Rokit's 40-year journey: The retailer's strategy to longevity in an evolving vintage market

The popularity of vintage clothing has skyrocketed in recent years, as new players arrive on the scene with fresh models and sourcing patterns increasingly influence the flow of stock. But it hasn’t always been like this. The sector has had to wade through negative public perception and accessibility concerns in order to move beyond being a niche, subcultural market into a more mainstream part of fashion.

“Part of that shift was likely as the overall aesthetic started to casualise,” said Eibhleann McMahon, creative director of vintage retailer Rokit, noting that changes were particularly pronounced in the late 2000s and 2010s. “You had normcore and streetwear rising and opening up vintage up to a newer market. Guys that would be shopping in JD Sports were suddenly coming to Rokit.”

Now on the cusp of its 40th anniversary in September, Rokit has seen vintage crawl through the trenches to its modern day renaissance, serving as a sectoral placeholder from its base in London. Since its founding in 1986, the retailer has evolved from a single market stall in the English capital focused on American vintage to a fully fledged chain, with four locations in London and one in Cardiff, Wales.

Part of this longevity can be attributed to Rokit’s ability to transform itself adjacent to the times. The company has slowly changed its own retail model, moving away from the traditional ‘hunt and dig’ vintage shop towards stronger merchandising, lighting, clearer product organisation and a high street-style shopping experience, striving for McMahon’s objective of opening up the environment.

“Rokit is for everyone,” she notes. “It is not a niche vintage shop. I wanted to compete with the high street, to improve merchandising and make the store experience feel akin to the way you’d be used to shopping in any other street shop. That was very much the objective: to bring Rokit into the new, to make it accessible to everybody, whether that’s physical accessibility, cultural accessibility or price point.”

That shift was also driven by changes in product quality. As new clothing became cheaper and trend cycles accelerated, vintage increasingly offered consumers an alternative. McMahon explains: “Man-made fibres became worse, everything became cheaper, the fashion juggernaut became out of control, the repetition of trends and the speed at which they were produced was crazy.”

For Rokit this has meant positioning vintage not only as a sustainable alternative, but also as a source of better quality clothing. “If you’re going to buy that white T-shirt, why not buy it vintage, where you’re going to find a better quality,” she says. “It already exists and it’s our responsibility to do something with that.”

Vintage meets the commercial market

The mainstream trajectory of vintage has brought more commercial players into the category. Retailers such as Primark and Urban Outfitters have toyed with vintage categories in their stores, while resale platforms like Vinted and preloved offerings by brands like Zara and Boohoo have made secondhand shopping more accessible. But MacMahon believes there is a difference between incorporating vintage into an existing retail model and building a business around it.

“Sometimes when you’ve got these small vintage pop-ups in high street stores, it can feel a little bit false, a little bit greenwashy, or almost like jumping on a trend that perhaps the buyers don’t fully understand,” she says. “Rokit has had customer bases growing with us. We’ve grown together and people my age and older continue to return. We don’t feel like we have to stop going there.”

That does not mean commercial competition is necessarily a bad thing. McMahon sees it as an opportunity for Rokit to continue improving its own proposition. She notes: “Any commercial output needs competition, but you need it to be better. How can our website be better than Vinted? It can be better than Vinted because you can trust Rokit. We’re going to give you an accurate description, we’re going to vet our product, we’re going to photograph things professionally. We’re going to invest in that.”

That investment extends to cleaning, pressing, measuring, checking composition and photographing each piece. “We’re not dealing with huge markups, not like your traditional fashion model. Our markups are relatively small because we put a lot into the processing.”

Vintage hasn’t escaped the microtrend curse

The rise of social media has also changed how consumers shop vintage. While previous generations were influenced by subcultures that developed over time, today’s consumers are increasingly exposed to rapidly changing microtrends. “Rokit certainly skewed towards the microtrends for a long time,” McMahon says. “We used to merchandise and edit alongside that. I think we’ve all shifted it to a more open market.”

Consumers still come to Rokit looking for the original versions of current trends, but the retailer believes they are also looking for something more authentic. “Most people are shopping trends, but I think our customers are trying to shop a more authentic version of them that would perhaps stay with them a little longer,” she says. “There is no doubt about this being driven by social media. It’s not driven by subcultures which take a while to gestate and build and grow. Now, it's an algorithm.”

