This platform lets shoppers ‘swap’ their used clothes in exchange for gems from someone else’s closet — here’s how it works

Online shopping platform Swap Society is providing a sustainable way to satisfy your constant craving to refresh your wardrobe.

In 2017, after being inspired and “absolutely hooked” by a small clothing swap group among friends, Nicole Robertson launched Swap Society — an online platform that makes it simple to swap out your used clothing and shop items that other members have swapped in.

Swap Society is one of the latest such sites catching on in the online consignment, thrifting, and swapping space, along with companies like thredUP and Mercari. Brightly.eco put together a list of the top 20 earlier this year.

Here’s how Swap Society works: You pay a roughly $20 to $30 monthly subscription, depending on yearly or monthly billing, and when you no longer want an item, you give it to Swap Society in exchange for “SwapCoin” (the platform’s currency).

You then get to use your SwapCoin balance to shop the items on the site that other members have sent in. And knowing everyone on the platform is an active subscriber may help to cultivate a more engaged base of like-minded swappers.

Swapping can be a fun and easy way to break your addiction to fast fashion, which is one of the greatest offenders when it comes to earth’s rising temperatures. In fact, the fashion industry produces more pollution annually than international flights or ocean transport.

Fashion creates waste and pollution at every phase of its life cycle. Creating clothing requires 93 billion cubic meters (over 121 billion cubic yards) of water every year, and 20% of the world’s water waste is a product of garment dying and treatment. Old clothes and unused textiles account for 7% of landfill content. And only 1% gets repurposed into new garments.

We need to find ways to extend the life cycle of clothing and cut back on fast fashion consumption. Swap Society makes it fun to give your old clothes a new home and have constant access to an ever-rotating selection of garments that are new to you.

“I didn’t have time to list my clothes for sale online, and I never liked going to those resale shops where they hardly accept anything and they pay you pennies on the dollar for the items they do accept,” Robertson told Stefania Corti in a LinkedIn Q&A.

“I created Swap Society … to make it easy and affordable for women to mix up their wardrobes sustainably,” Robertson said to Shoutout LA.

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