SINGAPORE — English undergraduate Hannah Jade Lim used to be an avid thrifter but these days, she is a lot more hesitant about buying from such stores, because she has started to doubt how much more sustainable they are than traditional retailers selling new clothes.

"I saw that certain thrift stores would rack up piles and piles of clothing that would not be sold, and they would bring in even more items. Where would all of the pre-existing unsold clothes even go?” the 21-year-old said.

Thrift stores have gained popularity here in recent years, especially among the youth such as Ms Lim who are drawn to the notion that these stores offer a more sustainable way to shop.

Lately, though, these same youth shoppers are placing more scrutiny on these stores. With the popularity of thrifting, more businesses have opened up to ride on the trend, but not all are selling only secondhand goods, as some customers have learnt.

Some of these shops may look (and even smell) like traditional thrift shops and are located alongside thrift shops, but are selling a mix of pre-loved and new items.

Ms Rachel Yeo, for example, was recently taken by surprise when she found racks of new clothes in one such store. At first glance, it looked like a traditional thrift store, but it turned out to have a roughly equal mix of new and secondhand items.

The corporate affairs consultant, 30, who has been thrifting actively for the last decade, said: "It's obvious when it’s firsthand because you see a repeat of the same product (in the shop), whereas when it’s secondhand, it’s more often than not a one-off item."

Recently on video-sharing channel TikTok, thrifters were riled up by accusations that a small handful of thrift stores were selling brand new items while passing them off as thrifted.

And even when it comes to stores selling exclusively secondhand items, young consumers are questioning whether the common practice of sourcing inventory from overseas would ultimately add to wastage here.

Still, environmentalists who spoke to TODAY said that thrift stores are more sustainable than most regular retailers. Even if they are importing secondhand clothes from abroad, for example, they are saving those clothes from ending up in a landfill.

Why source overseas?

The question of how thrift shops source their stock was thrown into the spotlight when a few TikTok users alleged that some of these businesses were passing off new items, likely bought from e-commerce sites, as secondhand ones.

Among the stores that were called out by TikTokers for such practices, one has closed down and most of the rest declined to comment when TODAY reached out to them.

Dream Vault was one that rebutted the accusations, telling TODAY that it has always positioned itself as a concept store selling thrifted clothes alongside new items from vendors who rent shelf space from the store.

When TODAY visited the store in Queensway Shopping Centre, its owner who gave her name as just Ms Tan showed how pre-loved and new clothes were hung on separate racks.

"Customers will usually ask us which ones are the new or old items," she said, adding that salespersons have always been transparent in their responses to shoppers.

Separately, TODAY spoke to 10 other thrift shops, most of whom said that they do import secondhand clothes, mainly from regional suppliers. These may come in bales or in curated selections.

Mr Taufiq Husin, 26, owner of Local Thrift SG, said: "In bale, it’s much cheaper, because it’s in bulk and sometimes you have to sieve through to remove slightly torn items.

"Curated means they hand-pick for you, show you the pictures and deliver exactly what you want.”

The thrift shop owners said that they do this because it is cheaper than sourcing in Singapore and they are more likely to obtain unique items.

And while they do care about sustainability, they also have to ensure the profitability of their businesses.

Ms Jesselynn Ni, who runs Two Worlds thrift store that imports its goods from regional suppliers, said: "As a business, I need to make sure that my shop is sustainable in the sense that it doesn’t close down. But environmental sustainability is a priority, too. That’s partly why I get only secondhand clothes."

Ms Portia Tan said that she began sourcing for secondhand items from Japan for her shop Kaeru because she wanted to do something about the global problem of textile waste.

"I chose Japan because people there haven't really adopted this habit of buying thrifted clothes and it's still quite a stigma there. Here in Singapore, we have players tackling the problem, like Refash and Cloop,” the 30-year-old said.

Cloop is a circular fashion enterprise that accepts donations of clothes and selects some to sell, while Refash is a chain of secondhand-clothes stores that buys pre-loved fashion from Singapore residents.

What it takes to source secondhand clothes in Singapore

There are a handful of thrift shops here selling only from a domestically sourced inventory.

However, they either face their own challenges or are in a unique position to operate in such a manner.

For example, there is Refash, arguably the most prominent secondhand clothes reseller here with 17 outlets islandwide, and another eight in Malaysia and Hong Kong.

The company raised S$400,000 in seed funding in 2016, a year after its founding, and was acquired for an undisclosed amount in 2022 by e-marketplace operator Carousell.

