Second Street opens a Ginza store selling nothing but resale luxury

Second Street, the secondhand-fashion chain run by Geo Holdings, opened a store in Ginza on 18 September devoted solely to resale jewellery, watches and designer ready-to-wear — the first shop in what the company said will become a chain of luxury-only specialist stores in major Japanese cities.

2nd STREET GINZA occupies the third and fourth floors of Maronie Gate Ginza 3, about 211 tsubo (roughly 700 square metres), and carries around 5,000 pieces in total, according to Second Street. Roughly 500 of those are jewellery and watches — about 300 jewellery pieces from houses including Cartier, Bulgari and Tiffany & Co., and 200 watches from brands such as Rolex and Omega — alongside ready-to-wear from labels including Comme des Garçons, Maison Margiela and Moncler. Prices span from under ¥10,000 to more than ¥1 million, the company said.

The store has a private appraisal room on the fourth floor and multilingual staff for English- and Chinese-speaking customers, with specialists trained through Second Street's partner Okura Holdings, according to the release. A launch promotion running until 18 October offers a ¥1,000 discount on purchases over ¥11,000.

Second Street is best known as a mass-market resale chain, its shelves usually mixing jeans and streetwear with the odd designer piece. Putting a luxury-only format on Ginza's most expensive real estate, rather than a suburban outlet, is a bet on the tourists and domestic buyers who already treat the district as Japan's benchmark for authenticated luxury, new or secondhand. Whether the nationwide "chain of major-brand specialist stores" the company describes as its next step becomes real will show whether Second Street can compete with Japan's established brand-resale specialists, such as Komehyo and Ragtag, on their own turf rather than at the volume end of the market.