The second-hand stuff you don't want,
It became the most Fashionable clothes for African brothers
In Africa, foreigners wearing Chinese-language T-shirts have become a unique sight on the streets.
When you see this scene, you may even feel disoriented.
For example, this young man is wearing a Sportswear with the Chinese character printed on it. His dark face is in sharp contrast to the strong clothing style with Chinese characteristics:
Another example is the little brother's clothes on the back of the "Chengdu No. 7 High School", I don't know what the students of Chengdu No. 7 High School will feel after seeing:
These black people must not know the meaning of these Chinese, only think these mysterious Oriental symbols have a sense of Fashion indescribable.Just as we Chinese all like to buy some clothes with English.
But it is also a reflection of the fact that Chinese clothes are becoming the most popular item in African closets.
In fact, the second-hand clothing market in Africa is very popular. Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, has the largest second-hand clothing market in East Africa. Thousands of second-hand clothes are transferred here every day.
In 2018, China exported a total of $280 million in second-hand clothing, more than 70 percent of which went to the African market.
In the domestic sale of 6 cents a jin of old clothes, to Africa, a change, can sell dozens of pieces of ***, and every time the arrival of goods are everyone looting the state.
It seems that the secondhand clothing business has become big business.
One might ask: where does China get these old clothes from?
Most of it comes from our "donations".
Offline, our old clothes make their way to Africa through recycling yards and bins.
Online, recycling platforms such as Xianyu and Feiant are also encouraging users to make bookings with their mobile phones, who then conduct door-to-door recycling.Some of these recycled clothes are exported to Africa.
Among them, Feiant has become the largest online waste clothes recycling and comprehensive processing platform.It has more than 3 million users, covering more than 300 cities in China, and recycles more than 100,000 tons of used clothes annually.
How do flying ants work?
We donate clothes for free,
It helped him earn $60 million a year
The founder of Flying Ant is Jack Ma.
In 2014, when Ma was a student at university, he noticed that many of his classmates threw their old clothes into the trash can after graduation without taking them away.
He thought it was a waste of resources, so he wondered if he could donate the clothes to poor mountainous areas.But when he called public interest organizations, many turned him down.
This is because after the recycling of old clothes, the storage, cleaning, disinfection and logistics need a lot of money, which public welfare organizations cannot afford.
According to Ma's survey, there are two pain points in the used clothing recycling market:
The first is that there are fewer places that need large quantities of clothes donations at present. The demand for donations of used clothes exceeds the demand, so I don't know how to deal with it.
Second, it is very difficult to deal with old clothes, so many people are unwilling to do it, resulting in a large waste of resources.
After fully understanding the market, Ma decided to start his own recycling project.He enlisted some of his classmates and founded Flying Ants.
Here's how Flying Ant operates today:
It expected that many people did not know and were unwilling to donate clothes, so it first demonstrated the use of old clothes for environmental protection and public welfare through new media promotion and encouraged users to make appointments for door-to-door recycling.
In the simplest way, users can make an appointment on the WeChat platform, fill in the weight of the clothes, and then arrange a Courier to collect them.
What do they do with the old clothes?
Old clothes that meet the criteria for donation are sent to the mountains by flying ants.Environment-friendly recycled old clothes will be sent to processing factories by flying ants to make green bags, aprons, stalls and so on.
Newer, better quality summer clothes, will be cleaned and disinfected, to the relevant foreign trade companies for export to Africa.This is where flying ants make their money.
As a business, rather than a public welfare organization, Flying Ant naturally wants to make money.
In the media to Ma Yun interview, Ma Yun revealed that particularly good summer clothing exports, can sell to 8,000 yuan - 12,000 yuan/ton range.The cost of used clothes is around 0.6 yuan per kilo.
According to the data of more than 100,000 tons of old clothes collected annually by Feant, Feant can earn 60 million yuan per year.
That's not nearly as much revenue as a big-name Internet company, but it's a lot of money for a startup.
And flying ants have other businesses.There is a related e-commerce section on the public account of flying ants - Ant heart selection and a good set.One of the good set is Ma Yun through the poor mountainous areas to establish links to help agricultural electricity providers.
While there are no specific revenue figures for the business, Ma said they helped farmers sell 1.8 million kilograms of organic lotus roots in 2018.I can see that the revenue should be good.
Making money out of a good heart?
In fact, there has been a kind of questioning about this kind of used clothing platform: How can our clothes, which are donated for free, become a tool for you to make money?Are you cashing in on our kindness?
Let's just say that the voice is biased.
First of all, the clothes we donate need to be treated before they can be donated.
The documentary Great Made shows that people tend to dump their unwanted clothes on recycling companies, regardless of whether they are wearable or not.
Most of these items, however, cannot be donated, such as Underwear, dresses, high heels and so on.Some of the clothes are so damaged that they are discarded.Things like coats and sneakers are universal.
Recycling companies spend their days sorting through mountains of old clothes, then disinfecting, packing and shipping them.
All of this requires a certain cost, and only companies like Flying Ant are willing to help us bear it.
They help you eliminate the cost of disposing of your old clothes, which is free of charge, whether it's recycling or sorting and packing.What's wrong with them making extra money by exporting?
Second, the amount of clothing waste we generate each year is staggering.Having a company like this to help us reduce waste is a good thing for the environment.
Look in your closet. How many pieces of clothing have you worn once and then put on the shelf?How many clothes go straight into the trash?
Data show that from the stock, the annual output of used clothes in China will reach 3.9 billion ~ 6.5 billion pieces, and the total amount of all kinds of textiles piled up by families will exceed 100 million tons.
The total amount of fiber processing in China is about 500 billion tons every year, generating more than 200 billion tons of waste textiles, but the utilization rate is less than 10%.The final result is that a large number of old clothes are burned or buried, which not only wastes resources, but also causes serious pollution.
In such a situation, if the flying ants can use their own strength, make every old clothes play its *** * value, isn't it?
What is public welfare?Must not be linked to profit?
The goal of public welfare is to design a business model that benefits all parties and enables more people to participate in it.This is sustainable public good.
Platforms like Flying Ant are already making more people aware of the recycling of used clothes through this model.If it can use it to increase the rate of used clothing to 20, 30 percent, why should we blame it?