With its financial resources, Refash is able to buy exclusively domestic stock, which many smaller thrift businesses cannot afford to do.

Refash's founder and chief executive officer Aloysius Ng said that its primary source of inventory comes from members of the public who sell their clothes to the shop.

In recent years, though, it has begun buying stale stocks from retail brands to further its mission.

"Consumers of secondhand clothing, wherever the source is from, slows fashion down," he said.

"Secondly, we have enabled fast-fashion brands to clear their aged stocks or inventory with slight defects through us; all these clothing items would have otherwise ended in the landfills or worse, be destroyed unethically."

At the other end of the spectrum is RIP Thrift Store, which started online in 2021 and is renting a rack at Two Worlds' outlet in Golden Landmark Shopping Complex.

Its co-founder Lee Lin Wei, 27, said: "Our clothes are mainly from donations from the community and also from (our co-founder’s mother), who owns a thrift store in Clementi, and we source items that she can’t sell.”

Mr Lee is running this as a passion project with two other co-founders, all of whom have full-time jobs. And they are relatively small in scale, selling about 100 pieces a month from their rack in Two Worlds or double that if they attend pop-up events.

Since the business is not the founders' main source of income, they are not under pressure to drive revenue to cover overheads and make a living.

They acknowledged that to keep to their ethos of keeping thrift clothes "accessible", they would have to tweak their business model to possibly include vintage items with bigger profit margins in the future.

On the other hand, The Fashion Pulpit, a clothes-swapping business that started in 2018, runs mainly by a subscription model. Users pay a monthly fee, which allows them to contribute their unwanted clothes and swap them for others' pre-loved items.

Although it has 6,000 paying members, founder Raye Padit said that overheads such as rent are still a challenge.

"Rent keeps going up... We have moved thrice, this is our fourth location, because of that,” he added, speaking from the shop's outlet at Jalan Besar.

He has stuck by this business model through the years because The Fashion Pulpit's bigger goal is not just to encourage people to shop secondhand, but to encourage a change in behaviour by reducing purchases in the first place.

‘No better or worse’ green model

Singapore generated 211,000 tonnes of textile and leather waste last year alone. Of this, only 2 per cent was recycled, based on the latest figures by the National Environment Agency.

Refash has 175,000 pieces of clothing in its inventory and The Fashion Pulpit has 13,000, which gives an idea of the mountain of secondhand clothes circulating here.

So it is understandable that some consumers have begun to question why thrift stores are importing even more items from overseas when they are supposedly eco-friendly businesses.

However, environmentalists said that thrift stores are a much greener alternative to regular fashion retailers even if they import their goods.

Senior consultant Ngiam Shing Shian from sustainability consultancy Aeterni.eco said that measuring the environmental impact of different imported goods is a complex matter.

How the items are shipped — whether by air, sea or land — will affect the amount of greenhouse gases they incur.

The materials and chemicals used in the manufacturing of those items and the items' country of origin also matter.

And as an island nation, most of the goods in Singapore would have to be imported anyway, whether secondhand or new, the environmentalists said. At least through thrifting, less waste is going to the landfills and incinerators.

Ms Robin Rheume, founder of Recyclopedia.sg, a website focused on recycling, said: "If you are keeping clothes out of the landfill, whether it's a landfill in Malaysia or it's a landfill in Japan, then it's still good.

"So instead of taking potshots at these little guys selling secondhand clothes, why don't we take potshots at these big providers of fast fashion, because they're the problem.”

Ms Hazeerah Basri said that ultimately, there is "no better or worse” model dealing with secondhand clothes

She is the Singapore country coordinator for advocacy organisation Fashion Revolution, which campaigns for more transparency and sustainability along the fashion supply chain.

For example, she said that subscription-based swapping may be suitable for consumers who like to frequently refresh their wardrobe, while thrifting is a more affordable alternative that is still sustainable.

"They serve different sets of people — people who don’t want to buy new, want to be environmentally conscious, but with differing lifestyles and budgets,” she added.

Thrift shopper Ho Swee Chin, 20, who is waiting to start her tertiary studies, agreed and said that the onus is on shoppers to change their consumption habits.

"At the end of the day, a thrift shop is a business. I don’t really think thrift shops have a moral obligation to promote sustainability, so I don’t expect them to,” she added. "They are not charity organisations for planet Earth.” — TODAY