Lululemon Wants to Sell You Its Used Leggings. But Are They Worth Buying?

Whether a brand-resale program is for you depends on your priorities and risk tolerance.

If packaging, bend-over-backwards customer service, and free shipping are your highest priorities, you may want to skip resale altogether. These programs offer few of the frills that many modern-day shoppers have come to expect. Shipping can be expensive, and the return process can be inscrutable (and can often impose a restock fee). The packaging, while adequate, does not provide an Instagram-worthy unboxing experience.

If you prioritize finding the best price for a particular item, or if you like your jeans to arrive broken-in, and you are willing to go into a purchase with relatively low expectations, these programs may be worth exploring. Many shoppers — including many of my Wirecutter colleagues — have found tremendous deals on like-new items, such as our Lululemon shorts.

But then there’s the case of the vomit fleece. Both the Patagonia fleece jacket and the Lululemon shorts were said to be in excellent condition, and we purchased both for a great price, but only one didn’t smell like the contents of a toilet.

There’s also the power of brand names. Children and adults alike love to participate in fads. Nobody really likes to admit it, but brands and logos matter to many shoppers, and sometimes having the real thing rather than a just-as-good-as-but-not-the-actual-thing can play a significant role in one’s enjoyment of an item. If you’re a budget-conscious shopper who wants items from a particular brand, again, this is a great option.

Finally, there’s the sustainability claim. Initially, I was skeptical of these claims made by major corporations positioned to sell once-unsellable goods by passing the burden of environmentalism on to customers. I wondered if the “keeping items out of landfills” verbiage was simply an instance of greenwashing, especially considering how much shipping goods could tax the environment. Could these programs actually lower one’s environmental impact?

The short answer: Yes.

In the world of clothes, it’s hard to do anything less sustainable than making new items. “The raw materials and the environmental costs of virgin production is highly, highly outweighed by just reselling something, even if you’re calculating in the transport,” says Marcie Greene, who teaches at the Fashion Institute of Technology’s fashion business management program.

A 2021 New York Times article about cotton tote bags cites a study that found it would take 54 consecutive years of daily use of a single cotton tote to offset the impact of that tote’s production. Another study by Swedish researchers shows that the environmental impact of fiber and garment production dwarfs the impact of an item’s distribution.

And then there’s the return rate. The United States Postal Service estimates that the return rate for online purchases is about 25%. However, according to Ryan Rowe, CTO and co-founder of Archive (the company that handles the resale logistics for Lululemon, Fjällräven, and Cuyana, among others), estimates that the return rate for resale is closer to 15% to 20%. Rowe also told me that that rate is even lower for the items in the lowest condition-grade tiers, perhaps because consumers have lower expectations.

Of course, countless other considerations make it hard to truly determine the efficacy of these programs. AI may be used in the back end of resale programs, and the ease of online shopping can encourage overconsumption, among other factors.

But extending the life cycle of garments and reducing the number of new garments produced and sold notably contribute to diminishing the overall environmental footprint of the whole garment trade, and that makes a compelling case in support of the claims that these resale programs can lower one’s environmental impact.

Though we tested only a small set of items from three brands, what seems consistent across these resale programs is their ability to displace new purchases.

And their prices are hard to beat. If you, like me, go straight for the sale section of any clothing store, choosing to purchase from a resale program is almost like walking into a shop with a 30% to 50% coupon automatically applied.

Because these programs appear to be beneficial for everyone involved, they are likely to play an increasingly large role in the way everyone shops, and if you know how to navigate them, there’s probably a good deal in it for you, too.