Major fashion brands are moving aggressively into the secondhand clothing market, launching their own resale platforms to compete with eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY), Depop (NASDAQ: TDUP), and The RealReal (NASDAQ: REAL).
For years, the resale of their products generated billions in revenue on third-party platforms, money that the brands themselves never touched.
Now, companies including Zara, H&M, Lululemon, Levi’s, and REI are building their own secondhand marketplaces to capture that opportunity directly.
According to ThredUp’s 2026 Resale Report, the global secondhand apparel market is projected to reach $393 billion by 2030, growing twice as fast as the broader apparel market.
In the United States alone, resale is expected to reach $78.8 billion by the end of the decade, after growing nearly four times as fast as overall retail clothing sales last year.
Shawn Grain Carter, a professor of business management at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology, told Fortune that branded resale allows companies to “own the entire fashion life cycle,” from initial sale through resale, repair, and eventual recycling.
Neil Saunders, managing director at market research and consulting firm GlobalData Retail, said brands that ignore the secondhand space risk falling behind both culturally and commercially.
“There’s a real reason for brands to play in that secondhand space,” Saunders told Fortune, adding that “resale is one of the hottest spaces” and that brands not present in it are losing out.
H&M launched its Pre-Loved initiative in 2021 and has since expanded it to 24 online markets and stores across 11 markets, describing the program as both “a sustainability and a business opportunity.”
Sofia Måhlén, team lead for circular business models at H&M, told Fortune that “by extending product life through resale, we can support resource efficiency while creating new opportunities for growth through new business models.”
H&M reported that resale represented 0.8% of the group’s turnover in 2025, with resale revenue reaching SEK 1,844 million, equivalent to approximately $194.4 million USD, a 31% increase from the prior year.
Carter said younger consumers are driving much of the momentum, pointing to Gen Z and younger millennials as resale’s most engaged shoppers, drawn by both sustainability values and budget pressures from rising housing costs and student debt.
Much of the recent expansion has been enabled by technology providers such as Trove and Reflaunt, which supply brands with the logistics, authentication, and infrastructure needed to operate resale programs at scale.
Patagonia launched its Worn Wear platform with Trove in 2017, and was subsequently followed by Levi’s, REI, Eileen Fisher, and Lululemon building out their own resale offerings through similar partnerships.
Pacsun expanded its secondhand concept, PS Vintage, to 16 U.S. locations in April after launching online five months earlier, with top-performing stores achieving a 20% sell-through rate within weeks of opening.
Saunders acknowledged a competitive dynamic is also pushing brands into the space, noting that seeing major names enter resale prompts others to question their own strategy.
“There’s definitely a little bit of bandwagoning,” Saunders said, explaining that big-name participation raises internal conversations about why a brand is absent from the market.
Saunders also noted that resale reinforces sustainability positioning, saying brands “can make a very strong argument that you are acting sustainably because you’re not encouraging things to be thrown away or going into landfill.”
Control over brand presentation is another key driver, with premium brands preferring to oversee how their products are shown and sold rather than leaving that entirely to third-party platforms.
“I don’t think for most it will ever displace the sales of new products,” Saunders said, framing resale as an incremental business that complements rather than replaces traditional retail.
