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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.
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.