One of the narratives that we explored in detail last year was the shift to thrift stores during a time when food inflation was elevated. There were a couple of wrinkles during 2023--one was that Temu disrupted spend for Halloween and the second was that secondhand really isn't in fashion for Christmas. We see these impacts in the visitation trends below. Notably, we believe that Savers is outperforming given that its merchandise mix is much broader than clothes and accessories (categories that dominate Plato’s Closet and Buffalo Exchange).
With a focus clothes and accessories category, we took a look at ThredUp’s recent resale industry report. The chart below from the report shows overall secondhand apparel split between non-resale (offline) and resale (online). Resale/online would include ThredUp, Poshmark, and eBay. (ThredUp’s GMV in 2023 was $322M, as such, $19B+ of the $20B below would be eBay.) Non-resale/offline resale would include the retailers shown in the chart above, plus industry leader Goodwill (which we estimate did around $4B in apparel sales). For reference, Savers Value Village did about $530M in apparel in the U.S.
For context, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) personal consumption expenditures (PCE) figure for new apparel (new) is $404B; as such, resale is 10% of consumer demand. But secondhand leaders eBay (4.3%) and Goodwill (0.9%) are only a small portions of overall consumer demand, indicating that secondhand remains niche with little impact to full-price brands and retailers (which is especially true for non-eBay online retailers).
