Beyond Retro’s Steven Bethell: ‘Depop and Vinted aren’t the enemy. Fast fashion is’
Steven Bethell’s mum wanted him to go to law school; instead, he has built a secondhand clothing empire that kicked off a youth shopping earthquake – and is now trying to revolutionise the creation of new textiles and clothes.
About 30 years ago, the Canadian and his wife, Helene Carter-Bethell, set up Bank & Vogue, a group that now buys clothing from about 300 charities in the US and finds a new home for 4m items a week in more than 30 countries around the world.
One of those countries countries is the UK, where, in 2002, the group took on the Beyond Retro vintage fashion business, which sells about half a million garments a year. After opening in Cardiff this summer, it now has seven stores in the UK, taking the total to 17 worldwide and with plans for two more next year. An online shop launched in 2010.
The group paved the way for the likes of the websites Depop and Vinted, which have persuaded many younger shoppers to look for secondhand items as an alternative to fast fashion.
Wearing what appears to be a 10gallon hat along with a natty jacket and shirt, Bethell is enthusiastic about the future for secondhand shopping, which is booming in the UK and elsewhere.
“I think there is a category shift, in sensitivity and understanding of the environment, you can’t go back from. You can’t uncare that the planet is burning up,” he says.
The evidence is that young people are keen on secondhand clothes, not just because they can find bargains and more interesting pieces, but because they are concerned about the sustainability of the fashion industry, which contributes more to the climate emergency than the aeronautical and shipping industries combined. If trends continue, it could account for a quarter of the world’s carbon budget by 2050.
The global secondhand market is expected to grow 66% in the next four years alone to $351bn, according to a recent report by the US reuse website ThredUp well ahead of the general fashion market, as shoppers seek to save
cash and be more sustainable.
“Everybody who has a party thinks the party is going to last but the nice thing about trends is that the trends have all been secondhand [in recent years],” says Bethell, who now lives offgrid on a farm in Ontario guarded by stone lions.
“We are a bit more trend-proof than corduroy. We evolve. Beyond Retro has demonstrated over 20 years [that it] can reflect trends of the day through youth.”
While Beyond Retro faces big competition from pure-play online marketplaces, he sees the likes of Vinted, eBay and Depop as allies, not rivals. “My enemy is not Depop and Vinted. My enemy is fast fashion and people that are treating fashion like lettuce,” he says.
So keen is he to take on the behemoth of fast fashion, Bethell agreed to meet Kourtney Kardashian, appearing for “about four seconds” on her TV show to expound the virtues of recycled fashion and advising on her capsule collection with Boohoo. Bethell is not sure that his effort had any effect on Kardashian’s millions of social media followers but says he is “proud that I am trying”. To date, Bank & Vogue claims to have saved 500,000 tonnes of product from landfill. The group has a facility in India that sorts, grades and processes textile waste for recycling and reuse. Its aim is divert more than 680,000 tonnes by 2025.
Beyond Retro takes a tiny proportion of trendy items – what Bethell calls the “pixie dust” – and sells them in its 17 stores or online.
Of the rest, about 40% is sold to Latin America for resale and reuse and more is sold to “grading houses”, which sell on a large proportion to African countries for resale. About a fifth is cut up for “wiping cloths” in various industries and approximately another fifth is shredded for use in items such as mattresses and car doors.
Bethell is working on changing that model. “Right now, we can sell everything. Really the question is: ‘Can you move up the evolutionary ladder?’ Instead of shredding and making insulation for car doors, can you make a component for a garment?”
Today, less than 1% of all clothes thrown away globally are recycled back into clothes but Bethell is hunting for ways to step that up.
Since 2017, Bank & Vogue has also been working with Converse to provide ready-made components, cut from unwanted clothing such as floral dresses and plaid shirts, which the footwear brand uses to create new pairs of shoes.
Last year, the group launched Beyond Remade – which takes parts of unsellable used clothing and upcycles them into glamorous new garments, including skirts, jackets, bags and dungarees.
Bethell says the project is “really is about us showing to brands that we can make luxury from post-consumer material”, and he is working on new brand collaborations expected to be announced next year.
“The idea of using existing material is what every grandmother did, making quilts from scrap fabric. Our best future is looking at the past,” he says.
Looking for ways to recycle fabric that cannot be made into new items is top of his to-do list.
