How the secondhand culture has become a booming business From sustainability ideals to million-dollar investment rounds

The fashion crisis that is terrorizing and paralyzing the sector certainly concerns sky-high prices, the cultural relevance of fashion itself and the saturation of a market on which the storms of geopolitics are crashing down. But the true root of these problems is perhaps more abstract: once the equation between price and value is broken, forcing customers to pay for an increasingly exorbitant perception, it is the sector's business model itself that is showing ever more evident signs of breakage. It is an outdated and dysfunctional model, and the rise of the secondhand market represents the arrival of a new order that is preparing to replace it. In fact, as illustrated by the report The State of Fashion 2025 drafted by McKinsey & Company in collaboration with The Business of Fashion, resale will account for 10% of the global apparel market by the end of this year, with a business volume destined to reach 350 billion dollars by 2028 and a compound annual growth rate of 12%.

It is precisely in response to this urgency that, to give a very recent example that appeared during the latest Milan Fashion Week, Resellify was announced to the press, a startup based in Milan founded in 2023 by Alessio Autore and Alessandro Pavoni, born to speed up resale dynamics. The idea is to transform resale into an instant operation: by inserting itself directly into the e-commerce of brands, every transaction is automatically recorded in the buyer's virtual portfolio, along with images, specifications, sizes, identifiers, and data on the original purchase. The moment one decides to resell an item, the app allows it to be put up for sale in one go on all the major platforms like Vinted, Vestiaire, eBay, or Depop without registration obligations, writing texts, or useless repetitions. The user only needs to upload updated shots to illustrate the current condition of the item. For the future, there is talk of extra features, including the most important one, which is clothing bartering.

Resellify has revolutionary potential precisely because it embodies a turning point in the sector's business model: it is no longer important how many items are sold but how many times the same item is sold. And while Resellify charts this trajectory, a new report from Vestiaire Collective has shown that there has been an 88% jump in the supply of men's clothing on the platform over the last three years, making it one of the sectors with the greatest momentum. And perceptions are changing too: 70% of men select purchases thinking about potential resale, while 59% of its buyers belong to Millennials or Gen Z, compared to 50% in the female audience. The success of resale is due to the usual three factors: 74% of respondents choose it for savings; the ability for collectors to search for rare or precious pieces remains very important, even in the field of jewelry and watches, while sustainability accounts for 39%, so much so that 70% care for their garments in view of future resales. All interesting data, but how much has the secondhand market actually grown today?

The unstoppable advance of the new marketplaces

In 2025, the second-hand fashion market has recorded exponential growth that began to manifest itself as early as January, when the pre-owned luxury segment dominated millennial spending projecting the market to 60.55 billion dollars by 2029 from 34.39 billion in 2023, and in August another report showed that the global market hit 190 billion dollars in 2024 to rise to 208.6 billion in the same month and project itself toward 521.5 billion by 2034. To give an idea of how much it has grown, Vinted reported in April a 36% increase in revenues to 813.4 million euros, equivalent to over 926 million dollars, with net profit up 330% to 76.7 million euros, or 87.3 million dollars, and in May it became the leading clothing retailer in France by sales volume, surpassing omnichannel competitors.

ThredUp, on the other hand, announced in May the first quarter results with revenues at 71.3 million dollars, up 10% year-over-year, and in August recorded second quarter revenues at 77.7 million dollars, with +16% year-over-year and a gross margin of 79.5%. In the same month, The RealReal marked record second quarter revenues at 165 million dollars, up 14% year-over-year, raised the annual guidance, and reduced total debt by 27 million dollars through strategic swaps, including a 6 million dollar decrease on the 2028 notes.

The platforms' initiatives have measured results with expansion projects and media campaigns that have revealed high confidence in the market. ThredUp launched a vintage collection in early May in partnership with Beyond Retro, which included over 17,000 pieces of womenswear, and published analysis on the stock that closed at 6.37 dollars. In mid-September, WWD reported that tariffs and price increases have driven growth in luxury second-hand in the USA with increasing demand for used bags. ThredUp unveiled a new brand identity with AI features in late September and released the Resale Report, which estimated the global second-hand market at 367 billion dollars by 2029. Meanwhile, among the most interesting initiatives, Vinted launched in September the TV series RE/Style on Prime Video, in which eight emerging designers competed to create collections with used garments to debut at London Fashion Week.

Business hunger

And also on the M&A and investment front, this year has been fiery for luxury second-hand. In addition to the Resellify app we mentioned earlier, in mid-April, the platform Faume raised 8 million euros in a round led by Amundi Private Equity Transition to expand into the UK and Italy, including a partnership with Victoria Beckham to support premium resale infrastructure. In mid-May, MySize acquired key assets of Percentil, a Spanish second-hand fashion marketplace, to reposition it as a high-margin platform in Spain, France, Germany, and Italy. In early June, the Ziniosa platform closed an undisclosed round from Inflection Point Ventures to scale its luxury preloved platform in India, including expansion into the men's category. In mid-June, Brandback, a resale infrastructure more or less similar to Resellify, attracted 7.4 million dollars in pre-seed and seed rounds to develop resale infrastructure integrated into retailers' online carts.

Still in June, Vivrelle, a membership club for the rental of designer handbags, jewelry, and diamonds, cashed in 62 million dollars in a Series C round led by venture capital firm Protagonist to expand into new US markets, diversify the designer inventory, and implement AI technologies. In early July, Bought, a Finnish startup that automates resale using AI, acquired the Netflea marketplace, marking the second acquisition in six months. On August 21, Rent the Runway completed a recapitalization led by numerous investment firms to obtain new capital and expand further. Finally, on September 30, Save Your Wardrobe, an app that uses AI to scan and track garments, acquired Les Raccommodeurs, a French B2B platform for clothing repair and aftercare, which manages in-store and online repair services for brands, to integrate repair services into its digital wardrobe and resale platform.