The secondhand clothing market is projected to reach $393bn globally by 2030, with the US resale market forecast at $78.8bn by the end of the decade. Resale is growing at roughly twice the rate of the broader apparel market, and last year it grew nearly four times faster than overall retail clothing sales. That money has, until now, largely been captured by platforms that specialise in it: eBay, Poshmark, Depop, The RealReal.
The brands whose clothes those platforms resell have noticed. H&M Pre-Loved, launched in 2021, now operates across twenty-four online markets and in stores in eleven. Zara runs Pre-Owned. Levi's, Lululemon, REI, Patagonia, Eileen Fisher and others have built their own resale operations, PacSun's vintage arm runs in sixteen US locations, and Urban Outfitters operates take-back in the UK.
Shawn Grain Carter of the Fashion Institute of Technology described the strategy as brands seeking ownership of the entire lifecycle of a garment, from first sale through resale and repair to eventual recycling. Neil Saunders of GlobalData framed the motivation more bluntly: consumers are increasingly involved in resale, and brands see a risk in not being present. H&M's Sofia Måhlén put the company's case as "By extending product life through resale, we support resource efficiency and growth."
This publication has argued from the beginning that the secondhand market is the strongest source of value available to most shoppers. The companies that spent a decade ignoring it are now attempting to enclose it. That is worth examining carefully, because the outcome is not obviously good and the most revealing number is one the companies published themselves.
The 0.8% that explains everything
H&M Pre-Loved generated SEK 1,844m last year, roughly $194m, up 31% year on year. In isolation those are healthy figures: substantial revenue, strong growth.
Set against the parent company, they represent about 0.8% of group turnover, after five years of operation.
That single fraction is the most honest thing in the entire story, and it deserves to be sat with rather than glossed. A large, well-resourced retailer with global infrastructure, an established customer base, enormous brand awareness and half a decade of effort has built a resale business amounting to less than one percent of what it does. This is not a failure of execution. It is a structural result, and the reason is not difficult to identify.
Why a volume retailer cannot become the custodian of the used market
Here is the tension that nobody writing about this subject states plainly, largely because the affiliate press earns its money on primary sales.
A company whose business model is selling large quantities of new clothing has a direct commercial interest in customers buying new clothing. A resale programme that genuinely succeeded, that captured a substantial share of its customers' spending, would be cannibalising the primary business. Every garment bought secondhand instead of new is revenue moved from a high-margin new sale to a low-margin used transaction.
So the resale operation exists in a permanent contradiction. It must be large enough to be credible, to demonstrate environmental commitment and to prevent customers leaving for independent platforms. It must not be large enough to meaningfully reduce new sales. Something under one percent of turnover is, from the parent's perspective, close to the ideal size: visible, defensible, growing, and harmless.
That is not cynicism about anyone's intentions. Individual people running these programmes may be entirely sincere, and extending the life of garments is genuinely worth doing. It is a structural observation about incentives. An organisation cannot be relied upon to build something that would damage its own core business, and nobody should expect it to.
What a brand-run resale channel actually does to what you see
The consumer consequence is concrete rather than theoretical, and it comes down to who decides what appears in front of you.
An independent secondary market is indifferent to brands. A vintage dealer, a charity shop, a general resale platform will list whatever is good and whatever sells, from any maker, any era, any price. The selection reflects what exists and what people are giving up.
A brand-run resale channel lists that brand's goods only. Within that, it is curated by the brand's interests: it will favour pieces that reflect well on the label, it will price against its own new stock rather than against the wider market, and its entire architecture is designed to keep you inside the brand's ecosystem, where the primary line is always one click away. It is a shop, and shops are arranged to sell.
The specific loss is comparison. The great advantage of the independent secondhand market is that it puts everything on the same rail: a superbly made coat from a defunct maker sits beside an indifferent one from a famous house at a similar price, and the buyer who can read construction wins. A single-brand resale channel removes that comparison entirely. You cannot discover that something else is better made when only one maker is present.
The three-day arc on who controls resale
This story completes a pattern that has emerged over the past few days, and the three parts are more informative together than separately.
First, a court heard evidence that a luxury house was destroying tens of thousands of unsold products in a single city over a period, which is the most direct possible method of controlling what reaches the secondary market: ensuring it never arrives.
Second, a major platform expanded authentication across more than a hundred brands, making institutional verification a standard feature of resale, which lowers the barrier for buyers while concentrating value on recognised names.
Third, and now, the brands themselves are building owned resale channels to capture the flow directly.
Three different mechanisms, one direction of travel: the secondary market, which grew up outside the industry's control and became genuinely useful to ordinary buyers precisely because of that, is being brought under control. Some of that is beneficial, since authentication reduces fraud and brand programmes extend product life. All of it reduces the independence that made the channel valuable.
