Noor Muhammad scoured the Barra Market, one of the more frequented thrift markets locally known as landa bazaars in downtown Karachi for an hour in search of boxing boots that would fit his feet, his training regimen and his budget.

When the young boxer from the lower middle class neighbourhood of Lyari finally found a `pre-loved` (second-hand) pair, which had better cushioning and fewer cracks, Noor and the shopkeeper couldn`t agree on the price. After haggling at length, the shopkeeper agreed to bring down the asking price from Rs3,500 to Rs2,000. But Noor only had Rs1,700, and was only able to purchase it with a contribution from his friend.

Noor represents practically every other young man in Lyari, or one of Karachi`s many impoverished localities, who have aspirations to become athletes and sports stars in order to escape the vicious cycle of poverty. Even Noor had to put his boxing on hold, as he couldn`t manage it along with his job as a waiter at a local café, where he makes about half the government-mandated minimum wage of Rs37,000.

Noor tells Eos that, at his boxing gym, youngsters often train in unmatched, torn shoes, with patched up uppers made of parachute necessary for excessive sweating, to reduce weight. `Most of us would get second-hand gear from these landa bazaars, but even that is difficult now due to the steep rise in prices,` he continues.

FLEA MARKET FLIPPERS A major factor driving up prices in landa bazaars is the emergence of online portals dedicated to pre-loved items.

Sabir Khan, whose family has owned a shop in the Barra Market for decades, says that these online sellers have started purchasing their items in large numbers, which they then sell at higher prices after marketing them online. `They sell them on their respective online channels, so many of which have now cropped up,` he tells Eos.

The shopkeepers at the Mayo Hospital Landa Bazaar in Lahore have coined the term `landa professors` for these online thrift-shop owners. `They come here and inspect each pair so cautiously, making sure it`s from the right brand, is not too damaged, and is not a rip-off,` says shopkeeper Ameer Hamza. ``We now call them professors for their dedication in this search,` he tells Eos.

What Hamza describes is neither a new concept nor is it unique to Lahore markets. It has been a rising practice in the West, particularly in the wake of Covidled lock downs. It is casually called `flea market flipping` there and is considered one of the cheapest business ideas that offers phenomenal returns, with instances where people have literally made fortunes through it. One oft-cited reason for its popularity is the rise of sustainable fashion, with conscious consumers worried about the impact of excessive production on the planet.

One such local online store is Secret Stash.

Its owner, Nazish Hussain, tells Eos that she got the inspiration for it while on vacation in San Francisco. `People always want high end brands, but don`t have the budget for it, and that`s where we come in,` she continues.

However, Hussain believes that the thrifting culture has less to do with sustainable and eco-friendly practices, and more about people who want to buy high-end items that would otherwise be too pricey for them. `Buying second-hand stuff was looked down upon earlier, but now people own it,` she asserts.

OF DUMPSTERS AND GOLD MINES In a seminar on used textiles held in Islamabad last year, the European Union (EU) delegation`s top official Jeroen Willems pointed out that Pakistan is among the top importers of second-hand textiles.

`In the EU, there is a notion of `fast fashion`, in which, on average, people discard a shirt after using it seven times, he pointed out. This results in some 12.6 million tonnes of textile waste, with a portion of it ending up in Pakistan.

This has been corroborated by a recent report, Mapping the Sustainable Fashion Ecosystem in Pakistan, commissioned by the British Council in Pakistan. According to its findings, Pakistan currently import sroughly 1.5 million tonnes of textile waste each year from Europe.

`Most of this ends up in landfills and a small amount makes it to the flea markets, says its author, Abdul Rehman, who is a Lahore-based designer and researcher of indigenous cultures. Among other things, the study criticises the Western practice of overproduction and over consumption, and its convenient discarding and eventual dumping into countries such as Pakistan.

The overwhelming majority of these products including from the EU, UK, USA, Korea, China and the UAE first land at the Karachi port, from where they find their way to warehouses in Sher Shah, the city`s most popular scrap market.

Whether it`s Lighthouse or the other second-hand markets in Karachi, Raja Bazaar in Rawalpindi, Naulakha and Mayo Hospital landa bazaars in Lahore, the Karkhano Bazaar in Peshawar, or other such markets in the peripheries, all of them source and procure their products from Karachi and its scrap dealers. Each shop you visit in any market will have a representative who visits the port city periodically and books a shipment back to their respective towns.

Those who work in appliances and house hold items, such as cutlery, furniture or decor, often make the longer trek to Balochistan, where the Chaman-Spin Boldak border crossing is a veritable goldmine for prized articles from European and Pan-Asian countries, via the routes of Iran and Afghanistan.

Discarded or dated as they may be, they are cherished in Karkhano, the famed landa bazaar of Peshawar. After the closure of the Torkham Border, where vendors from Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) would get their shipments at relatively cheaper rates, the Chaman-Spin Boldak crossing is now the only way to access goods from the Afghan market. Transporting them to either Peshawar or elsewhere adds to the cost.

However, even in KP, pre-loved clothes and shoes are mostly supplied from Karachi.

