Tag: Carousell Group

Singapore – REFASH, a Singaporean omnichannel secondhand fashion destination under the Carousell Group, has announced the opening of its first Hong Kong store in Mongkok on 20 April with a special event where women can declutter their wardrobes for instant cash. This marks the brand’s Hong Kong expansion plans beyond their over 20 stores across Singapore and Malaysia.

REFASH’s first Hong Kong store brings the best of their Singapore and Malaysia shopping experience. Hong Kongers can look forward to a specially-curated inventory of ‘brand new with tags’ (BNWT) women’s fashion from popular Singapore and other leading Southeast Asian brands, which are otherwise unavailable in the Hong Kong market.

With the Municipal Solid Waste Charging Scheme implementing soon, this provides an alternative option to encourage Hong Kongers to not only avoid throwing away items still in good condition, but also provide a convenient way that appeals to busy Hong Kongers.

Aloysius Sng, founder and CEO at REFASH, said, “REFASH was started 8 years ago to extend the lifespan of clothes and build a more sustainable future for fashion. I am heartened that over the years, we have collectively diverted over 7.3 million clothes from the landfills and given over 3.6 million used clothes a second life. We wanted to target the Hong Kong market next after our Malaysia expansion last year, as we saw a market gap to reach the mass market of Hong Kongers. We believe that sustainability should not be a trend, but part of everyday life.”

He added, “We are excited by great initial results in Hong Kong. In Jan and Mar this year, we partnered with Carousell Hong Kong to do a decluttering event for instant cash, and collected around 3,500 pieces of clothes. Majority of which are in almost-new condition. We are excited to officially launch our store and continue to expand more stores in Hong Kong.”

Singapore – Multi-category classifieds and recommerce marketplace Carousell Group has launched its ‘Circular Economy Impact Report’ that showed how secondhand transactions have made a positive climate impact in greater Southeast Asia.

The data from the report revealed that the user community of the platform has avoided a total of 116,577 metric tonnes of carbon emissions in four goods categories in 2022, including fashion and luxury, electronics, furniture and home living, and hobbies and toys. The staggering number is equivalent to 5.3 million trees absorbing CO2 per year.

Furthermore, it also showed that more than half, or 56%, of purchases made in the Carousell marketplace displaced the purchase of a new item. On average, 55% of surveyed users across Carousell’s six key markets have reported an increase in buying and selling of second-hand items in 2022 as compared to 2021.

Carousell has also partnered with European climate tech company Vaayu in quantifying their impact, leveraging its proprietary AI and machine learning (ML) technology, and utilising its Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) database of over 600,00 product data points to come up with the report.

Quantifying the avoided carbon emissions, the report reinforces the fact that the act of buying and selling pre-owned or used items is a better choice for the planet as compared to traditional retail, which involves purchasing new items. It also underscores the significance of every individual transaction in contributing to the overall impact of the circular economy.

Gaurav Bhasin, chief strategy officer at Carousell Group, said, “By facilitating secondhand transactions, Carousell Group holds a central role in advancing the circular economy alongside our users in the Greater Southeast Asia region. As a key enabler of the circular economy in our region, we have a responsibility to lead by example and measure the potential positive impact of choosing secondhand products over new ones in a trustworthy and transparent way.”

He added, “In addition to the avoided emissions calculations, we have also taken the opportunity to calculate our group’s carbon footprint. The robustness of our chosen methodology underscores our strong commitment to sustainability, and it forms the bedrock of our sustainability endeavours.”

Also commenting on the result, Quek Siu Rui, co-founder and chief executive officer at Carousell Group, said, “Our mission is to make secondhand the first choice for everyone. We have stayed true to this mission over the past 11 years, and we remain committed to making selling and buying secondhand even simpler, more trusted, and convenient. With the release of the report, we hope more people realise how easy it is to embrace secondhand as a lifestyle and contribute to a greener world without compromising on the things they enjoy.”

Meanwhile, Namrata Sandhu, co-founder and CEO at Vaayu, shared, “Retail is responsible for 25% of global carbon emissions, and with research continuing to show we’re not on track to keep global warming below 1.5C, we’re at a critical inflection point. Circular business models, like recommerce, offer a clear path to reducing retail’s impact on our planet, which is why we are so proud to partner with Carousell Group to quantify its climate impact and empower communications with its users.”

