Grailed Platform: Used Fashion Distribution Center

If you happen to be a fan of online games such as World of Warcraft, you may encounter this English word in some special tasks.

Internet search, the answer is "Holy Grail" meaning.

But for those trends,

For severe lovers, this word has another layer of implied meaning like sneakerhead and Hypebeast.

In the official interpretation of Urban Dictionary and Grailed, "Grail" refers to the single product that the fashion and trend victims have long dreamed of, but because of the price and opportunity. You can use it as a noun or grammar as a verb.

What is Grailed?

In short, this is a paragraph.

Online Resale and second-hand trading platform, but unlike people who are familiar with salted fish, Grailed's customers are hardcore fashion and trend consumers.

Here, you can find works like Helmut Lang, Maison Martin Margiela, Walter Van Beirendonck, Raf Simons, and so on, which are now regarded as mythical designer brands. They can also search for popular popular brand names such as Supreme, Yeezy, and cable. Although they are mainly second-hand or resale products, their value is often comparable to that of new ones.

This is why the platform name should be added to the past participle suffix after "Grail" once.

It's good for those who sigh that they are born out of time, or for various reasons.

Fans, Grailed may well be an opportunity to regret drugs.

Before finding Grailed, David felt that he had lost interest in fashion and shopping.

Facing the numerous brands, buyer shops, shopping malls and so on.

The 44 year old man, who was once crazy to spend money on selling the house in Visvim, Undercover, Dries Van Noten, Sacai, Miu Miu, Helmut Lang, now has a much lower purchasing power than before.

Naturally, he can blame it on age growth.

In fact, as a glutton, facing the brand at the moment, he has no interest in it: "what I sell now is almost the same every season. It makes me feel that there is less and less money paid at once, and what brand is a fire, and a lot of people buy it all over the place, no matter what the genuine fake is, and it doesn't matter whether it fits right or not, anyway, just put it on."

In 2004, David began to buy Prada's men's wear and accessories, both for personal use and for collection only for its design.

In recent years, he has abstained from this habit naturally, for the simple reason that "so many local tyrants are beginning to wear".

Obviously, David is very picky, because in addition to the clothes itself, the factors that affect his purchase include the design of the brand store, the image of the advertisement, the exposure of the media and so on.

Especially in this social media era, if he sees a WeChat public number, or a group of people who try to puff up a brand with a web - based writing technique, it is instinctive that the "underground" state of Vetements has briefly picked up the interest of David, although he also early thought "clothes itself has too many Margiela early shadows", "at least not a cat and dog brand."

But since last year, when he saw the domestic and international media almost swarming Vetements fever and exploded the chain effect of subculture and cool children, his desire to buy the brand suddenly dropped.

If it is not known that the brand has a very strict strategy on sales channels, pricing, discounts and replenishment, David will be disappointed with the large number of women's windbreaks that are used for collection in their wardrobe.

Until the appearance of Grailed.

At the beginning of the year, Grailed launched an auction called "Grailed 100". It selected 100 rare pieces of Rick, Owens, Raf Simons, Undercover, Saint Laurent, Number (N), and so on.

It is a coincidence that at the time of Raf Simon's departure from the creative director of Dior women's clothing, Grailed 100's Raf Simons 2003 autumn and winter series, China and India, had three pieces of "Power, Corruption and and" album cover on the cover of New Order launched, and the second line was used for the first time to get the price of about 7000 dollars. That is the first time that the platform has been known, and because he did not understand the way of purchase, he missed the coveted coat again. "At that time, the Internet was still underdeveloped, and I had to go to Hongkong to buy it, but when I went there, all the items in the shop were sold out.

Then I saw several sellers on eBay.

But it's either bad, or the size is wrong, and the price can go up to 900-1200 dollars. "

Unlike Vintage's antique clothing in general, customers like David are pursuing "clothes not as old as they are", but their goal is to be a niche, or once a niche, designer with a landmark in the past 10-20 years.

These single products known as Archive archives often symbolize the precious masterpieces of their creators and brands at their peak.

The single product that drives the trend of fans tends to have the following characteristics: Show Pieces design; limited or small output; lack of regional supply due to purchase and retail channels; creative director changing the brand and brand suspension.

For example, in David's view, although he likes Dries Van Noten, but because of the good and bad works of every season, he is most eager to collect and "replenish" her men's clothing for 2006 years, 2010 autumn winter, 2013 autumn and winter, 2015 spring and summer: "especially when a brand has no shops in China, plus there is no Farfetch at that time, the buyer shop may not be able to get the money you want."

Founder of Grailed and CEO Arun Gupta

From eBay, Stylezeitgeist, Styleform's second hand trading section, Yoox and Facebook discussion group to Reddit,

The second-hand paction and resale of Archive's works have maintained a spontaneous mode of operation for a long time.

