Fashion brands like Zara, H&M and Levi’s want a bigger piece of the $393 billion resale market

A growing number of fashion brands—including Zara, H&M, Lululemon, Levi’s and REI—are launching their own resale platforms, selling secondhand versions of their products alongside new ones. The reason is competitive as much as it is environmental: for years, the resale of their clothing has happened on eBay, Poshmark, Depop and The RealReal, generating billions in sales that the brands themselves never touched. Now, they want a cut.

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., resale is expected to reach $78.8 billion by the end of the decade after growing nearly four times faster than overall retail clothing sales last year.

For retailers, the opportunity extends well beyond simply selling more clothes. By operating their own resale marketplaces, brands can capture a share of the growing secondhand market while maintaining a relationship with customers long after the original purchase. 

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 the initial sale to resale, repair and eventual recycling. Rather than relying on third-party marketplaces, brands can create another revenue stream while strengthening customer loyalty, she said.

“There’s a real reason for brands to play in that secondhand space,” Neil Saunders, managing director at market research and consulting firm GlobalData Retail, told Fortune. “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 where customers are both culturally and economically—and “resale is one of the hottest spaces.”

H&M, which launched its Pre-Loved initiative in 2021 and has since expanded it to 24 online markets and stores across 11 markets, echoed that thinking, describing resale to Fortune as both “a sustainability and a business opportunity.”

“By extending product life through resale, we can support resource efficiency while creating new opportunities for growth through new business models,” Sofia Måhlén, team lead for Circular Business Models at H&M, told Fortune.

The company said selling pre-owned items alongside new merchandise lowers the barrier to shopping secondhand by allowing customers to purchase both in a single transaction. H&M said resale represented 0.8% of the group’s turnover in 2025, with resale revenue reaching SEK 1,844 million ($194.4 million USD), a 31% increase from the previous year, according to data shared with Fortune.

Meeting shoppers where they are

Carter said younger consumers are driving much of the momentum behind the trend, pointing to Gen Z and younger millennials as resale’s most engaged shoppers. She said many are drawn to secondhand fashion because it aligns with their interest in sustainability and circular fashion while also helping stretch budgets amid rising housing costs and student debt.

Saunders said resale also gives brands another advantage: it lets them participate in a fast-growing market while reinforcing their sustainability efforts.

“You can make a very strong argument that you are acting sustainably because you’re not encouraging things to be thrown away or going into landfill,” he said. While he noted resale has to complement broader environmental initiatives to be meaningful, he said it “definitely burnishes those green credentials.”

He also sees an element of competitive pressure.

“There’s definitely a little bit of bandwagoning,” Saunders said. “When you start to see some of the big names on that, it definitely raises conversations like, ‘Hey, why are we not playing in this space? What’s our strategy around that?’”

Owning the secondhand sale

Much of the recent expansion has been enabled by companies such as Trove and Reflaunt, which provide brands with the technology, logistics and authentication needed to run resale programs. Patagonia launched Worn Wear with Trove in 2017, followed by Levi’s, REI, Eileen Fisher and Lululemon. Zara built its own Pre-Owned marketplace around resale, repair and donation, while H&M’s Pre-Loved platform lets customers shop curated vintage pieces alongside pre-owned H&M garments.

Increasingly, brands are bringing resale into physical stores as well. Pacsun expanded its secondhand concept, PS Vintage, to 16 U.S. locations in April after launching it online five months earlier. The retailer told Modern Retail that its top-performing stores achieved a 20% sell-through rate within weeks. Urban Outfitters is taking a different approach, launching a U.K. take-back program that gives shoppers store credit for returning pre-owned clothing, with partner Reskinned handling the cleaning, repair and resale.

Still, Saunders believes the bigger story is about control.

“There definitely is a viewpoint among some of the more premium brands that they would prefer to control that channel, or at least have some degree of control,” he said.

An official resale marketplace doesn’t give brands ownership over the secondhand market. Consumers can still buy and sell clothing through platforms like eBay, Poshmark, Depop and The RealReal. But it does allow companies to oversee how their products are presented, create a consistent shopping experience and maintain a relationship with customers long after the original purchase.

“I don’t think for most it will ever displace the sales of new products,” Saunders said. “Sometimes they will buy into both.”

Rather than replacing traditional retail, Saunders said resale has become an incremental business that complements new product sales. Carter agreed, saying resale gives brands another opportunity to engage customers throughout a garment’s life instead of ending the relationship at checkout.

H&M likewise expects resale to become a larger part of its business.“We are continuing to expand access to resale and second-hand services across H&M Group’s brands and markets to help keep products in use for longer,” Måhlén said.

As the resale market continues to grow, fashion brands are no longer content to watch the second sale happen somewhere else. Increasingly, they want to own a piece of it.