Brands Want Their Cut Back
For decades, fashion labels watched billions in secondhand sales flow through eBay, Poshmark, Depop and The RealReal — revenue generated entirely off products the brands had already sold once. That calculation is changing fast.
A growing number of major retailers — including Zara, H&M, Lululemon, Levi's and REI — are now launching their own resale platforms, selling pre-owned versions of their products directly alongside new inventory. The strategic logic is straightforward: if consumers are going to buy secondhand, brands want to own that transaction.
The market size makes the case on its own. According to ThredUp's 2026 Resale Report, the global secondhand apparel market is projected to reach $393 billion by 2030, growing twice as fast as the broader apparel market. In the U.S. alone, resale is expected to hit $78.8 billion by the end of the decade, after growing nearly four times faster than overall retail clothing sales last year.
H&M Posts Hard Numbers
H&M launched its Pre-Loved initiative in 2021 and has since expanded it to 24 online markets and stores across 11 markets. The company told Fortune that resale represented 0.8% of group turnover in 2025, with resale revenue reaching SEK 1,844 million — approximately $194.4 million USD — a 31% increase from the prior year.
Sofia Måhlén, team lead for Circular Business Models at H&M, described the initiative as 'a sustainability and a business opportunity,' telling Fortune that 'extending product life through resale' supports resource efficiency while opening new growth channels.
Owning the Full Life Cycle
Shawn Grain Carter, a professor of Fashion Business Management at New York's Fashion Institute of Technology, told Fortune that branded resale allows companies to 'own the entire fashion life cycle' — from initial sale through resale, repair and eventual recycling. Rather than ceding that ground to third-party platforms, brands capture an additional revenue stream while deepening customer loyalty.
Neil Saunders, managing director at GlobalData Retail, put it plainly: 'More consumers are involved with resale, and I think there's a view that if a brand is not present in the space, it's losing out.' He added that companies need to meet customers where they are both culturally and economically — and 'resale is one of the hottest spaces.'
Much of the recent build-out has been enabled by technology providers Trove and Reflaunt, which supply brands with the logistics, authentication and platform infrastructure needed to run resale programs at scale. Patagonia launched its Worn Wear program with Trove in 2017; Levi's, REI, Eileen Fisher and Lululemon followed. Zara built its own Pre-Owned marketplace around resale, repair and donation.
The Market Has Already Voted
The resale pivot is a textbook free-enterprise response to a market signal: consumers were spending money in a category, and brands were simply not present to capture it. Third-party platforms built billion-dollar businesses on that gap. Now the original manufacturers are closing it — using their own brand equity, customer data and supply-chain infrastructure as competitive advantages no eBay or Depop can replicate.
The brands that move fastest stand to lock in customer relationships across the entire ownership cycle, not just at the point of first purchase. In a margin-compressed retail environment, that recurring touchpoint — and the revenue attached to it — is exactly the kind of durable advantage that separates category leaders from everyone else.
