One of the largest barriers for the (relatively new) market of refurbished fashion is a lack of consumer acceptance. The current approach for most companies is advertising refurbished products as a cheaper, more sustainable alternative to new products. Nevertheless, they are not being compared to better alternatives to second- hand products. Besides that, the refurbished clothing market has some more barriers that could possibly be overcome with new marketing and design strategies.

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For a course in Sustainable Consumer Behaviour, a paper was written which includes a literature review of sustainability in the clothing industry and a case study of the brand The North Face to discover possibilities to improve consumer acceptance of refurbished clothing in order to reduce the waste produced by the clothing industry. The paper is titled 'Refurbished Fashion: How The North Face could increase consumer acceptance of their refurbished clothing line'.