Resale Revalued: what U.S. secondhand trends mean for fashion and luxury brand
Secondhand platforms now influence how shoppers find labels, assess value and choose what to buy new. See what this shift reveals about your brand, and where to begin.
Why resale has become a source of market intelligence
Sneakers, handbags, denim and fine jewelry now change hands on secondhand platforms at roughly four times the growth rate of new-goods retail. Price is only part of the appeal: buyers discover labels there, develop loyalty and increasingly decide what to purchase at full price based on what a piece is worth used. For most companies, this activity holds signals they have not yet learned to read. The whitepaper draws together independent research on the U.S. resale landscape to show where it stands, why it matters for brand strategy and what distinguishes the businesses already capturing its value.
Inside the research
Three questions it answers for fashion, footwear and luxury brands.
$78B
Where the U.S. resale market stands
The U.S. secondhand apparel market is on track to reach roughly $78 billion by 2030, growing at around 7% a year and representing about a fifth of the projected $393 billion global secondhand market.
Online resale is expected to nearly double by 2029, approaching $40 billion: in the most recent full year of data, it grew eight times faster than the broader retail clothing sector.
Brands are responding: more than 150 U.S. brands now run an official resale program, up from single digits before 2020. Apparel drives volume, but watches and fine jewelry hold around three quarters of resale value, so a strategy built only on apparel data reads half the market.
Up to 1,000%
Which resale strategy fits your brand
Some brands resell at nearly 1,000% above retail, while others capture almost none of their own resale market. The research groups brands into four recurring types, based on how well their products hold value and how much of their secondary market they can see.
90 days
How to get started
That is the typical time to market with a resale as a service partner, compared with 18 to 24 months for an in house build. The whitepaper compares the three ways to start, including partnering with a marketplace, with lessons from real launches, including one that did not work.
Who should read it
Recommended for
Strategy, merchandising, sustainability and e-commerce leaders at fashion, footwear and luxury companies. In most organizations each of these teams owns part of the resale picture, with limited visibility and no common accountability. The whitepaper offers a shared view of the market and of the options open to them, from treating secondhand data as an intelligence layer to operating a fully owned channel.
Research base
About the research
The whitepaper draws on analyses by NYU Stern Luxury & Retail MBA ’25 candidates into the U.S. resale landscape, across mid-market apparel, streetwear, sneakers and fine jewelry. Starting from different categories and sets of brands, these independent studies arrived at strikingly consistent conclusions. Program launches from the last two years add concrete evidence to the findings.
