Mainstream Retail Brands Entering the Resale Market

Mainstream retail brands entering the resale market are making a competitive land-grab. Billions in secondhand revenue made leaving the market to third-party platforms too expensive to ignore. For individual sellers, the result is more competition for buyers, but not fewer reasons to sell. The practical advantage now lies in choosing the right marketplace and pricing from evidence.

Why resale became a billion-dollar channel brands couldn't afford to ignore

Sustainability gives brands a tidy story about resale, but missed revenue gives them a reason to build it. Keeping products in use has a real environmental purpose. Yet the commercial pressure comes from consumers spending money on secondhand goods that retailers did not sell them. In the U.S., secondhand sales grew nearly four times as fast as retail clothing sales as a whole last year. Growth at that pace turns a sideline into a channel that competes for the same clothing budget.

Gen Z supplies much of that momentum. A large majority of shoppers aged 18–24 actively buy secondhand apparel, and a significant share of their closets comes from resale platforms. For these shoppers, secondhand is a regular place to buy the product in the first place. Brands are competing with resale for these shoppers' purchases.

Economic pressure has widened the appeal beyond shoppers who cannot afford new. Inflation, cost-of-living pressure, and rising trade tariffs have made used goods a practical choice for people who could otherwise buy at retail. Shoppers increasingly weigh whether paying more for new is worth it. As that calculation spreads, brands face a market where their products can remain desirable while their stores lose the transaction.

For years, brands watched billions in secondhand revenue flow to platforms they didn't control

For years, consumers resold Levi's, Patagonia, and Lululemon through third-party marketplaces while the brands received nothing from those transactions. Platforms including eBay, Poshmark, Depop, and The RealReal built large businesses around branded secondhand goods. The product's appeal survived its first owner, but the manufacturer had no share in the next sale. For a brand, that is an awkward arrangement.

Shawn Grain Carter, associate professor of Fashion Business Management at FIT, says branded resale allows companies to “own the entire fashion life cycle”. That includes the initial sale, resale, repair, and recycling. The ambition to “own” the entire cycle gives the brand a commercial role after the original purchase. It also gives the company more say over how its products appear when they return to market.

A casual listing on Poshmark may misdescribe an item, photograph it poorly, or price it in a way that distorts its perceived value. Brand-run programs can also verify condition and authenticity in ways ordinary peer-to-peer listings cannot, addressing distrust around counterfeiting. Those motives explain why brands wanted to enter resale, but wanting a second checkout is not the same as being able to operate one. Brands lacked the infrastructure to make resale practical to run.

The enabling infrastructure that made brand-run resale operationally possible

“Resale as a service” technology lowered the operational barrier that had kept brands outside the market. Instead of treating resale as a business they had to build entirely themselves, brands could work with providers that supplied the underlying tools. That change connects the long-standing motive to the timing of entry. The opportunity acquired an operating system.

Treet's partnership with multitool brand Leatherman shows what that can look like beyond clothing. Together they launched Leatherman Exchange, a peer-to-peer resale program that transfers the product's original warranty from seller to buyer. For Leatherman Insiders, that warranty is extendable to 40 years. The program brings a brand-backed benefit into a transaction between owners. It also demonstrates that branded resale need not stop at the wardrobe door.

Marketplaces have been building their own enabling tools. eBay launched a click-to-resell feature using Certilogo's connected product smart tags, letting consumers scan a QR code embedded in a garment and list it in a couple of clicks. eBay's official announcement named Italian brand Save The Duck as the first to pilot the feature. The product itself supplies an entry point into the marketplace.

eBay also rolled out AI-powered listing tools that pre-fill item details from photos. These reduce the work of creating a listing for both brands and individual sellers. Together, these developments address a basic constraint on resale, which is that every used item needs to become a sellable listing. Lowering that friction makes participation easier. It helps explain why resale has moved from an attractive idea to something brands can put into operation.

What the leading brand resale programs actually look like in practice

H&M Pre-Loved shows how resale can become part of a retailer's business. Launched in 2023, it expanded online and into stores across multiple markets. Its resale revenue grew 31% from the prior year. H&M describes the program as “a sustainability and a business opportunity,” explicitly pairing the two motives. The commercial result gives substance to the second half of that description.

The move into stores is particularly telling. Resale is no longer confined to a separate corner of the internet, away from the retailer's main customer experience. It is reaching the places where the brand already sells. That shows a commitment beyond announcing a pilot. The shop floor is a more demanding home than a press release.

The pattern also extends across product categories. Leatherman Exchange applies the model to tools, while IKEA is testing a peer-to-peer marketplace for used furniture. Those efforts are at different stages, so they should not be treated as identical evidence of maturity. Along with H&M's expansion, they show that brands are trying resale in different ways and for goods beyond apparel. Brands are finding ways to bring their products' second lives within their commercial reach, creating a new source of competition for established marketplaces.

