Gen Z isn't letting the economy keep them from living their most luxurious lives. They're just buying stuff secondhand instead

A record number of Gen Z is living at home and fueling a luxury boom. And even increasing economic uncertainty is not deterring their pursuit of the good life — they’re just buying secondhand instead. About 30% of Gen Z — those born between 1997 and 2012 — are buying secondhand items to afford higher-end brands, according to an April 5 resale report by ThredUp, an online thrift store and resale platform. ThredUp used data derived from a GlobalData survey of 3,012 American adults in December.

Consumers Vote With Their Wallets as Secondhand Apparel Sales Boom

One in every three apparel items purchased in the U.S. last year was secondhand, according to the resale platform ThredUp, which has been tracking apparel resale markets for over a decade. As U.S. consumers continue to gravitate toward more sustainable products, over half shopped secondhand apparel in 2022, ThredUp found in its annual Resale Report. Globally, the secondhand apparel market is set to nearly double 
by 2027, reaching $350 billion — including $70 billion in the U.S. alone. In the U.S. in particular, resale markets grew five times faster than the broader retail clothing sector in 2022, and global secondhand sales are expected to grow three times faster than the global apparel market overall. Brands are looking to benefit from rising consumer interest in secondhand shopping, with a record 88 brands launching resale programs in 2022.

How to secondhand shop online, according to experts

There’s no question that combating the climate emergency requires large-scale, systemic change. But individual action is important too. One of the most meaningful changes you can make on a personal level is buying less of everything — especially new things. “Buying used is better than buying new because very simply, it requires much less extraction of resources, much less fuel to ship things all over the world and it keeps things out of the landfill,” says Sandra Goldmark, professor and director of sustainability at Barnard College, senior assistant dean at the Columbia Climate School, and author of “Fixation: How to Have Stuff Without Breaking the Planet.” “Unless I absolutely can’t avoid it, I don’t buy new.”

Something Odd Is Happening With Handbags

Where do shoppers turn when an industry built on novelty runs out of new ideas? Over the past year or two, though, something largely unprecedented has been happening on people’s shoulders. Old bags are back. A significant—and growing—number of fashion-conscious people appear to be mining the depths of their closets or scouring secondhand marketplaces for designs released in the past decade or so. These women aren’t merely hunting down vintage styles of historical fashion significance, or the timeless classics that a wealthy mom might pass down to her daughter. Instead, many of them are carrying precisely the bags that should be at the nadir of popularity: one-off seasonal releases, designs whose trendiness peaked in the 2010s, and other bags that would otherwise scan as outdated to anyone in the know. One of fashion’s most basic rules is that nothing is less cool than the recent past, yet here are trendy people parading around like it’s 2015.

Fashion Briefing: As the economy worsens, brands and retailers are upping their focus on margins

Fashion retail is in a perilous spot. The looming possibility of further economic decline and reduced consumer spending has retailers seeing flashbacks to the lowest point of the pandemic. Revenge spending in 2021 and 2022, plus pandemic savings that gave some consumers excess disposable income, helped. Now, those retailers are staring down what’s expected to be an incredibly difficult rest of 2023.

Reverse Logistics Startups Attract Investors from Venture Firms

The e-commerce industry is experiencing a surge in reverse logistics startups dedicated to processing online returns for retailers in a profitable way. These startups, such as Loop Returns and Two Boxes, have attracted around $200 million in venture capital investments. According to data from the National Retail Federation, last year alone, American consumers returned $212 billion worth of merchandise purchased online, which highlights the importance of making the returns process smoother and more profitable for retailers.

What brands excel at recommerce?

A new report from OSF Digital (a digital transformation company) and Trove (a recommerce platform provider) aims to shed light on the trends and leaders in recommerce. We know from this report, as well as the annual ThredUp Resale Report, that recommerce revenue is poised to grow at three to five times the rate of traditional retail through 2030. What is still unclear from that growth is whether this business model will drive down the production of new products. This rapid growth also means opportunity and responsibility for those advocating recommerce initiatives.

Weekend Briefing: The challenges facing the fashion rental industry

Rent the Runway reported a pessimistic outlook for the rest of the year last week, announcing an expected revenue of $325 million. That was below analysts’ expectation of $345 million, which led to the company’s shares falling by 14% on Thursday, the most they’ve fallen this year. But RTR expects its subscriber count to grow by 25%, though analysts called this prediction “lofty.”

Resale’s big secret? It may need stores

These days it’s difficult to find a retailer or brand that hasn’t at least experimented with resale. Rather than figure out how to do it themselves, most have turned to third-party platforms that specialize in secondhand e-commerce, leaving the success or failure of their attempt in other hands. As it turns out, selling used goods online is so inefficient that it’s difficult to do so profitably. Despite the robustness of resale’s growth, it’s a niche best left, for the most part, to brick-and-mortar stores, experts say.