As the fashion industry grows beyond fleeting trends and turns its attention to vintage treasures, premium marketplace Luxury Promise proves that loving pre-loved products is the next big thing.

Founder and CEO of Luxury Promise Sabrina Sadiq felt inspired after selling her vintage Hermes Kelly bag – just days after she bought it – to a client on the spot for double the price. This light-bulb moment showed her a clear gap in the market.

Officially launched in 2016, Luxury Promise is a premium marketplace for pre-loved luxury goods delivered with speed and authenticity, made possible through visual recognition and anti-counterfeit technology.

One of the startups from Womentum 2019, a women in tech accelerator by womena® in partnership with Standard Chartered, Luxury Promise has grown an expansive community of pre-loved luxury lovers.

“We find there’s a shift in the way people are spending. Especially with the rise of social media and the digital world, people want the experience, and to not necessarily spend as much,” she says. “They want the experience of owning luxury goods, which is what buying pre-loved allows you to do.”

Formerly a lawyer, Sabrina utilized her skills to thoroughly research the secondary luxury market, currently valued at $20 billion globally and expected to more than double over the next five years. She was able to understand what was missing, the dynamics behind consumer culture and which regions in the world her platform could cater to.

She launched her startup with an office in London’s Bulgari Hotel and set out to bridge to the rest of the region and Asia through an international hub in another luxury capital, Dubai.

When companies claim to be “global,” Sabina says, “they think about the US, they think about Europe, but they forget about the rest of the world. The Middle East is a huge market [and] parts of Asia are a huge market.”

Luxury Promise’s online platform allows them to serve their customers in the most convenient way possible, working towards their aim of making high-end fashion more accessible while connecting fashion lovers across the globe.

“The process takes just 60 seconds, where the user can sign up, then upload several images of their product for authentication purposes, which is then given a value compared with the pricing index,” explains Sabrina.

Luxury Promise is also looking to encourage sustainable fashion. “It’s not just about giving access to luxury goods but actually fixing a problem. The second biggest pollutant after oil is fashion,” says Sabrina. “We’re telling people, you need to think about your environment and there’s no shame in buying pre-loved.”

With an 80 percent return in customers, Sabrina and her team plan on expanding globally by directing more funds, hiring the right staff and increasingly educating more people on the secondary luxury market.

“This is our baby. I have three kids. I call this my fourth child. I wake up, I’m feeding it, I’m nurturing it, I want it to grow,” she says.

“I want this to be a company that one day we’ll exit and be proud to say we cracked a market that no one was thinking about.”

Set in the innovative ecosystem of Berlin and the bustling investment hub of Dubai, Season 2 of Womentum Series follows the journey of entrepreneurs from MENA’s top female-led tech startups as they go through a four-month accelerator. Join us as we dive deeper into the highs and lows of entrepreneurship and the challenges they face as they build and grow their businesses. Check out Season 1 of the series!