Secondhand clothing sales are forecast to surge 12% this year to $289bn (£217bn) and continue to step up, as AI and social media influencers help shoppers find the items they want.
The rise of sites such as Vinted, Depop, Vestige and ThredUp is expected to power an average 9% annual growth over the next five years to reach $393bn, twice the pace of the overall clothing market.
The prediction came in ThredUp’s annual resale report, which uses research from market analysts GlobalData. In 2021 the market was worth just $141bn, less than half this year’s expected total.
Brands such as Dr Martens, Zara and Mulberry have begun selling their own secondhand items or repairing and reviving used items as demand booms.
“Resale is no longer just growing, it’s taking direct market share,” said James Reinhart, the co-founder and chief executive of ThredUp, with its report finding resale now accounts for a 10th of global clothing sales. “In 2025, the US secondhand market grew nearly four times faster than the broader market,” he said.
Sales at ThredUp rose by a fifth to $310.8m last year. Depop’s sales were up 42% to £101m, according to the latest accounts at Companies House, and Vinted’s up 36% to €813.4m (£710m) in 2024.
However, resale sites have found it hard to profit from the boom, with ThredUp making a $20m pre-tax loss and Depop a £42m loss in those years. Only Vinted made a profit – of €76.7m in 2024 – and Depop was recently sold to eBay by its former owner Etsy.
Reinhart said that potential inflation, as the conflict in Iran pushes up energy and fuel prices for clothing manufacturers and retailers, could prompt more consumers to turn to secondhand items in order to get the brands they wanted more cheaply.
“The industry continues to be robust and shows no signs of slowing down based on young people’s behaviour,” he said.
AI is helping online platforms sort through their “vast assortments” and catalogue them so that potential buyers can find them. “Netflix and Spotify spend 15 to 20 years building data and algorithms to give you what you want. AI can do it [for us] almost instantly and that is pretty significant.”
He said the technology was also reducing the “points of friction” between spotting an item on social media and buying it. “The next phase of this market will be defined by who can best unlock supply and use AI to connect that inventory with the next generation of shoppers,” Reinhart said.
Those between 14 and 45 – gen Z and millennials – were expected to drive 70% of market growth, said Neil Saunders, GlobalData’s managing director. He added that “the infrastructure for discovery must evolve into the social feeds where these consumers live”.
“The global secondhand market is entering a more competitive, structurally complex phase,” Saunders said.
He added that technology would be required to make selling easier, so that there was enough stock to meet growing demand.
