The furniture resale industry heats up

The resale revolution is coming for your couch. Chairish, the vintage-furniture platform, has just released its first-ever Resale Report, combining internal data with research from Statista to outline the burgeoning secondhand furniture space.

Back in 2018, Chairish’s report noted that fashion led resale, accounting for 49% of the market, while the home-furnishings category only made up 11%. Apparel still dominates, but last year, home goods climbed among the fastest-growing resale categories.

• The resale furnishings category is projected to grow by 54% by 2025, 3.5x faster than traditional retail, per the report.
• Sales for secondhand furniture are on track to hit $16.6 billion over the next five years, a 70% jump from 2018.

“A lot of this is due to habits that were initiated, formed, and developed in the fashion space that are now migrating into the home area,” Chairish cofounder Anna Brockway explained in a presentation ahead of the report’s release.

Staying home: Of course, those habits were accelerated by the pandemic—to the benefit of Chairish, which saw a 60% increase in sales last year, as well as the furniture industry at large.

“Buyers very quickly became more comfortable buying big-ticket sofas [and] home furnishing items [online] because they needed to,” cofounder Gregg Brockway said.

The drivers? As with fashion, younger sustainability-minded shoppers are leading the trend: 31% of millennial and Gen Z shoppers said Covid boosted their interest in online shopping for used or vintage furniture, per a Chairish/Statista survey.

• 44% of millennials have already resold furniture online.

And, and, and: Brockway nodded to how customers might look to resale to avoid the delays caused by supply-chain issues. “Vintage, by definition, is immediately available and ready to ship.”—JG