Year in Review: Why resale boomed in 2025

While much of the retail industry was bracing for tariffs to begin taking effect earlier this year, the resale sector saw a potential silver lining.

In February resale platform ThredUp posted on its website that it expected tariffs to “provide a tailwind to the secondhand market as shoppers seek more affordable options.” A ThredUp poll cited in the post found that if tariffs drove clothing prices up, 59% of consumers would seek more affordable options including secondhand; most likely to do so were millennials, with 69% saying higher prices for new apparel would prompt them to shop resale.

For ThredUp, the prediction proved prophetic:

• Its Q3 results in November saw record quarterly revenues of $82.2 million, a YoY increase of 34%.
• Active buyers on the platform shot up 26% YoY for the quarter, totalling 1.57 million.

Other resale marketplaces also saw banner Q3s:

• Secondhand behemoth eBay reported quarterly revenues were up 9% YoY, totaling $2.8 billion.
• Luxury goods reseller The RealReal reported quarterly revenues were up 17% YoY, totalling $174 million.

But tariffs were just one of many factors that helped shape resale in 2025, so we asked some industry executives for their takeaways.

Resale made a splash on the red carpet

While used clothing in previous generations may have been stigmatized as unappealing or unfashionable, what was notable in 2025 was how much resale became downright glamorous.

As a sponsor of the Met Gala in May, eBay helped source pre-owned ensembles for red-carpet A-listers including actor and singer Jeremy Pope and influencer Emma Chamberlain. In September eBay had its own runway show at New York Fashion Week. And in October eBay announced a partnership to become the official Pre-Loved Partner of Condé Nast, the publisher whose magazines include Vogue, GQ, Vanity Fair and Glamour.

It’s an “overarching moment in fashion where designers themselves, celebrities [and] fashion houses…are really embracing recommerce as being an integral part of the fashion conversation and industry,” Alexis Hoopes, VP of global fashion at eBay, told Retail Brew.

The C-suite led the charge

Emily Gittins, CEO of Archive, which partners with brands on their resale programs, said a few years ago brands saw resale primarily as a sustainability initiative, so it was the brands’ heads of sustainability who typically oversaw their resale efforts.

Today when Archive pitches brands, sustainability executives are “sometimes still in the conversation, but often the first meeting is with the VP of e-commerce, or the CEO, or the CMO,” Gittins told Retail Brew.

“In 2025, we saw a lot more brands setting growth targets against this channel, hiring teams against it, and really doubling down on resale as a key part of their growth,” she said. “It’s being elevated to the most senior level and thought of as a real part of how the business is going to grow.”

Gittins noted that the resale industry insiders celebrated when the VF Corporation, whose brands include The North Face (an Archive resale partner), Timberland, and Vans, advertised for its first head of re-commerce this year. (According to his LinkedIn profile, Barruch Ben-Zekry began as VF Corp’s head of re-commerce in October.)

Non-clothing brands entered the fray

While fashion brands have been at the heart of resale’s surge over the last several years, Jake Disraeli, co-founder and CEO of Treet, said that in 2025 some notable non-fashion brands got on the bandwagon, too.

In November, for instance, Treet worked with multitool brand Leatherman to launch Leatherman Exchange, a peer-to-peer resale program that promises to transfer the products’ 25-year warranties from the sellers to purchasers.

Treet also helped another brand throw its hat into the resale ring—literally. The hat brand Melin launched its resale marketplace, Melin Re:Cap, in September.

A broader array of brands launching recommerce programs signals to Disraeli that consumer enthusiasm continued to grow this year.

“We’re constantly shocked at the appetite for resale from consumers,” Disraeli told Retail Brew. “Which then means brands are interested in meeting their consumers where they are.”