Why Your Next Shirt, Jacket or Pants Should be 'Recommerced' As part of the hot 'recommerce' trend, brands like A.P.C. and Patagonia are updating the responsible and thrifty custom of mending. Here's what's in it for you.

COKE CANS get recycled. Houses get flipped. And today, clothing gets recommerced. Recommerce is the practice by which a brand or store buys or takes back a used garment from a customer, repairs it to like-new condition and resells it at a sliver of the original cost. Labels and stores including the North Face, Nordstrom and Patagonia have all lately trotted out their own micro-sites devoted to the phenomenon. It's a concept rooted in L.L. Bean's legendary, decades-old policy of mending items however decrepitbut this very old idea has caught on as more eco-minded customers opt for a spruced-up secondhand shirt rather than a brandspanking-new one. Two rehabbing services have made the recom revolution possible: Trove in California and the Renewal Workshop in Oregon. When a company such as elevated outerwear brand Arc'teryx buys back a jacket, it sends it to Trove which then cleans it, realigns the zipper or sews up a hole, photographs it and lists it on a special rehabbed-gear section of Arc'teryx's website. The Renewal Workshop similarly revitalizes and reincarnates garments for its partners, which include Carhartt and the North Face. Offering a recommerce program bolsters a company's environmental bona fides, but what do customers get out of it? Well, anyone with used gear from the label can trade it in for store credit, though how much varies widely by brand. At Patagonia, you can reap up to $100 for a pricier item, while San Francisco workwear label Taylor Stitch and women's essentials brand Eileen Fisher pay as little as $5 per piece, and Arc'teryx offers 20% of the garment's original price. But shoppers, not swappers, benefit most from these programs. Affordability is the first major hook of recommerce, which Andy Ruben, the co-founder of Trove, likened to the world of used STYLE & FASHION | FASHION Why Your Next Shirt, Jacket or Pants Should be 'Recommerced' As part of the hot 'recommerce' trend, brands like A.P.C. and Patagonia are updating the responsible and thrifty custom of mending. Here's what's in it for you UP WITH UPCYCLING Brands with a range of sensibilities have leapt into the recommerce market.

• What do you make of the "re-commerce" programs described in the article? Would you buy clothing through these types of programs?
• What do you think would be the primary reasons for engaging with a re-commerce program ? For instance, how important do you think the green aspect is versus the opportunity to buy discounted goods or receive trade-in credit for other merchandise?
• Is this really a new idea? Have you had a sense of deja vu throughout the course with some of the "new" sustainability ideas and concepts we've heard about?