How much are your designer handbags, watches, accessories, and jewellery worth? There's an app for that
In the age of the internet, the pre-loved and designer goods digital resale market has been something like the wild wild west. Unless sellers and buyers are working with authentication partners and trusted entities, oftentimes transactions are completed in best faith, with a lot of haggling, bidding, and negotiations in the process.
The team at Rebag, a digital platform for buying and selling pre-loved designer goods, are on the path to changing all that, by giving sellers and buyers market data on the dollar values of handbags, watches, accessories, and jewellery they're either looking to offload or acquire.
Today, Rebag introduced Clair AI, an image-driven instant appraisal tool available for free use on both Rebag's website and in its app.
Here's how it works: Users who download the Rebag app can photograph their designer handbags, watches, accessories, and jewellery. The app is capable of recognizing 15,000 bags from the top 50 luxury brands in the world—boasting 90 per cent accuracy!—and the more people use the app, the smarter the app gets, hello magic of AI.
After answering some basic questions assessing the condition of the handbag, the app culls market data and generates two prices: one offer for cash payment (for users who choose to sell their bags directly to Rebag) and one for Rebag credit (to shop the store).
"Clair AI is the world's first image recognition technology for resale," Rebag CEO Charles Gorra said. "It took us about six years to build and millions of data points. The scanning function works very much like a QR code or a mobile banking deposit. Clair AI only needs one good front-facing picture of the bag."
Not just for Rebag sellers and buyers, the Clair AI tool is free for anyone's use. Gorra suggests anyone concerned with resale value of handbags use the app in-store or while online shopping—to find out how well certain handbag models hold up in resale value. For fun, app users can also scan designer goods in magazines, on television screens, or... well, anywhere you see a handbag you're curious about.
I tried the Clair AI tool on a years-old Louis Vuitton GM Neverfull tote in monogram canvas, and within seconds, Rebag tendered offers of US$690 for direct resale or US$830 for store credit. Taking an average of these two numbers, I'd expect an average price of US$760 if I were to sell the bag on an independent platform, such as eBay.