The founder and CEO of Grailed and Arun Gupta, who graduated from Yale University, are one of them.

Therefore, the original recognition of fashion is limited to J.Crew and other public goods, and gradually understand the brand names of Norse Projects, Rick Owens, Common Projects and so on.

Unfortunately, Arun Gupta started buying in the Styleform trading sector because of the shyness.

Second hand works.

In December 2013, Arun Gupta posted a post on Grailed online in the discussion group on the Reddit website. Now he is still active in this sector.

In June 2012, after the failure of his life's first project, WakeMate, to wake up the bracelet, the IT man, who was already a fashion and fashion enthusiast, began to program the prototype of Grailed.

With the popularity of Reddit and Styleforum, and the small group and pioneers who have already formed the scale.

Although the function market is single and the page is poor, the Grailed that was launched at the end of December 2013 attracted many colleagues to join.

For this reason, Styleforum also blocked the account of Arun Gupta, but you can still see the pformation process from the fans to the Grailed founder in the multiple sub blocks of Reddit.

Today, Grailed's monthly browsing volume has exceeded six digits. According to Arun Gupta, 65% of the sellers can sell the products they sell in 30 days, and more than half of them sell the goods on the day they get on the shelves.

Grailed has also attracted the attention and joining of the industry. The Raf X Saville coat included in Grailed 100 belongs to Inventory magazine.

The director Stephen Mann's private collection; Ian Connor, a red stylist Kanye West, once shouted on Twitter that Grailed was the best website he had ever seen; the street photographer Tommy Ton also said he often visited the website; the founder and chief editor of the popular Tommy blog, the founder and chief editor of the famous fashion men's wear website, joined the director of brand and was responsible for the editorial content board of the company, which was named "zaomi".

After several updates, Grailed's Web site and app version have now provided relatively perfect page search capabilities.

Website products are divided into three categories: the most popular "Grailed" and "Hype" respectively push forward the contemporary designer's brand old works, such as Acne Studios, Our Legacy, Dior Homme, Helmut Lang, A.P.C, etc., including the show backstage pass, the show music, the purchase bags in the specific period, and the like brand, such as ",", ",", "and"; and the "brand" is the gathering place of the popular brand or the poor quality single product.

Buyers and sellers can start trading on Grailed through simple registration. Sellers can choose to pay at a single price after uploading detailed descriptions, new and old degrees, and express prices. They can also negotiate prices with sellers by clicking the "Offer" button. If the other party accepts, buyers can pay through Paypal.

The whole paction process is mainly guaranteed by Paypal's trading mechanism and Grailed's mail complaint system.

Once a fake dispute is encountered and the seller fails to deliver the goods, the buyer can appeal to Grailed to ensure the safety of the loan.

However, since Grailed emphasizes the C2C style free paction, it can only be solved by the buyers and sellers themselves in terms of size and chromatic aberration.

Compared to most

Grailed still maintains the "shabby" UI design, which has no requirement for the product graph uploaded by the seller (its staff will only make adjustments to the brand classification, or force the shelves to question the goods). Maybe some people will criticize it for its lack of refinement, but for the Grailed target users such as David, it turns out to be the most attractive factor for them: "Grailed is not Etsy, nor SSENSE, it is more like a professional fashion player version eBay.

I will go up and see it now.

In my opinion, the rough pictures taken by the seller on the cell phone are more attractive, and only those who are knowledgeable can realize the beauty of Grailed. I don't want to see that one day Grailed is MCM's backpack.

Less than half a year after using Grailed, David rekindled the desire to shop.

He bought a coat of Dries Van Noten 2010 autumn and winter series, a Helmut Lang 2004 spring summer series elastic vest, a Miu Miu, 2005 autumn winter series wool trousers, a Julius 2009 year autumn winter series leather coat, two A.P.C jeans......

On its list of desires, there are fewer than more than 20 items that have been invited to bargain with sellers.

Since it is secondhand or resale, will the price be as cheap as imagined? The answer is not necessarily.

Although the original intention of Arun Gupta to create Grailed is to build a second-hand low price platform, the resale market of the Tibetan dragon tiger promotes the popularity of the rare and expensive archives.

On the Grailed, because the price of goods depends entirely on the seller, it is necessary for the buyer to have some fashion knowledge to discern the hero.

If you don't understand why a 1999 8 Helmut new Lang Lang lined parachute harness is sold at a price of $1000 and does not include shipping and import duties, then it may not be suitable for you.

