For years, resale sat alongside fashion rather than at its center, offering a cheaper or more sustainable alternative to buying new. In 2025, that framing broke down. Earnings calls, platform data and consumer behavior all point to the same shift: Resale has become a default starting point for shopping, especially as prices rise, trend cycles become faster and shoppers demand more transparency around value.
On The RealReal’s third-quarter 2025 earnings call on November 11, CEO Rati Levesque described the change in blunt terms. “We are changing the way people shop, making resale a primary option,” she said. According to the company’s data, “58% of shoppers prefer the secondary market outright, and 47% of shoppers now consider resale value before buying something new.” As Levesque put it, “Resale is no longer reacting to the fashion industry but driving it.”
The financials support that claim. In the third quarter, The RealReal reported $520 million in gross merchandise value, up 20% year over year, with revenue rising 17% to $174 million. Active buyers surpassed 1 million on a trailing 12-month basis. The company raised its full-year outlook to more than $2.1 billion in GMV. Categories like fine jewelry and watches outperformed, with first-time watch buyers up 46%. Searches for wedding dresses, meanwhile, surged 247%, signaling that shoppers are increasingly turning to resale for milestone purchases, not just discretionary ones.
What distinguishes this moment from previous resale booms is not just scale, but also structure. Resale is increasingly supported by data, comparison tools and real-time pricing intelligence that make secondhand shopping easier, and harder to ignore. Platforms including The RealReal, Vestiaire Collective and eBay now publish trend reports that track brand heat, pricing shifts and condition preferences, turning resale into a measurable market rather than a fragmented alternative. They’ve hired stylists and influencers to promote the lists, too.
That data layer is also shaping how consumers shop. At Beni, a resale search engine founded in 2021, founder Kate Sanner said shoppers are no longer just looking for the lowest price. “They’re also asking how to get the highest quality and the best value for their money,” she said. Beni aggregates listings across platforms including Depop, eBay, The RealReal and Vestiaire Collective. By the start of 2025, it had reached close to 1 million users.
Part of resale’s momentum, she added, is cultural fatigue with algorithmic sameness. “People are kind of revolting against the algorithm and being like, ‘We all look the same, and I don’t want to look like everyone else,’” she said. “It’s almost become a badge of honor if you can hack the world of thrifting and find something cool.”
Peter Semple, CEO of the resale platform Depop, said the platform now hosts more than 50 million items, with secondhand increasingly substituting for first-hand purchases. “In economically difficult times, you can buy objectively cheaper and more affordable things in the secondhand market,” he said. “People can also sell a thing to buy a thing, or sell a thing to have more disposable income or, in some cases, build a business.” He added that, in 2025, “three in five purchases on Depop are supplanting a purchase that would have been made elsewhere.”
Consumers’ adoption of resale is being accelerated by a new layer of comparison-shopping tools. Phia, an AI-powered shopping app founded by Phoebe Gates and Sofia Kianni (both named to Glossy’s 2025 Innovators list), allows users to compare prices across the primary and resale markets, track resale value, and see alternatives in real time. Since its launch in April this year, Phia has indexed more than 350 million items across 5,000 brand partners, reduced search latency by over 80% and surpassed 640,000 mobile downloads, according to the company.
“The second you activate the extension, we’re packaging in all the information that you could need to decide whether or not you should make that purchase,” said Kianni. That includes resale value. “It’s been really cool to see how much people care about understanding how much secondhand value an item will retain, so that they can think about the cost per wear and buying higher quality items.” Phia’s core users are Gen Z and millennial women.
“For the first time in forever, our company is possible,” said Gates, pointing to AI advances that make large-scale price and resale tracking feasible. “There is no way, three years ago, that a company like us could exist. With every purchase, every item a user returns and every result they don’t select, our algorithm is continuously learning.”
Likewise, Jude Lugo, a longtime eBay seller with 702 followers, noted that selling secondhand has become significantly easier in recent years, thanks to “AI description and title tools” that help new sellers list items faster and price them with more confidence.
Luxury, once seen as resale’s most fragile category, is now one of its strongest growth engines. Kirsty Keoghan, global gm of fashion at eBay, said resale is a customer acquisition play, rather than a cannibalization threat. “Between 40-65% of the first time you buy a luxury brand, it’s in the secondary market,” she said.
For its part, eBay now authenticates luxury watches, handbags, jewelry, clothing, shoes and accessories, pairing authentication with condition checks and AI-driven fraud prevention. “We spend an awful lot of time making sure that people have a trusted experience,” Keoghan said.
And it helps that resale is showing up in fashion’s most visible arenas. At London Fashion Week, stylist Amy Bannerman worked with eBay on an Endless Runway activation showcasing resale styles. “Pre-loved is the status symbol,” she said. And, instead of recreating runway looks through cheap dupes, she said, audiences are increasingly sourcing archival pieces or altering vintage finds.
