New Website for Buying and Selling Ski Gear Online

What made you decide to launch a pre-loved/secondhand ski and snowboard wear site?

WhoSki.com exists to help extend the life-cycle of high-value, durable items such as ski and snowboard jackets, pants and snowboots. At the same time, we want to make it easier and cheaper to update your own on-piste style so we can all look good on the slopes for less. Your old could - and should - be someone else’s new.

We decided to create WhoSki.com for three reasons:

• As consumers, concern about the horrifying impact of the fashion industry, whereby 87 percent of clothing ends up in landfill in the UK. That equates to 11m clothing items sent to landfill or incineration every week.

• As skiers, concern about the environmental footprint of winter sports. In addition to enabling the buying and selling of pre-loved clothing via WhoSki.com, as a brand we also regularly attend and participate in workshops, seminars and events in the sustainability, circular economy and #SkiGreen sectors.

• As parents, guilt about the amount of good-as-new ski and snowboard clothing that is discarded, barely worn, without being passed on for further use.

WhoSki.com is the place to sell your no-longer-wanted ski and snowboard clothing, and refresh your mountain wardrobe at prices that mean you can get a quality new look at low prices without fast fashion guilt.

Extending the active life of clothing by just three months per item, reduces its carbon, water and waste footprint by up to 10 percent. We can all do that, surely?

2) What sort of difficulties have you encountered, if any?

The shutdown of the ski industry due to the Covid pandemic soon after we launched WhoSki.com has been a major challenge, as for others in the wintersports sector.

However, we have spent lockdown re-visiting the transactions side of our website, resulting in an easier to use re-launched site, which works simply and effectively across all platforms from mobile to PC. We also focused on promoting the #SkiGreen message, expanding our knowledge of the eco side of the wintersports industry and helping build networks in the environmental sector, which has been valuable and illuminating.

Looking on the bright side, many people shaking out their ski wardrobes after a two year break are finding that certain items no longer fit (at the NEC National Snow Show in October 2021 we heard from many who had actually lost weight by working out through lockdown). The best place to sell and replace those too big / too small items is via WhoSki.com.

Expanding the WhoSki.com community will be a gradual process, but we are committed to organically building our user base. We are also talking to a number of commercial and industry partners about how we can assist in the re-use and re-circulation of pre-loved, good-as-new clothing.

How much does it cost to upload an item on your site?

It is free to post items for sale on WhoSki.com: there is no registration fee. We do, however, charge a small 20 percent commission on every sale, a quarter of which we donate to charity. Our charity partner is stem4, a Wimbledon-based teenage mental health charity.

Partnering with stem4 is our way of supporting a charity which helps young people access positive mental health support easily and through their phones. Every item you buy or sell through WhoSki.com directs a charitable donation to this important cause.

Ebay, Gumtree and MarketPlace are all well-established sites for selling pre-loved. Why should we choose WhoSki?

Auction sites are now so large it can be confusing to know who you are buying from, or what you are being offered. In comparison, WhoSki.com is a specialist wintersports clothing website, designed to make it easy to pass on and purchase relevant items without the ‘noise’ of larger, broader sites.

Because ski and snowboarding is our business, we know and care about this market, enabling sellers and buyers to connect in a safe, dedicated, fee-free forum.

Many people choose to give their unwanted ski clothing to local charity shops. The problem with this is that the vast majority of textiles donated this way do not sell - especially specialist items such as wintersports clothes. Making it easier to sell direct to other ski / snowboard enthusiasts is a more effective way of keeping clothing in circulation and out of landfill. This is what we mean when we refer to the circular economy.

Can items be bought and sold internationally? Are there potential customs issues?

We are a UK-based site. However, there is nothing to stop registered users based overseas from buying and selling via WhoSki.com, provided they arrange local payment of relevant taxes and postage costs. If you are sending an item from the UK overseas, check the latest rules on customs declarations for the destination country before you agree to post it.

How do we get started?

Great to hear you want to support the #SkiGreen economy! Simply visit WhoSki.com to browse items for sale, find out more about sustainability in the pre-loved clothing market and read our blog which covers all things skiing and the circular economy. We’ve also added a #SkiGreen Directory of businesses and organisations operating with eco-principles so you can arrange your next trip to the mountains with a reduced impact on the environment.

Sign up to our newsletter to stay in touch with site developments - don’t worry, we do not spam - and register for free as a site member in order to sell your good quality, unwanted wintersports clothing or buy from others in our community.