In 2020, Bank & Vogue signed a deal with Swedish chemical textile recycler Renewcell under which it provides 30,000 tonnes a year of used jeans – mostly plus-size US jeans, which are difficult to resell – to be turned into cellulose for new yarns. Other denim is being shipped off for shredding into material that can be turned directly into fibre.
However, such innovation faces many challenges in a global market beset by cost pressures as household spending power is squeezed by the cost of living crisis, while manufacturers are unwilling to shift away from the yarns they know.
A global slowdown in clothing sales has depressed demand for yarn and Renewcell recently scaled back production amid lacklustre orders. While it says there is strong demand from brands, some of which have invested in the company, uptake from fibre manufacturers that could spin its recycled cellulose pulp into yarns such as viscose is lagging amid a surge of virgin viscose coming on to the market.
“We and they have proven that circularity in textiles is not only possible, but here now ... Brands need to step up and buy the fibre,” says Bethell.
“This is hard work but I think it’s worth it,” he concludes, noting that several secondhand sellers and recyclers are finding it tough to make money, while Beyond Retro and Bank & Vogue turn a profit.
“My job is to say we started a journey. I’ve been 20 years in resale. We are showing it is possible to have longevity.”
He adds: “I want to be like the Greeks, where before they became citizens they had to promise to leave the planet a better place.” CV
Family Married, two children, four grandchildren.Education BA in political studies.Pay N/ALast holiday The Bahamas.Best advice he’s been given “Each day, figure out how to delight your customer.”Biggest career mistake Putting all his eggs in one basket.Word he overuses “F**k”.How he relaxes Farming and moving rocks.
The idea of using existing material is what every grandmother did. Our best future is looking at the past
Steven Bethell
decarbonise.”
He said African countries would be willing to side with the rich world but only if they received assurances that their transition to renewable energy would be fully funded, and if there was clear language to differentiate between the phase-out dates for rich and poor countries.
Campaigners also stressed the need for rich countries to acknowledge their greater responsibility for emissions. Meena Raman, a climate policy expert at her 16th Cop with the Third World Network, said: “The global stocktake has been full of dishonesty and hypocrisy from the global north, especially the US and umbrella group of countries, who are suddenly claiming to be climate champions talking about the 1.5C north star, while refusing to talk about their historical emissions and historical responsibility.
“This is a super-red line for the United States. They don’t want to talk about equity, and insist that the text refers to all parties without any differentiation.
“They are setting up the developing countries for failure so they can blame, and show themselves as climate champions even as they are expanding fossil fuel production and consumption … This is hypocrisy, it’s climate colonialism, and climate injustice.”
The actions of rich countries in pursuing fossil fuels themselves reeked of hypocrisy, Adow added. The US is the biggest oil and gas producer in the world; the UK has vowed to “max out” the North Sea and is building a new coalmine; the EU is sourcing additional gas supplies from around the world.
“We know these are crocodile tears from the UK and the US on phasing out fossil fuels,” said Adow. “The US is the ultimate petrostate. If they were so opposed to fossil fuels, why do they seem to love them so much?”
Asad Rehman, the founder of the Global Campaign for Climate Justice,said: “The hypocrisy of rich countries claiming it’s a death sentence for small islands, whilst spending the last decades refusing to cut their emissions and announcing huge fossil expansion is the real death sentence. It’s a toxic circle: both a lack of ambition and years of saying one thing and obstructing behind closed doors.”
Brandon Wu, the director of policy at ActionAid USA, said rich countries must fulfil their promises: “It’s understandably very difficult for developing countries to commit to a fossil fuel phase-out when they simply have no reason to believe that international support will be forthcoming. Rich countries have to rebuild the trust by giving some much clearer signals that finance and technology transfer will be coming.”
Rebecca Newsom, the head of politics at Greenpeace UK, said it was “no wonder” that many African countries felt this way. “Countries like the UK continue to go on a drilling frenzy for new oil, gas and coal, and rich historically polluting countries have consistently failed to deliver – or blocked progress – on the new public finance urgently needed to support developing countries with climate action,” she said.
According to analysis by the Pacific Islands Climate Action Network and Oil Change International, 127 countries at the talks had called for or endorsed a decision to phase out fossil fuels at Cop28, up from 80 countries just a year earlier.
Newsom said there was still a chance for rich countries to take a different direction. She said: “What these dynamics make clear is that to really unlock the talks in Dubai, countries like the UK, US, EU, Japan, Canada and Australia need to urgently get their own house in order and significantly ramp up the public finance needed to deliver the genuinely fair and ambitious package that the world wants and needs.”