Secondhand Apparel Market Set to Hit $393 Billion by 2030

The global secondhand apparel market grew 13% in 2025 while new apparel sales were nearly flat. That gap is the central argument of ThredUp's 14th annual Resale Report, released April 2, which projects the resale sector reaching $393 billion by 2030, representing roughly 10% of total global apparel spend.

The report, conducted by analytics firm GlobalData, modeled a 9% compound annual growth rate for secondhand between 2025 and 2030, putting it on a pace roughly twice as fast as the overall apparel market. In the U.S., the acceleration is sharper: resale grew nearly four times faster than broader retail clothing in 2025 and is projected to hit $78.8 billion by 2030, adding an estimated $23.3 billion in incremental value along the way.

"Resale is no longer just growing, it's taking direct market share," said James Reinhart, ThredUp cofounder and CEO. "In 2025, the U.S. secondhand market grew nearly 4X faster than the broader retail clothing market. 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."

The generational math underpins that ambition. Gen Z and Millennials are expected to drive more than 70% of resale market growth through 2030. Consumer adoption is already reflecting that shift: 59% of consumers shopped secondhand apparel in 2025, up seven percentage points over three years, according to GlobalData's January-February 2026 survey of 3,268 U.S. adults.

Online resale is the most concentrated growth zone. The digital secondhand channel stood at $29.7 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $48.3 billion by 2030, a compound annual growth rate of 10%. In the near term, the report forecasts U.S. online resale hitting $31 billion in 2026 alone, up from $26 billion the prior year.

The report's structural argument is that resale has moved past its growth-story phase and into something harder: platform competition for supply. Reinhart framed it directly: the next phase will be defined by fragmentation across platforms and who can deploy AI to connect inventory with the next generation of shoppers. In that context, AI-enabled discovery and pricing are positioned not as peripheral features but as the infrastructure that determines which platforms actually scale profitably.

GlobalData's findings drew on consumer surveys, retailer tracking, public data, and a separate January-February 2026 poll of the top 50 U.S. fashion retailers and brands. That last dataset signals where the power is shifting: legacy retail is now being benchmarked against the secondhand channel by its own analytics firms.

At 10% of global apparel spend and growing at twice the rate of new clothing, secondhand is no longer the margin channel it used to be. The brands without a credible answer to that number are already falling behind.