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You can drop hundreds on a new Comme des Garçons T-shirt—or you could thrift for it. Increasingly, consumers want to try the latter.
By 2025, the secondhand market is expected to double from $36 billion this year to $77 billion, according to ThredUp’s just-released report on resale (conducted with GlobalData).
- Resale is the major driver of the increase, and is projected to make up 61% of the secondhand market by then.
- It will grow 11x faster than the overall apparel industry, per the report.
Top of mind: Companies see that customers are looking for cheaper, more sustainable alternatives, ThredUp President Anthony Marino told Retail Brew.
60% of retailers offer or are open to offering secondhand, the report said, and we’ve seen deals aplenty lately.
- Etsy agreed to acquire Gen Z fav Depop—which has ~30 million users in ~150 countries—for $1.6+ billion, while Rent the Runway is entering resale (no membership required) as a way of bouncing back from the pandemic.
“There's a younger generation that's adopting secondhand very quickly,” Marino said, sharing that more than 40% of millennials and Gen Z shoppers bought used apparel, shoes, and accessories in the past 12 months.
The big picture: The pandemicjuiced resale into a force with staying power. 33 million people shopped secondhand for the first time in 2020, the report said. And across the board, 42% of consumers plan to devote more $$ to secondhand in the next five years—the biggest category shift in spending.—KM