But this does not mean that Grailed is only for deep fashion customers. You can still find a well maintained, more than RMB 2000 yuan and Hedi Slimane in the Dior Homme era's fashionable suit jacket. You can also meet the new Acne Studios jacket that has just sold over the season, sold at the original price of 1/3, the A.P.C jeans sold for 60 percent off, or the ALYX Studios roller coaster safety buckle belt which is slightly below the market price.

In addition, Grailed's "Bump" mechanism encourages sellers to get the opportunity to promote the home page by reducing the selling price (each time Bump is confirmed, and the price is reduced by 10%). (besides, when the goods are on the shelves, they get a Bump promotion opportunity every 10 days).

Up to now, Grailed still has a free policy for the buyer, and the seller will receive 6% Commission and 2.9%+30 cents Paypal fee in each paction, but if you are a hot seller on the platform, the Commission part will have a corresponding discount (if a refund is made, the commission paid by the seller will be returned).

David spent most of his leisure time in browsing Grailed.

"Even if you don't buy things sometimes, you would like to look at them. They are better than most magazines and new media, because you can see from some buyers' descriptions that they know more about these brands, from the change of logo to the replacement of fabric suppliers.

I seldom use the search function, I prefer random feeling. Maybe there is a surprise when I row on the screen.

Personally, I think the mid 90s to early 2000 is the best time for fashion industry. The men's clothing in previous years is also good.

In the meantime, most of the things are done in a very general way, and the so-called innovation is based on the old people's stuff, even if they don't even bother to change it. If I choose to buy a good Margiela MA-1 jacket on Grailed, or a similar style of a new cutting-edge designer, I will definitely choose Grailed, maybe the price is still cheap, and it's not second-hand, but at that time the brand's workmanship and texture were better than now.

The emergence of Grailed provides a more professional platform for professional sellers than forums and discussion groups.

A professional seller who does not want to disclose specific information and is now living in the United States said that he was once a member of the Supreme resale force. Since joining Grailed, he began to gradually expand the types of goods sold: "if it is Supreme, Palace, or Common Projects, a brand that is very hot and rarely discounted, even if it increases the price, it will soon be able to sell; if I get Show Pieces of some cheap niche designers on sale, eBay or YOOX, the profits will be relatively large, and some will probably be sold on the shelves. Most of the people playing the Grailed are very professional, so long as your goods are scarce enough, they are not afraid of buyers.

Besides, if we calculate the exchange rate, the price is still cheaper than the original price.

Therefore, the seller's requirements are to be knowledgeable and must be able to pick out what is really good.

Even in

In the mainland of China, where the culture and consumption start late, many consumers are inconsistent with the flaunting style of shopping for novelty and luxury, and turn to the niche brand. However, in the context of social media and partial success, the consumption of "minority" or "elite" often can not escape the embarrassing result of a flash in the pan.

It is almost certain that Grailed is difficult to weather in China in a short time. It can kill its popularity only by Paypal's domestic situation and most of the time that VPN is needed. However, David believes that this is not a good thing, because Grailed is a small platform with user threshold.

It is precisely because of this, the accuracy of its target customers is so natural that there is no need to talk about the mystery.

Byronesque and online collaboration with Instagram account @she_comes_in_technicolor with the same nostalgia plot.

Grailed is not the only player in such a market. It was founded by Gill Linton in London.

Byronesque is the main product since the 90s of last century.

Brand women's clothing, but in the trading mode, Byronesque plays the role of a "rare Commission Commission Hunter": after uploading the pictures of designers who wanted to buy pictures in previous years, Byronesque sends private Shopper (Personal Shopper) to find a single product that meets user requirements in the global antique shops and suppliers.

In addition, Byronesque also sells good designer brand old products, and the price and specific information are also confirmed by mail and private shopping guide.

Recently, the platform has cooperated with Instagram account @she_comes_in_technicolor with the same nostalgia plot.

The Maison Martin Margiela issued by the latter is available in autumn winter plastic film vest, Comme des Gar C ons, 1993 autumn and winter short body jacket and Balenciaga 2001 spring and summer waist waist dress etc. rare single products can be purchased through inquiries to Byronesque mail.

from

LN-CC began selling Raf Simons files in 2013, The Archive in Losangeles, and famous stylist David Casavant for collecting a large number of Raf Simons and Helmut Lang files. Earlier, we talked about the Melbourne and Shanghai in Shanghai, which were mentioned earlier in the interview. In 2015, it was accompanied by the opening of Wuyuan Road's buyer shop, the operation of the store in the shop, and all kinds of existence in micro-blog, micro-blog and friends circles.

It is not difficult to detect files, shops and personal accounts.

The popularity of reverse fashion is heating up.

Looking back at the fashion works over the past 20 years, the fashion world is trying to cover up its mediocre nature with cultural and innovative gimmicks.

If you are tired of the present, you may as well look back at the past -- not too far away, just 20 years.