Dr. Martens

The first pair of Dr. Martens 1460 boots sold in 1960, with a similar design and construction that’s used today. Since then, the company has become known for the durability and practicality of its boots and shoes, making it a great candidate for resale. 

In 2022, the Dr. Martens team launched its first resale pilot in the UK with Depop and The Boot Repair Company. Following the success of the pilot, the brand felt conviction to build a more expansive offering with resale, and the Archive partnership in the US was born. 

Dr. Martens footwear has been resold in thrift and vintage stores for decades, so the team wanted to find a way to “add value to a system that already existed by authenticating, repairing and restoring them,” said Anna Wickes, Dr. Martens Head of Recommerce. 

In just under a year from when the brand launched resale, ReWair had sold over $1 million worth of secondhand merchandise which drives profitable revenue. Dr. Martens has committed to becoming net zero by 2040, and resale will play an important role on that journey. When an item is sold via ReWair, it has a significantly lower carbon footprint than a new product. 

“Buy-in across the entire organization has been really strong,” Wickes said. “Leadership across teams have been real advocates for resale and are committed to it being a core part of our business in the future.”

Even prior to the launch of ReWair, Wickes has been an industry champion for circularity and its business potential. "Your brand is already being resold and repaired by customers. By offering this yourself, you gain customer connection, loyalty, data, and countless other benefits," Wickes advocates.

And the team had the data to back that up—prior to launching their own resale business, the brand surveyed their customers and found that more than one third of their wearers had bought secondhand Dr. Martens. “By launching resale within your brand, you have complete control, and can make decisions keeping mainline sales in mind,” she adds.

Since the launch of ReWair, the brand has additional data that supports this. Of ReWair customers, 43% are new to the brand, showing that resale has the potential to attract an entirely new customer base. And moreover, adding a resale channel within the Dr. Martens ecosystem has increased the LTV of full price customers: the lifetime value of customers who shop ReWair is more than 2 times higher than those who only shop full price.

Archive’s technology helps brands build resale businesses that replicate the full-price e-commerce experience. For Dr. Martens—which views resale as a crucial part of its circularity strategy— reproducing the look and feel, as well as the best-in-class user experience, of the mainline website was key to launching ReWair in the United States. 

The brand has also leveraged Archive’s team of experts to consistently track the business performance and provide best practices for growth on both the supply and demand side. One way that the brand has ensured success for ReWair in its first year was placing a prominent “resale” tab on Dr. Martens main website, which helps existing customers easily discover secondhand options and build awareness. 

Additionally, the Archive team had the skills to integrate ReWair with the existing Dr. Martens tech stack, which was key to allowing them to scale recommerce as a publicly listed company based in the United Kingdom.