As shoppers face rising prices, trade uncertainty and microtrend fatigue, fashion resale is having a moment. Data from ThredUp estimates that the global secondhand apparel market could reach $367 billion by 2029. ThredUp also found that the U.S. secondhand market grew five times faster than the broader clothing retail market in 2024.
Shoppers have cited various reasons for their resale habits, most stemming from unbeatable prices for quality clothing and a desire for one-of-a-kind items. Gen Zers and millennials are also more likely to shop with sustainability in mind, making resale an attractive alternative to fast fashion.
That’s despite the fact that there are still pain points within the resale shopping experience, like relatively unnavigable platforms. Lizzie Wheeler, resale expert and founder of Instagram accounts @shit.u.should.buy and @studiodorothy.nyc, believes that enhanced search capabilities and curation would go a long way. She also expressed frustrations with keyword accuracy and authenticity on certain platforms. “Sellers need to be more precise,” she said. “They’ll say anything pleated is Issey Miyake.”
Photo: Courtesy of Thredup
The daunting tasks of verifying resellers and confirming authenticity have long plagued resale sites, especially those that offer higher-end products. There are countless Reddit threads full of duped shoppers with woeful tales of fake Dior bags and tattered Chanel flats that were supposedly authenticated or marked as in “Very Good Condition” by “experts” at The RealReal, Poshmark, eBay or other sites.
Resale platforms are still a long way from operating with the ease offered by traditional multi-brand e-commerce players like Moda Operandi, MyTheresa and Revolve — but ever-evolving technologies, increased revenue and an influx of customers present the resale space with a once-in-a-blue-moon opportunity. As more consumers begin to classify their apparel and accessories as assets rather than disposable items, resale’s market share and place in regular shopping routines will only grow. The platforms and brands enabling resale that is efficient, profitable, scalable, and easy to operationalize globally will ride the burgeoning wave to the top.
Below, experts weigh in on the innovative features and burgeoning technology that may help them get there.
Digital Passports
Photo: Courtesy of Eon
There is an opportunity to accelerate the growth and ease of resale by removing the need for manual data entry, according to Natasha Franck, the founder and CEO of digital identity technology company Eon.
“Digital identities, also known as Digital Product Passports, can make it possible to auto-populate product listings into resale environments for customers,” she explains. “Brands can deliver best-in-class after-sales services and increase customer-lifetime-value; customers can seamlessly resell and maximize earnings; and resale solution providers gain access to best-in-class inventory, product data and new users.”
This involves creating a data profile for a product — either at its origin or retroactively — that enables its reselling, rental or recycling to take place through a variety of avenues that the brand stewards and has visibility into. Coach, for example, leverages Eon’s platform and app to power the Digital Product Passports on its circularity-focused Coachtopia line. This integration allows consumers to list their pre-loved Coachtopia products on Poshmark with one click, and allows Coach to tap into peer-to-peer resale for the first time, while maintaining visibility and retaining a portion of secondhand profits.
Digital product passports solve a number of resale pain points on both sides of the equation: Sellers can list products with just one click, and buyers can trust that their purchases are authentic. Importantly, digital product passports will be mandatory for brands based in — and that sell into — the European Union by 2028, thanks to the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR). Coach is an early adopter in the United States, but Franck expects many major brands to follow starting next year. Eon has existing partnerships with Poshmark, ThredUp, Vestiaire and The RealReal, to help clients list across a variety of marketplaces.
Artificial Intelligence
Image: Courtesy of Poshmark
Because resale is a data initiative at its core, AI is driving a lot of the innovation in the space. Depop recently partnered with AI-backed photo editing platform Photoroom to permit sellers to instantly remove backgrounds, enhance images, resize assets and generate polished visuals in seconds. On the sell side, Poshmark has automated listings with Smart List AI, which can quickly generate high-quality listings from just one photo, and Promoted Closet, which uses machine learning to help sellers advertise their entire closet with a single click. On the buy side, the company is excited about Posh Lens, a visual search tool that allows buyers to find available listings based on one image.
“Looking ahead, we’re building new shopping feeds and search experiences that use AI to surface listings tailored to each shopper’s preferences and behavior,” explains the platform’s founder and CEO, Manish Chandra.
