Kardashians drive buyers remorse, ThredUp report says

According to new research, buying holiday gifts from Everlane is a wise purchase and shopping from Kardashian Kollection is not.

As consumers fill shopping carts with discounted items and scour the internet for sales, secondhand online marketplace ThredUp is gearing up for an influx of unwanted clothing gifts following the holiday season. In its recent “holiday purge surge” report, ThredUp shared insights of most returned or unwanted holiday gifts, based off data from last year.

The online thrift store shared that each January, it receives a surge of unworn items that are still new with tags. It expects to get 250 thousand new items in January, 60 percent more than it receives during the other 11 months out of the year. ThredUp estimates that overall, 30 percent of holiday gifts are returned.

ThredUp put together a list of last year’s most returned clothing gifts and styles, and its analytics are just as useful for holiday shopping as the most commonly purchased items. ThredUp’s insights can be heeded by consumers as a “what not to buy” guide as they shop for gifts this season.

Biggest Black Friday regrets

Retailers are still celebrating a successful Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend, yet ThredUp anticipates consumers aren’t feeling the same. It experienced a surge in jeans with their tags still attached after the sales event weekend last year, which will likely happen again if consumers soon feel regrets.

Last year there was a 250 percent increase in new denim items from Express sent to ThredUp during November and December, and a 155 percent increase in True Religion jeans.

Most purged gifts of 2017 holidays

Activewear topped the unwanted gift list of the 2017 holiday season. The top offenders were North Face fleeces and Under Armour shorts, each of which ThredUp saw an 80 percent increase of new-with-tags items.

In broader fashion categories, the most commonly returned gifts after last year’s holiday season were J.Crew cardigans, Asos maxi dresses, Banana Republic ruffle dresses and Victoria’s Secret swimsuits. These are the gifts not to buy, no matter how good the sales are. ThredUp received 442 percent more J.Crew cardigans than it typically does last January.

Brands with the highest regrets

Missguided and Kardashian Kollection drove the most buyers remorse of all the brands ThredUp received last January. Almost half of the new-with-tags items sent to ThredUp in 2017 were from Missguided, and 26 percent was from Kardashian Kollection. It seemed that celebrity-led lines generated quite a bit of regret; Kate Hudson’s Fabletics and the Eva Mendes NY&Co line were not far behind.

Brand with the least amount of regrets

And finally, Everlane is a safe bet. Less than one percent of all of the new-with-tags sent to ThredUp over 2017 was from Everlane. In fact, throughout the year, the thrift shop received 1,641 items from Everlane. Only three items from the brand still had tags attached, indicating that those who bought new from Everlane kept and wore the clothing for some time.

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