Not Just Arm Candy

With bags having a resale value, they are no longer a frivolous expenditure.

- Smita Tripathi

WHEN Nishi Kapadia, a 28-year old advertising executive bought a Louis Vuitton for a little under Rs 1 lakh, her family thought it to be a frivolous expenditure. A few months later she sold the bag online for Rs 70,000 recovering nearly 70 per cent of the cost. “I bought another bag for Rs 80,000,” says Kapadia cheerfully. She plans to hold on to this one for a few months and then sell it and buy another one. “Once everyone has seen it, I’ll change it. I don’t need to live with the same bag. It’s not my husband,” she chuckles. She already knows which is going to be her next bag — a Fendi.

Kapadia and several others like her are keeping websites such as Confidential Couture, Luxepolis, Luxury Station, etc., in business. Confidential Couture, for instance, sells 4-7 bags a day — a far cry from 2-3 a week when Anvita Mehra, launched the site in 2014 with a handful of bags from friends and family. Today she has an inventory of around 400 bags and receives 25-30 queries a day from fashionist as planning to sell their bags. “Earlier one didn’t know what to do with one’s luxury bags after a while. They were too expensive to be gifted but at the same time most women wanted to purchase a new one and the older one just took up closet space. Now they can sell them and recover some of the cost,” says Mehra.

Take 26-year old Gurbani Bhatia, a professional pianist who has sold five bags and a pair of shoes on Confidential Couture including a couple of Louis Vuitton clutches, a Gucci purse, a Chanel bag and a Fendi monogrammed cloth bag that she used to take to college. “I used the Fendi for over six years and then sold it for Rs 28,000. The option of being able to sell the bags makes one shop more,” smiles Bhatia. She reckons she paid Rs 50,000 to 55,000 for the Fendi. Getting half her money back is better than the bag lying in a corner in her closet.