Amazon has expanded its luxury presence by partnering with What Goes Around Comes Around, the trusted reseller of authenticated high-end vintage. Through the partnership, a dedicated WGACA section showcasing vintage luxury accessories and bags is featured on Amazon’s site. The move is an expansion of Amazon’s Luxury Stores experience, which the ecommerce giant introduced in 2020, and reflects the continued momentum of luxury resale.
“Luxury Stores at Amazon delivers an immersive, inspiring experience for luxury brands and continually expands our assortment,” said Muge Erdirik Dogan, President of Amazon Fashion in a statement. “We’re thrilled to collaborate with What Goes Around Comes Around to grow our selection of pre-loved luxury handbags and accessories, giving customers even more options to shop for themselves and their loved ones ahead of the holidays.”
While Luxury Stores established Amazon as a resource for the latest in luxury collections from some of the world’s most venerated fashion designers, the WGACA partnership allows the company to carve out a space as a trusted resource for high-end resale, a category that has been plagued by counterfeiting.
“Not all Chanel is created equal,” said Seth Weisser, WGACA Co-founder in a June 2022 interview with Retail TouchPoints. “We know what the best of the best is. These products are expensive and we want to respect the investment reality of the consumer spending thousands of dollars on a piece, and we want to direct that purchase. Five years from now or 10 years, if they retained this, they’re going to be thinking ‘Well, it was expensive but now it’s worth twice or 4X or 5X as much’ for some items, depending how long you hold it.”
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Founded by Weisser and Gerard Maione in New York City in 1993, WGACA now operates boutiques on the East and West Coasts. The brand is known for its rare vintage items from fashion houses including Azzedine Alaïa, Chanel, Hermès, Louis Vuitton, Tom Ford and Versace. However, it also serves as a valuable resource for unique denim and hard-to-find preloved T-shirts, which can sell for nearly $1,000, and luxury conversation pieces such as a Gucci guitar case. The WGACA online business is mostly dedicated to bags, accessories and jewelry, which are the categories featured through its Amazon partnership.
“These are the iconic pieces that are the holy grail,” said Maione in a June 2022 interview with Retail TouchPoints. “People come [to us] because it’s also very aspirational and special.”