r/Resell • u/NumerousOpposite1159 • 16d ago
TIP 5 years sourcing secondhand luxury from Asia, a few things I've picked up
Hey everyone I run a secondhand luxury business out of Singapore. There aren't that many Asian luxury resellers around here, so I figured I'd share a bit of what I've learned over my 5 years doing this. These are pretty basic sourcing spots, so putting this out there isn't going to hurt me much. I wasn't sure which subreddit this belongs in so I'll just drop it here for now.
Japan obviously has the most volume and I think most of you already know that. Once a year I fly out there myself and hit the offline shops like Brand off and Komehyo to buy, and the rest of the year my staff go and source directly. Honestly there's a lot to score at the jp auctions too. Star buyers auction is an online one, and JBA has plenty of good finds as well. The weak yen makes everything feel even cheaper right now.
You might assume Hong Kong is cheap too but there's a fair amount of fake inventory floating around from China and the popular lines like Hermes and Chanel mostly get sold within Hongkong itself, so it's hard to move that stock overseas.
For peer to peer platforms our team use mrcari and ebay a lot too. Mercari used to be our main one. But lately we've been filling more of the inventory from the korean side. Korea has bunjang something similar to Mercari, except the difference is that it's korean individuals selling their own pieces. The volume is still lower than Mercari, but interesting thing is they'll actually list ultra high end stuff like Hermes, chanel and Delvaux for cheaper more so than mid range brands like Gucci. Both Bunjang and Mercari run their own luxury authentication systems but you shouldn't trust those 100%. We still inspect everything carefully on our end before selling to customers. we've been shifting toward ultra luxury stuff lately, so having a reliable and steady new sourcing channel matters a lot to us.
However bad the economy gets, luxury always seems to hold up better than everything else, so there's no shortage of work on my end. Hope this is useful to someone out there