Secondhand fashion is no longer a niche. The US resale apparel market has roughly doubled since 2020, thrift store transactions have risen 22% over the past year, and secondhand shops continue to attract more shoppers while traditional retailers lose traffic.
However, the biggest winners may not be thrift stores, but the brands learning how to profit from resale.
Resale goes mainstream
According to a Bain & Co. report, 42% of US consumers say they bought secondhand clothing or accessories at least once in the past year.
Globally, resale apparel revenue is projected to reach $317B by 2027. That would represent a 23% jump from last year. McKinsey estimates the secondhand market will grow two to three times faster than the firsthand market from 2025 to 2027.
Gen Z is leading the charge. Roughly 80% of shoppers aged 18 to 24 actively purchase secondhand apparel.
Between 60% and 70% of consumers are turning to secondhand shopping specifically to buffer rising costs, analysts say. Apparel prices rose 4.2% in the 12 months ending in April, the category's highest year-over-year jump since 2022.
Traditional retailers are joining in
Big brands are not watching from the sidelines. H&M has set up roughly a dozen secondhand pop-ups over the past few years and holds an investment in Swedish resale platform Sellpy.
Gap's Banana Republic recently launched limited-edition drops featuring pieces from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.
Reformation has expanded its preloved section to include brands like Prada alongside its own styles. Since 2021, the number of brand-owned trade-in programs has surged by triple-digit amounts, with over 150 major US brands launching dedicated platforms.
If brands do not sell their own used products, someone else will. Resale also gives brands direct control over product authenticity and lets them capture secondary profit margins.
For H&M, reselling items across Sellpy and other brands made up ~0.8% of overall sales revenue in 2025.
A European disruptor is eyeing the US market
The most aggressive bet on resale's future is coming from Vinted, Europe's largest consumer-to-consumer fashion marketplace. The company processed €10.8B (~$12.6B) of merchandise in 2025, up 47% from a year earlier.
Vinted's model charges buyers a small fee while letting sellers keep 100% of the listed price. That structure attracted more inventory, improved platform liquidity, and helped build toward profitability.
The company is now in early-stage US testing. Its US daily active users jumped more than six-fold in the second quarter from a year earlier, according to Wells Fargo analysts.
Vinted's US entry pits it against eBay, which recently acquired Depop for ~$1.2B, as well as Poshmark, Facebook Marketplace, and ThredUp.
Growth could hit limits
While resale extends a garment's life cycle, overall global textile consumption is still rising. Resale currently acts as a supplement to fast fashion rather than a replacement.
"We cannot maintain the business model of constant consumption and constant growth and recycle our way out of the problem — we have to produce and consume fewer things."
Emma Håkansson, Collective Fashion Justice
The most sustainable fix, researchers say, would be for retailers to design less trendy, more durable products and slow down fashion cycles. Resale programs are mostly pilots for now. They could scale if retailers deem them a financial success. But the industry's core production model has not changed, and that is where the math still does not add up.