A changing sourcing model

As vintage has become more popular, sourcing has become more complicated. Much of the product available today has already passed through the secondhand market multiple times, meaning older, higher-quality pieces are becoming increasingly scarce. “The grade in vintage has changed a lot,” McMahon says. “As it’s returned to market once, twice, even three times, it’s dying off.”

Rokit has maintained stability through a long-standing relationship with a textile recycling operation in Canada, which supplies the majority of its stock. “We’re fortunate that we’ve got this long-term relationship with a single supplier,” she says. “We can feed back and forth. They’re recycling everything, from lamps to shoes to bedding. Rocket is a portion of that.”

Despite this, the sourcing landscape has become more competitive. “Whilst it had become easier for resellers in a window of maybe the last decade, it’s now starting to become more difficult because the people they’re buying off can sell themselves,” McMahon says, adding that as a result, flexibility is becoming increasingly important for Rokit. “We can’t say, ‘Okay, you don’t have this grade of varsity jacket, so I’m going to go elsewhere.’ We have to ask, ‘Okay, we don’t have that grade of varsity jacket. What should we do next?’”

The next step of circularity

That question has helped push Rokit further into reworking and upcycling. Its Rokit Originals line takes pieces that would otherwise be difficult to sell and transforms them into new products. “Rocket Originals is really about how we serve these trends but in the right way,” McMahon says. “We want to be on trend, but it’s not a shallow pursuit. We want to produce good quality pieces.”

This approach also tackles a growing problem for the wider textile industry of lower-quality clothing that can no longer be resold. “We’re sitting on mountains of product and we all have to collaborate in a bid to solve this issue because it’s only going to get worse,” she adds. “We can put it back to market as is, or we have to find new ways of reworking it or completely disassembling it.”

For Rokit, that can mean everything from reworked denim and shirts to cushions and other products made from smaller fabric cuts. “We want to meet trends, we need to keep adapting, but we’ve also got this surplus of product that would otherwise be unsellable.”

Digital growth, physical discovery

While physical retail remains central to Rokit’s model, its digital business has allowed the retailer to reach a much wider audience. The website ships globally and offers a different experience to the physical stores. McMahon says: “In-store, it still remains about the experience and being able to find everything at every price point. Online, we find people are more like, ‘This is what I want, this is what I’m looking for.’ So we try to serve the differences in that respect.”

That online experience has been built around the same attention to detail as its stores, with detailed listings, measurements, composition information and product photography. “I didn’t want the shop to be dusty. I don’t want the website to be clunky. I want it to feel very, very simple to find what you’re looking for, but you also know more about it.”

The international reach of the website has also opened up new opportunities as luxury vintage becomes more prominent. The online site therefore serves a slightly different market, with a higher price point and a more global consumer.

New stores, new concepts

Rokit’s dedicated accessories store is another example of the retailer looking to differentiate and modernise its existing offer. Earlier this year, the retailer opened the store on Brick Lane as a means of “redefining vintage shopping”. The location offers pieces like Coach bags, statement jewellery and designer footwear, as well as reworked items from the Rokit Originals brand.

McMahon states: “We were seeing an increase in interest in accessories and it really was time to create what we think was the UK’s only dedicated accessories offering. It makes sense to go, ‘Okay, this is what we’ve got. Where do we go from here? How do we subdivide it? How do we modernise it?’”

The next stage could take several forms, from further specialist stores and pop-ups to an expanded luxury offer. McMahon, however, is deliberately leaving the door open. “Maybe we’ll have pop-ups within stores, like a niche of this, or maybe we’ll look internationally. Maybe we’ll develop the luxury side as we see more of this come through. Early reworks are going to feed into that.”

What comes next?

For Rokit, the future of vintage is likely to be shaped as much by what already exists as by what comes next. Nostalgia, changing consumer behaviour and the decline of newness are all feeding into the category. McMahon says: “Newness isn’t happening. It’s the reshaping of the existing that’s happening. Historically people would be replicating eras through vintage or replicating subcultures, punk, goth. Whereas now it’s all about the mashup.”

Ultimately, she believes Rokit’s ability to keep adapting is what has allowed it to reach 40 years. “It never rested on its laurels. It always wanted to move forward. It always wanted to adapt. It was always seeking change. It was always open to how we do things better, keep things fresh.”

While the vintage shop of the past may still have its appeal, McMahon believes the category has to keep moving forward. “Vintage isn’t about having a pinball machine in the corner and a dusty pile. That’s not the shop your granny could shop in. We need everyone to go in this direction and hopefully we’ll be part of that journey.”