Durability, Resale, and Repair: How Jackalo Enables Circularity in Childrenswear

I recently joined Joe Keenan, Editor-in-Chief at Total Retail, for episode 503 of the Total Retail Talks podcast to talk about what it actually takes to build a circular children's clothing brand. We covered everything from why I started Jackalo to how our resale program works and where I think kids' fashion is headed. Here's a summary — and what it means for you as a Jackalo parent (or someone who's thinking about becoming one).

Why I Started Jackalo

When my oldest was around four, the hand-me-downs stopped coming. Kids that age are hard on clothes, and most of what's out there simply isn't built to make it past one child. I kept buying pants. They kept falling apart before my kids grew out of them.

That's the problem Jackalo exists to solve. Children's clothing should be durable enough to pass through multiple kids — not just survive one wash cycle. If a pair of pants can't make it from sibling to sibling, or friend to friend, it has no business calling itself sustainable.

Durability Has to Come First

A lot of brands add a resale or repair program on top of products that weren't built to last and call it circular fashion. That's not how it works.

Before we could offer resale or repair, we had to get the clothing itself right. That meant testing materials carefully — balancing organic certification, durability, and skin sensitivity. (Organic cotton that's soft enough for sensitive skin but tough enough for an active kid isn't easy to source.) I tested early prototypes on my own children, which meant the feedback was honest and fast.

The rule I live by: make sure your product is durable enough to outlast one customer before you invest in anything else. Everything circular follows from that.

Why We Built Resale Into Our Own Website From Day One

When it came time to offer resale, we had a choice: partner with a third-party platform, or build it directly into hellojackalo.com. We chose to keep it in-house from the start — and the reason was simple.

As a parent, the last thing you want is to find a brand you love and then be sent somewhere else to buy the preloved version. You'd have to create a new account, learn a new site, and hope the quality was what you expected. That friction is real, and it stops people from making the sustainable choice even when they want to.

So we built it here. You can browse new and preloved Jackalo items in the same place, add them to the same cart, and check out once. The preloved pieces go through the same quality standards we apply to anything with our name on it. And when you see a five-year-old Jackalo item still in great shape and ready for its next kid — that tells you more about the quality than any product description ever could.

The TradeUP Program: Closing the Loop

Our TradeUP program is how clothes come back to us. When your kids outgrow their Jackalo pieces, you can return them for store credit, and we resell them through our preloved shop.

We designed it to be simple, because we know you're busy. No complicated logistics, no listing items yourself, no waiting to see if something sells. You send it back, you get credit toward your next purchase, and the clothing keeps going.

This is what circular fashion actually looks like in practice — not a pledge or a certification, but a real system that keeps clothes out of landfill and in the hands of kids who can use them.

What's Coming: A Generation That Expects This

Something I talked about in the episode: Gen Z is the first generation that grew up with secondhand shopping as completely normal. For them, buying preloved isn't a compromise — it's often the preference. As Gen Z becomes parents over the next decade, the expectation that children's clothing should have a second and third life will stop being a niche value and become the baseline.

That's the world Jackalo is built for. And if you're already shopping with us, you're already ahead of it.

Listen to the Full Episode

If you want to hear the full conversation — including the early trade-offs in building Jackalo and more on what makes the resale model work — you can listen to episode 503 of Total Retail Talks here. It's about 22 minutes.

And if you're new to Jackalo, the best place to start is by browsing our collection — new and preloved, all in one place.