THE SCRAPDEALERS OF KARACHI Over the past few years, the warehouse owners in Karachi have begun sorting the stuff, not just by the levels of its wear-and tear, but by brands and models too.

Ameer Muhammad is one of almost 300 importers dealing in used clothing and footwear, all of whom operate their warehouses in Karachi. He tells Eos that there`s a growing demand for these consignments, which currently stand around 3,000 containers per month.

Muhammad explains that shoes account for only about 10 percent of the goods, while the rest of the shipment comprises miscellaneous textiles. `Roughly one percent of what we import caters to the big city landa markets, such as Light House and Naulakha,` he points out. The remainder of this `dump`, Muhammad adds, is sent to the rest of the country, where people have fewer concerns regarding brand and quality, and instead expect the articles to cover bare necessities, he adds.

Muhammad adds that, even from this `waste`, the rather finer articles are picked and refurbished to be re-exported. `We only sell the sub-par products in the local market, because the good items, some of which can qualify as even vintage, have better markets in, say, Japan,` he points out. `It`s where we make our profits,` Muhammad concludes.

THE CRISIS OF AFFORDABILITY This evolution of local thrift markets has resulted in two kinds of importers: those such as Muhammad, who buy low grade products in bulk for up to $0.30 per kilogramme; and others such as Khazanay, an online portal, who buy better quality products that cost them up to five dollars per kg.

Muhammad explains that the higher price is due to each kg having at least one high quality apparel or footwear. `These products are then washed and polished, to be sold at higher prices in modern thrift shops,` he adds.

Some of these items, particularly foot wear of known brands, are even marketed at prices that are higher than for the same preloved item in the US. For example, a pair of discontinued Adidas, Nike or Vans can be found for around $40 in US stores such as Nordstrom Rack. This translates to around Rs11,000. However, a random search on the website of Pakistani thrift businesses shows the same article priced at Rs14,000.

The arrival of online sellers has increased the demand of pre-loved products, with the ripple effect resulting in the upward revision of prices by thrift market traders, to the detriment of their traditional buyers.

The shopkeepers across cities point out that they have also seen a difference in their buyers, who were previously looking for inexpensive products to fulfil basic needs. A large number of the new consumers include people such as Adil*, a fitness-conscious resident of Islamabad, who regularly participates in marathons that are now frequently organised by local groups.

Economist Ammar Habib Khan says that landa bazaars still cater to the low-income segments. `But now, there`s also a market for those from middle-income groups who desire famous brands or specialised items, he tells Eos. `The brand consciousness and the purchasing power of the people have both increased and, in general, that`s the reason behind market inflation,` he adds.

AN UNNATURAL TRANSITION In the British Council-commissioned study on indigenous fashion practices across Sindh and Punjab, Rehman documented just how remarkably different the local sustainable practices are from practices in vogue today dubbed sustainable.

It pointed out how the process of crafting the garment while using natural material was a communal activity among women, especially in Sindh and Punjab, and it sustained the sense of community, while being sufficient for their consumption too.

`It is still a fresh memory that weinherited clothes from older generations, and then those clothes were either repurposed or adapted to new fashion or, if nothing else, ended up as cleaning rags or insulating cloth for hot pots,` he explains.

Rehman argues that the transition to imported `fast fashion` trends, which continue to change, didn`t only shrink the market for locally produced items, but also instilled in consumers the desire to own more and more clothes and to value them less and less. `Now, in the name of saving time and money and getting inspired by fast-changing fashion, we end up spiralling into this over consumption spree.

Khan, the economist, points out that there is no immediate data to validate the claim that over consumption is the direct result of fast fashion.Hebe lieves that the inereased purchasing power of consumers and social media trends am likelier reasons for fuelling ove monsumption.

He adds that a major downside to the increase of this foreign dumping is that it has weakened our local industry. `We cannot come close to competing with cheap, branded items, he says.

Hussain, the owner of Secret Stash, insists that thrifting in and of itself is not the reason for overproduction. `The clothing brands are already producing more than they can sell and the batches already end up in the bin,` she tells Eos. `What we`re doing is collecting from the discarded or pre-owned stash, and selling it to people who either couldn`t afford it originally or are okay with buying it cheaper from us, she says.

The shopkeepers of landa bazaars acknowledge that their sales have grown, including due to social media trends.

However, most of them remain unhappy with digital thrift stores, saying they profit off the labour of shopkeepers.

But as Lahore`s Ameer Hamza points out, the anger has more to do with why the shopkeepers aren`t doing this themselves.

Hamza`s family has been in the business for the past 35 years, started by his grandfather.

Now, he plans to learn digital marketing in order to better market the products and demand higher prices.

With his network already in place, he is confident that he will scale up his business once he creates an online version of his physical shop. This was a recurring point made by shop owners in thrift markets in Peshawar and Islamabad as well. It would definitely result in higher revenues for those traditional sellers of landa bazaars.

This inevitable change is likely to deliver another massive blow to local businesses and the sustainability of indigenous producers as well as people such as boxer Noor Muhammad, who are getting priced out even of the landa bazaar.

* Name changed to protect privacy The writer is a journalist based in Islamabad. X: @MHunainAmeen