Singapore – Carousell Media Group, the advertising arm of Carousell Group, which holds recommerce platforms or marketplaces for pre-loved items such as Carousell, Mudah.my, ChoTot, OneKyat and Ox Street, has launched a first-of-its-kind recommerce programmatic buying platform. 

Called ‘Connect’, the tech is launched via the group’s advertising arm Carousell Media. The platform will deploy DSP ad technology and will be powered by the buying, selling, and search data signals generated from Carousell Media Group’s wide monthly user count across Greater Southeast Asia, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.

JJ Eastwood, managing director of Carousell Media Group, shared that the Connect platform was launched to allow brands to reach buyers and sellers both on and off Carousell’s marketplaces since “inspiration, discovery, and purchase can happen anywhere.” 

“We have witnessed unprecedented growth in recommerce over the last 12 months, that’s being propelled by consumer demand for sustainability as well as e-commerce, and it’s quickly becoming an important component of the consumer-brand relationship,” said Eastwood. 

The group said the Connect platform will give advertisers a viable alternative to the closed environments like Google and Facebook, by providing them with full-funnel marketing solutions and enabling them to engage with Carousell Media Group’s audiences on every ad format, such as video, display, audio, and Connected TV. Furthermore, Carousell Media Group says that the integration of first-party and third-party data sets is what sets the Connect offering apart from others. 

The platform was initially offered to selected advertisers, with Decathlon being a prominent one. The parent group said that as part of 2022’s rollout under Connect, its ad arm will be launching new ad products, such as Carousell Search Ads which will enable advertisers to fully leverage real-time keyword searches. 

As a parent company to classifieds platforms, Carousell Group has been shaping its capabilities to help entities in its advertising efforts. In November 2021, it launched for the second time its ‘Free Ads for Charities’ initiative, an advertising support program for non-profit organizations (NPOs) in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and the Philippines. 

Singapore – Carousell Group, the classifieds group in Greater Southeast Asia, has announced its acquisition of Ox Street, the end-to-end marketplace for authenticated sneakers and streetwear, in the aim to deepen its reach and scale to become a market leader for fashion and luxury goods in the region.

Ox Street will continue to operate as its own brand, retaining its name, platform, and team. The acquisition will be driving a synergistic partnership between the marketplaces.

The group said the acquisition reflects Carousell’s deep commitment to reimagining the classifieds experience, with a focus on trust and convenience, to make secondhand the first choice. The Ox Street team inspects and authenticates every pair of sneakers before it reaches its buyers. Carousell’s advanced and intuitive technology, extensive reach, and marketplace liquidity across a wide range of categories, combined with Ox Street’s authentication capabilities will further propel the mutual goal of creating an experience where transacting secondhand is as convenient and trusted as buying first hand.

Quek Siu Rui, the co-founder and CEO of Carousell, commented they are excited to acquire Ox Street in their mission to inspire the world to start selling, and they share common values in being user-first and in building communities, as evidenced by the brand love they have created among their dedicated community of sneakerheads and fashion enthusiasts, especially among the Gen Z.

“They have also built trust by authenticating every pair of sneakers that gets transacted on the Ox Street marketplace. We see immense opportunity in bringing that capability and their learnings to double down on our recommerce efforts. Most of all, we see this acquisition as joining forces to accelerate our shared vision of making second hand the first choice,” said Rui.

Meanwhile, Gijs Verheijke, Ox Street’s founder and CEO, shared that they initially started a conversation with Carousell on partnering up to provide authentication as a service for sneakers, but as discussions progressed they found so much common ground in how they see the future, that they decided it would be much more powerful for Ox Street to fully join the Carousell group.

“With Carousell’s reach and technological capabilities, we can supercharge Ox Street’s ability to innovate and reach more buyers and sellers. Last but not least, we have a lot of shared values and found a very strong cultural fit, and I cannot be more excited to partner with Siu Rui, Marcus, Lucas, and the entire Carousell team,” said Verheijke.