Global secondhand apparel sales reached about $257 billion in 2025, up 13%, while new apparel sales stayed nearly flat, according to ThredUp and GlobalData. Their forecast is $393 billion by 2030, roughly 10% of global apparel spending, with Gen Z and Millennials supplying about 71% of the growth. In the US, resale grew nearly four times faster than retail clothing, which rose 3.6%.
The catch sits in the same report. Supply of secondhand goods, not shopper demand, is resale’s main constraint, and growth now depends less on new converts than on share taken from new retail and from rival platforms. Closets are the scarce resource. Winning them gets expensive.
The business models tell different stories
A platform grows by adding users, adding orders per user, raising prices, or shortening the time a garment sits with one owner. This year’s filings show who is pulling what.
The RealReal lifted second-quarter GMV 22% to $617 million. Orders rose 8% and average order value 13% to $659. That is a price story: more money per garment, not more garments. Notably, 44% of new consignors came from its active buyer base, suggesting that existing customers are increasingly participating on both sides of the marketplace.
ThredUp grew active buyers 21% to 1.77 million and orders 22%. Revenue rose 16.9% to $90.8 million, slower than order growth of 21.9%. Based on reported revenue and orders, revenue per order was approximately $48.51, down about 4.1% from the previous year. This is as per our calculated metric, not a separately reported company KPI. Management said it ran more promotions to convert price-sensitive shoppers, then trimmed second-half guidance. The stock fell 28%.
Vinted shows volume at full stretch. GMV rose 47% to €10.8 billion in 2025, revenue 38% to €1.1 billion, and net profit fell 19% to €62 million as it funded Germany, logistics and a payments wallet. Revenue grew slower than goods traded, so its take rate slipped from about 11% to 10% on our calculation.
Depop has the users – seven million active buyers, about 90% under 34 — and about $1 billion in sales. Yet eBay paid roughly $1.4 billion in July, below the $1.625 billion Etsy paid in 2021. Reach is not the hard part. Money per buyer is.
| Platform | Model | Revenue as share of GMV | Profit marker |
|---|---|---|---|
| The RealReal (Q2 2026) | Authenticated luxury consignment | 31% | Adj. EBITDA 7.0% of revenue |
| Vestiaire Collective (2025) | Authenticated luxury marketplace | about 20% | First annual profit targeted for 2026 |
| Vinted (2025) | Peer-to-peer marketplace | about 10% | Net profit €62 million |
| ThredUp (Q2 2026) | Managed inventory, $49 revenue per order | n/a | Adj. EBITDA 5.3%, net loss 6.5% |
Scale does not lift every model equally. Authentication and handling make luxury platforms expensive to run but rich per order. Low-ticket platforms live on volume, and volume is where the pressure on fees, promotions and payouts shows first.
Does faster resale make a garment live longer?
Sales data cannot answer this. A resale purchase helps only if it replaces a new one, and only if the garment is then worn.
The best standardised evidence is WRAP’s 2025 study of 7,061 buyers on Depop, eBay and Vestiaire Collective: 64.6% of resale purchases displaced a new purchase. Turn that around and 35 of every 100 resale purchases added to a wardrobe instead of replacing something. Method matters. Depop’s own earlier survey found 88% displacement in the US. Under WRAP’s method, its 2025 US figure is 64%. Vinted reports 76% and Vestiaire 70%, both company figures on separate methods.
Independent work is less comfortable. A US survey of 1,009 respondents found secondhand buying positively correlated with new clothing purchases (r = 0.58), strongest among younger and frequent shoppers. About 19% said they discard clothes to make room for new ones. Heavy shoppers shop everywhere, so this is not proof of cause. It is the pattern a rebound would produce.
Then there is wear. Between 2000 and 2015 clothing production doubled while the average number of wears before disposal fell 36%, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation found. US garments are worn about a quarter as often as the global average. Resale’s promise is to reverse that. Yet no platform we found publishes wears per garment or median time between owners. Depop’s only figure is a user estimate of 46 wears, from 2022. The industry reports what it earns, not what it saves.
Velocity cuts both ways. A jacket worn forty times by each of three owners is circular. A jacket bought to flip, worn twice and relisted is a parcel with a green label.
What each stakeholder should do
The next stage requires a shift from transaction-led reporting towards evidence of additional garment use and avoided production.
| Stakeholder | Priority measures |
| Resale platforms | Completed sales, contribution margin, sell-through, return rates and repeat-use outcomes |
| Brands and retailers | Garment durability, repair rates, resale recovery value and new-product displacement |
| Manufacturers | Product lifespan, failure rates, repairability and verified material information |
| Investors | Profitability, cash generation, inventory risk and credible environmental performance |
| Policymakers | Textile reuse, waste prevention, product durability and transparent impact claims |
Environmental accounting needs particular care. A resale sale does not automatically prevent a new garment from being manufactured. Nor does it guarantee lower emissions after collection, cleaning, packaging, transport and returns are included.
A credible assessment must compare what happened with what would otherwise have happened. Did the buyer avoid purchasing new? Did the garment receive additional wears? How long did it remain in use? What happened after its next owner finished with it?
These questions require longitudinal evidence and transparent assumptions, not just estimates of the number of items resold.
Success needs a different definition
The resale industry has already demonstrated that secondhand clothing can attract consumers, support large businesses and command meaningful commercial value. The next challenge is more demanding: proving that its expansion changes how apparel is produced, purchased and used.
That means resisting the temptation to treat every additional transaction as an environmental achievement. A garment sold three times and worn extensively may deliver more value than three garments sold quickly and barely worn. The distinction should influence platform strategy, brand partnerships, product design and investment decisions.
For apparel businesses, resale should not become a convenient sustainability story attached to an otherwise unchanged model of continuous product turnover. It should become part of a wider system that rewards durable products, keeps usable garments circulating and reduces unnecessary demand for new resources.
The ultimate test is straightforward. If resale becomes mainstream, will the industry need to produce fewer new garments to meet people’s clothing needs, or will it simply create another channel through which people consume more?
The answer will determine whether resale becomes a durable business sector with measurable environmental value, or a successful market whose circularity claims run ahead of its results.
