In a world of fast fashion and outsourced clothing manufacture, one way to peacefully combat the environmental impact and labor controversies that go hand-in-hand with the modern apparel industry is to opt for secondhand clothing and footwear. Not only is secondhand less expensive than brand new clothing and shoes, but it is also a great way to prevent waste. Clothing styles have a tendency to come back in vogue after many years, and vintage clothing often has more character than brand new clothing. For people who want to set themselves apart from current fashion trends, secondhand clothing provides the means to do so. The
was estimated to be worth 211 billion U.S. dollars in 2023. By 2027, this was forecast to rise to more than 350 billion dollars. As home to the largest clothing market in the world, the United States is also the
U.S. market
In 2022, it was estimated that secondhand apparel had a share of approximately 12 percent of the total apparel market in the United States. This was an increase of 5.3 percent from five years previously. In the following five years the
market share of secondhand apparel was forecast to more than double, exceeding one quarter of the market in 2027. The results of a survey in 2022 showed that there were more
female consumers in the secondhand market in the U.S. than male, by around 10 percent. The
age demographic which bought the most secondhand apparel was 25 to 34 year-olds.
Consumers’ favorite marketplaces
Many of the most popular marketplaces to purchase secondhand apparel are online. The best known is
eBay, which is one of the largest secondhand marketplaces in general. Among second-hand apparel online shop users, eBay had a
brand awareness of 92 percent. There are also
specialist fashion resale platforms, which generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. The RealReal generated a revenue of more than 600 million dollars in the financial year 2022.
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