Poshmark is not alone in its enthusiasm for the rapidly shifting world of resale data. “We think the AI revolution is really going to disproportionately benefit resale and secondhand as compared to traditional retail,” says Alon Rotem, chief strategy officer of ThredUp. In the past year, the company has instituted three AI-powered tools to enhance the shopping experience. Image search, which is somewhat self-explanatory, allows customers to upload images from the internet or their camera roll to be compared against ThredUp’s massive inventory for matches. It also launched a ChatGPT-like style chat feature that helps shoppers find whatever they’re looking for in a natural language.
“You could literally type, ‘Dress me up like a leprechaun and make it cottage core,’ or whatever, and ThredUp’s chat bot will understand what you mean by that,” Rotem elaborates. The third rollout, which is available in Beta to a limited number of ThredUp users, is a foray into social commerce that curates feeds based on Pinterest and Instagram integration.
Resale as a Service (RaaS)
Image: Courtesy of Thredup
Rotem also highlights resale innovations happening in tandem with ThredUp’s platform-specific updates. The company is increasingly interested in partnering directly with brands to offer “Resale as a Service” (RaaS). Madewell Forever, for instance, allows customers to shop or trade in their own preloved items, powered by ThredUp’s technology and infrastructure. In place of a consignment payout, sellers receive a Madewell gift card, while the funds from the transaction ultimately end up with the brand.
Although branded resale has historically been unappealing to true luxury houses — whose promise of exclusivity is threatened by more affordable prices and broadened inventory — high-end brands can still leverage the benefits of resale without the risk of tainting their reputation. Archive, a technology company that powers resale on behalf of brands, secured $30 million in series B funding earlier this year. Its partners range from The North Face to Rachel Comey to Oscar de la Renta, underscoring resale’s growing appeal across market segments. Trove, another major player in branded resale, has taken a different approach to growth, making a series of strategic acquisitions over the past year as it expands its reach with partners like Steve Madden and viral comeback brand Frye.
Simplifying the Sell
Image: Courtesy of Future Reference
As the resale space has grown, outside players have seized on consumer pain points, building tech-enabled platforms that aim to solve problems faced by both buyers and sellers. Future Reference, an AI-powered resale tool that digitizes purchase receipts to enable one-click listing across platforms, is the result of founder Claire Illmer’s personal frustrations with her resale selling experience. Sellers sync their emails, which allows the platform to collect data from all purchases made in the past five years and list desired products across partner sites simultaneously. Illmer found that, on average, users have around $7,000 worth of untapped value in their closet from that time period alone. Future Reference allows users to either set a definitive price for items, or opt for a range at which they’d feel comfortable parting with their product. When sellers allow the platform to negotiate on their behalf, items sell approximately 23% faster. Illmer maintains that the offering is adopted by about 40% of sellers.
Shop Smarter, Not Harder
Image: Courtesy of Gem
Resale buyers have access to aggregator tools as well. Gem lets customers view and compare specific products across thousands of secondhand clothing stores at once. Phia, the buzzy shopping app and browser extension launched by Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni, shows buyers the best price for a chosen item across traditional retail and secondhand sites.
“Today’s shoppers don’t have time to open dozens of tabs just to compare prices,” Gates and Kianni share. “That’s where Phia comes in, as the first and only tool that instantly compares fashion across both new and secondhand sites to help you find the best price in a single click. No extra tabs. No ads. No endless searching.”
Phia operates by scanning real-time data from more than 250 million products across 40,000 retail and resale platforms, helping shoppers save up to 75%. Circularity is the cherry on top. “We envision Phia as a driving force in reshaping the future of fashion retail and resale,” Gates and Kianna emphasize. “One that empowers consumers to shop more sustainably while still prioritizing style, price and convenience.”
Resale is inching toward a real inflection point. The platforms seeing the most traction are those helping shoppers unlock the dormant value in their own closets with as little friction as possible. Tools that streamline listing, boost discoverability and automate pricing are clearly resonating, especially as AI evolves to meet the quirks of secondhand inventory.
But for all the tech innovation, what’s often missing is the retail instinct, or the understanding of who the customer really is and how they shop. As Wheeler pointed out, many resale platforms are staffed by tech folks looking to disrupt, not retailers trained to sell. And while Gen Z might enjoy AI-fueled microtrend hunts and visual search, the most valuable resale shopper today still resembles a traditional department store customer: They want ease, not NFC chips. They want polish, not infinite tabs. The brands and platforms that win will be the ones that merge back-end intelligence with front-end familiarity, making resale feel less like a workaround and more like a default.
Source: Fashionista.com
