Kids Brand Hanna Andersson Launches Its Own Resale Site

Hanna Andersson, the children’s brand known for making clothes that become prized hand-me-downs when they are outgrown, has launched an online resale shop.

It is the latest is a growing number of clothing and fashion brands looking to tap into the booming resale market with their own secondhand sales operations.

ThredUP, the online consignment store that publishes an annual report on the resale market, noted in its 2022 report that proprietary brand resale sites are driving the secondhand industry, with the number of brand and retailer sites jumping from eight in 2020 to 30 in 2021.

ThredUP expects the global secondhand apparel market to grow by 127% by 2026, to $218 billion.

The Hanna Andersson resale shop, named Hanna-Me-Downs, is designed to make it easier for Hanna Andersson customers to sell or buy pre-owned Hanna items. Sellers can opt to be paid in cash, or to receive a Hanna Andersson gift card.

Sellers who select the gift card option will get credit for 25% more than the sale price of the resold item. Those who opt for cash will receive 70% of the purchase price, comparable to the fees charged by third party resale sites.

The site gives Hanna re-sellers access to photos and product descriptions to make listings, and it suggests resale prices.

The site will begin offering items for sale today. Hanna Andersson previously opened the site to sellers to post listings and it currently has over 1,500 listings of items for sale, according to a Hanna Andersson spokesperson.

“We’re basically connecting our customers and sellers, and helping that relationship,” Jen Reed, Chief sustainability Officer, and Senior Vice-President of Global Sourcing at Hanna Anderson said in an interview.

The goal was to create a site that resonated with Hanna fans and reflected the brand, Reed said.

“There are a lot of Facebook sites and Instagram sites and other platforms where Hanna Andersson is being sold, but this feels to our customer that it’s the Hanna site,” she said.

Hanna Anderson partnered with resale tech company Archive to create the online resale store. Archive is a two-year-old company that creates programs that allow brands to incorporate resale into their businesses. It has created resale platforms for 35 brands including The North Face, Marimekko, M.M.LaFleur, and Oscar de la Renta.

Hanna Andersson is the first children’s brand in the U.S. to partner with Archive, Emily Gittins, CEO and co-founder of Archive, said in an interview.

“We’re really excited to be moving into this category in the U.S.,” Gittins said. “It makes a huge amount of sense when you think about it,” she said. “Children obviously grow out of clothing, and you might have people to hand that down to organically, but if you don’t, the opportunities to come back to the brand and resell it as part of that community feel so natural.”

Archive announced last month that it had raised $15 million in Series A funding that will allow it to expand to meet demand from a growing number of brands for resale partnerships.

Hanna Andersson is a popular and sought-after brand on other resale platforms. On the resale site Poshmark, for example, there currently are over 100 pages of Hanna Andersson listings, and close to 5,000 Hanna items for sale.

“There’s quite a market out there already,” Reed said. “This is us providing this service for our customers and having it all in one place, versus having to sell it themselves,” she said.

The brand was founded in 1983 in Portland by Gun Denhart, a mother who wanted to give American children the type of long-lasting, comfortable cotton clothing sold in her native Sweden.

Denhart’s goal was to create sustainable clothing that would be passed down to every child in the family, and to younger friends and relatives, when outgrown.

“Hanna-Me-Downs is a term that has been used internally at Hanna and externally for many many years, so now being able to re-launch it again as part of our brand is so important, reinforcing our quality message,” Reed said.

Previously, the company had offered customers a chance to buy and sell pre-owned items through its physical stores. The company no longer operates physical stores, and has returned to its direct-to-consumer roots as a digital-only retailer.

Brands increasingly have sought to offer trade-in and resale options both as a way to support sustainability, and as a way connect with existing customers and potential new customers.

Archive was founded to create resale experiences for brands because “we believe that brands should own the experience of allowing their customers to come back and resell past purchases through them,” Gittins said. “There is so much value to both the buyer and seller in having it through a branded channel,” she said. “We really think through with each brand what approach makes sense for them and their customer base.”

For Hanna Andersson, Gittins said, a top consideration was making it easy for busy parents to list clothing for sale. “Giving them the original photography, a price recommendation, names, descriptions. all of that data so it really is only a few clicks to list an item was a really important part of this,” she said.