How platforms are responding — and what that means for individual sellers inside them

ThredUp, eBay, and The RealReal all reported year-over-year revenue increases in recent quarters. Demand is growing enough for several kinds of seller to participate. The sharper concern for individuals is therefore not whether third-party platforms will disappear. It is how those platforms divide attention between casual sellers and larger sources of supply.

That tension is already visible in seller complaints. Poshmark sellers have publicly described branded shows and what they see as self-preferencing as an unfair advantage. Those complaints show a clash between the platform's peer-to-peer roots and its growing interest in institutional sellers. These complaints show why a seller can welcome more buyers while questioning who gets placed in front of them, without proving that every casual listing is disadvantaged.

eBay completed its purchase of Depop on July 30, 2026, so the platforms' traffic from fashion resale now falls under one owner. That creates questions about how independently the platforms will develop their seller policies, rather than proving that those policies will become identical. Future Market Insights expects platforms with reliable authentication and smoother seller onboarding to gain an advantage as pre-owned fashion becomes a regular purchase channel. Brand-run programs and large managed sellers tend to be better at those things than individuals who list items casually.

There is an important limit to this pressure. Brand programs cannot reproduce the price diversity, geographic coverage, or category depth of casual seller networks. An official H&M Pre-Loved marketplace only sells H&M items, so a vast range of other goods falls outside what it sells. Even so, as platforms seek more goods from brands and brands build their own channels, individuals may have fewer places to sell without competing with institutional sellers. The pie is growing, but the seating plan is changing.

Where individual sellers still hold a structural advantage brands cannot replicate

A brand's identity is also a boundary. Faherty Second Wave sells Faherty, and Lululemon Like New sells Lululemon. Their curated ranges cannot reproduce a seller's closet of mixed brands, categories, conditions, and decades. No single brand program is a direct substitute for that assortment. What looks untidy compared with a branded storefront is precisely what gives individual supply its breadth.

That breadth meets demand across the marketplaces where individuals already list. Young shoppers' established secondhand habits are not confined to official brand stores. Nor does the opportunity end with apparel, where branded programs concentrate. Electronics, collectibles, toys, and home goods remain largely the territory of individual sellers on eBay and Facebook Marketplace. The entry of tools and furniture brands broadens the competitive map without filling it.

Individuals also have room to price more precisely. Brand programs tend toward fixed, condition-tiered pricing that may not capture demand for a particular item. A seller who checks what an identical item actually sold for can price it in response to market demand. eBay's sold listings remain the most reliable source for that research. An active asking price records somebody's ambition, which is not quite the same thing as a buyer opening a wallet.

Speed makes that pricing advantage more useful. An individual can list, reprice, and delist faster than a managed resale program. AI-powered tools that make listings from photos cut the work that can otherwise make casual selling feel barely worth doing. With sold-price research, they help sellers compete on how listings look, how fast they go up, and how well they are priced, without running a business the size of a brand's.

How to choose the right platform given the shifting competitive landscape

Category fit comes first: a marketplace needs the right buyers for the item, with a selling format that suits the transaction. Brand competition makes that match more consequential because buyers increasingly have curated, authenticated alternatives. A good item on the wrong platform can still struggle to find its audience. The choice should begin with what is being sold and how its likely buyer shops.

eBay is strongest for electronics, collectibles, sneakers, and branded goods. Its buyers around the world make it a good fit for items that need a wider audience, and auctions suit goods whose market value is unclear. Sold-listing data also supports pricing research before a listing goes live. Its AI listing tools and Certilogo integration add infrastructure for branded resale.

Poshmark and Depop are stronger fits for fashion and community-led discovery. Poshmark has social selling and built-in flat-rate shipping, though casual sellers should watch how its shift toward goods from brands and enterprises may lead its algorithm to show managed sellers' listings more often. Depop serves a younger, fashion-focused audience. Under eBay ownership, its fee structures, policy alignment, and relationship with eBay's seller base may change over time.

For bulky local goods, Facebook Marketplace or OfferUp better matches the transaction. Facebook Marketplace is free for local cash sales and suits furniture, appliances, and other items that are easier to pick up than to ship. It does not provide sold-price visibility, so pricing requires cross-referencing eBay sold data. A local handover solves a different problem from a global auction. Neither is inherently better when the item calls for the other.

Listing on multiple platforms can meaningfully increase sell-through, but it also creates an obligation to remove an item once it sells. Forgetting can lead to refunds and negative reviews. Inventory sync tools or AI-assisted workflows that show whether an item has sold on another platform cut that risk. On every channel, though, using sold data to set prices is still the habit that helps most. With brand programs competing for the same buyers, pricing accuracy and platform fit do more to support sell-through than they did five years ago.