Resale’s growth rate is giving traditional retail a run for its money, according to the ThredUp 2025 Resale Report released Wednesday.
In the U.S., the secondhand apparel market grew five times faster than the broader retail clothing market in 2024, and is projected to reach $74 billion by 2029, with an average annual growth rate of 9%. The global secondhand apparel market could reach $367 billion by 2029, growing 2.7 times faster than the overall global apparel market.
Meanwhile, the U.S. online resale market will nearly double in that time period, reaching $40 billion and growing an average of 13% annually, per the report.
“In 2024, online resale saw accelerated growth for the second year in a row, and we're reaching levels that we haven't seen in terms of that acceleration since 2021 when we were coming out of the pandemic,” Alon Rotem, chief strategy officer at ThredUp, said in an interview with sister publication Fashion Dive.
The 13th annual report of its kind from reseller ThredUp stated that a record 58% of U.S. consumers said they shopped secondhand apparel in 2024, up 6 percentage points from 2023. In addition, a record 94% of U.S. retail executives said their customers are already participating in resale, up 4 percentage points year over year.
Among younger consumers, 48% said that when shopping for apparel, secondhand was the first place they looked. That figure is up 7 percentage points from 2022, according to the report’s consumer data, which was compiled for ThredUp by GlobalData from a survey of 3,034 U.S. adults taken in January and February.
Resale’s popularity may also provide a buffer for the fashion industry against ongoing tariff threats, said Rotem. The ThredUp survey reported that 62% of consumers said they are concerned that new government policies around tariffs and trade will make apparel more expensive.
“We're all paying attention to the impact of tariffs and the kind of impact they're gonna have on the economy,” Rotem said. “With resale, you’re effectively domesticating the supply chain. All of the clothing comes from the closets of Americans.”
In effect, tariffs could level the playing field in terms of pricing between resale and imported fashion in the U.S., especially if the de minimis exemption is eliminated for products coming from China, Rotem said.
“Even if the tariffs don't stay in the long run… uncertainty is causing retail executives and brands to think about how they might be able to leverage resale as a hedge against tariffs,” Rotem said.
The ThredUp report indicated that fast fashion and resale may be at odds, with 49% of all consumers — and 64% of younger consumers — saying they’ve cut back on buying “cheap, lower-quality apparel” because they can’t resell it.
Rotem also pointed out that the same people who say they are more eco-conscious are the ones purchasing a lot of the fast fashion, likely because both options offer lower-priced alternatives to buying new clothing.
“The growth of online resale is happening at the same time as the growth of fast fashion,” Rotem said. “They are at odds. They’re competing with each other. So it's a classic paradox of these two things being true at the same time.”
Rotem noted, however, that resale still faces some hurdles, including a need to find new ways to connect with customers.
ThredUp reported that 48% of consumers, and 59% of consumers aged 18 to 44, believe personalization, improved search and discovery make shopping for secondhand apparel as easy as shopping new. Those younger shoppers are also turning to social media, with 39% of them saying they made a secondhand apparel purchase on a social platform last year.
“Resale needs to continue to innovate in the way that it reaches consumers to make it as easy to shop secondhand as it is to shop new,” Rotem said. “That's the big challenge.”