What to do about it
One. Use brand resale for what it does well. If you want a specific item from a specific brand, particularly something recent, a brand-run channel is convenient and the provenance question disappears. That is a genuine use.
Two. Do not let it become your only secondhand channel. The moment resale happens inside a brand's ecosystem, you have lost the comparison that makes secondhand powerful. Keep using general platforms, charity shops and vintage dealers where everything competes against everything.
Three. Compare prices against the wider market, not the brand's new stock. A brand-run channel naturally prices its used goods relative to its own new goods, which frames a discount. The relevant comparison is what the same garment costs elsewhere secondhand, and what a better-made alternative costs.
Four. Remember that the best value is rarely branded. Well-made pieces from unfamiliar or defunct makers remain the most underpriced things in the entire market, and no brand-run channel will ever list them, because no brand exists to sell them.
Where this lands across the four channels
One. The vintage and estate market. Strengthened by contrast. Its independence is precisely the property being enclosed elsewhere, which makes it more valuable rather than less. Charity shops, dealers and general platforms remain the places where everything competes on equal terms.
Two. Small independent designers and craft workshops. Unaffected, and worth remembering as the counterpart. Buying new from a maker directly and buying old from an independent seller are the two transactions where no large intermediary shapes what you see.
Three. The accessible-luxury tier. Where brand resale programmes are most developed and most useful, given the goods hold value and provenance matters.
Four. Selective use of mainstream luxury. Where the secondary market has always been the sensible route in, and where brand-controlled resale most changes what is visible.
And the universal skip: the mid-tier mass market. Whose resale programmes are, in effect, an attempt to give durability-free garments a second life they were never built to have.
The honest caveats
Considerable fairness is owed here. Brand-run resale is genuinely better than no resale. Extending the life of clothing is worth doing regardless of who profits, and a customer who buys secondhand through a brand's channel rather than buying new has still made the better choice. The programmes deserve credit for existing.
Growth of 31% year on year is also real momentum, and a business at 0.8% of turnover today could be considerably larger in a decade. Reading a current fraction as a permanent ceiling assumes the incentives never change, and regulation, particularly around unsold goods and extended producer responsibility, may change them substantially.
And the market projections quoted here are forecasts rather than facts. Figures like $393bn by 2030 come from analysts with their own methods and assumptions, and forecasts of fast-growing categories are frequently revised. The direction is well evidenced; the specific numbers should be held loosely.
The honest takeaway
What makes this story worth a reader's attention is not that brands entering resale is bad. It is that the most useful number in it was published by one of the companies involved, and it says that after five years the used business is under one percent of the new business.
That is the whole argument, stated in a company's own accounting. A business built on selling new volume cannot become the guardian of the used market, because succeeding at the second would damage the first. Which means the independent secondary market, the charity shop, the dealer, the general platform where every maker competes against every other, is not merely a cheaper option. It is the only version of the secondhand market that has no reason to steer you anywhere. Use the brand channels when they are convenient. Do the serious buying where nobody has a stake in what you choose. The next move is yours.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why are fashion brands launching their own resale platforms? Because the secondhand market is growing at roughly twice the rate of the broader apparel market and is projected to reach $393bn globally by 2030, with that value previously captured by independent platforms. Brands want ownership of the full lifecycle of a garment, from first sale through resale and repair, and see a competitive risk in not being present where their customers increasingly shop.
What does the 0.8% figure mean? H&M's resale operation generated roughly $194m last year, up 31%, which amounts to about 0.8% of group turnover after five years of operation. It indicates that even a large, well-resourced retailer with global infrastructure has built a resale business amounting to less than one percent of what it does, which is a structural result rather than an execution failure.
Why can't a large retailer fully commit to resale? Because a company whose model is selling large volumes of new clothing has a direct interest in customers buying new. A resale programme capturing substantial customer spending would cannibalise the primary business, moving revenue from high-margin new sales to low-margin used transactions. The programme must be credible but not large enough to reduce new sales meaningfully.
Is buying through a brand's resale channel a bad idea? No. It is convenient, provenance is not in question, and buying secondhand through any channel beats buying new. The limitation is that a single-brand channel removes comparison: it lists only that brand's goods, prices against its own new stock, and keeps you inside its ecosystem, so you cannot discover that something else is better made at a similar price.
Where is the best secondhand value? In independent channels where every maker competes on equal terms: charity shops, vintage dealers and general resale platforms. Well-made pieces from unfamiliar or defunct makers remain the most underpriced items in the market, and no brand-run channel will ever list them because no brand exists to sell them. Compare prices against the wider market rather than a brand's new stock.
