the mix.
“We hope people will see investing in us as investing in the future – a future that has sustainable fashion in it. A future of fashion that does not cost the Earth,” the Kita team told Disruptr in a previous interview.