Fashion resale is finally ready for primetime

Sarah Davis, founder and CCO of the luxury resale company Fashionphile, saved the post out of pride. Now, years later, she’s working with Cardi B directly.

Fashionphile debuted a major new campaign this week with Cardi B, which Fashionphile is billing as its “most ambitious marketing effort to date.” It includes an ongoing collaboration with Cardi B, who will become the new face of the company, along with a slew of over 25 influencers, in-store events and out-of-home ads across the country. The campaign, called “Get Your Bag,” will run across all social channels, as well as TV and affiliate channels.

It’s a significant expansion for a company that didn’t even have a dedicated marketing department five years ago. And it’s not the only fashion resale company that’s growing, expanding and investing more heavily than the rest of the fashion industry. With the rise of resale powerhouses like Vinted and the expansion of resale channels by fashion brands like Eileen Fisher, secondhand fashion has gone from a niche way to save money to a legitimate, mainstream phenomenon.

Fashionphile’s Cardi B moment

Davis told Glossy that, as Fashionphile has grown, she has shifted how she thinks about marketing the company. While the marketing spend has remained relatively flat, Fashionphile is spending less than ever on performance advertising on platforms like Meta and more on big-swing, top-of-funnel moments like the splashy new Cardi B campaign. Fashionphile has previously worked with celebrities like Nicole Richie and Martha Stewart, but Cardi B is the biggest celebrity, in terms of social following, the team has ever worked with.

For Davis, the goal is to turn Fashionphile into an enviable brand in its own right, rather than just a vehicle to reach other brands like Chanel and Louis Vuitton.

“There’s no guidebook on how to run a luxury resale brand’s marketing,” Davis said. “There haven’t been many like us before. So the best playbook we have is what the luxury brands like Chanel are doing. We’re trying to act more like a luxury brand than just a marketplace.”

Davis said the closest comparison would be to The RealReal, though she noted that TRR makes most of its sales from contemporary brands rather than high-end luxury.

Fashionphile is big enough now to start leveraging the luxury template. It is profitable, has over $500 million in revenue and saw its sales increase by another 12% last year.

Luxury brands invest in celebrity ambassadors, out-of-home advertising and events — all of which Fashionphile is doing for the Cardi B campaign — while mostly ignoring performance advertising.

“I have this theory that if you turn off performance marketing and your sales are shot, you didn’t really have a brand to begin with,” she said. “Good brands don’t chase customers. Customers chase them. We’ve always wanted to be a brand that people are loyal to.”

Branded resale goes mainstream

Over the last few years, a broad range of apparel brands has begun adding branded resale channels to their online stores. These include older, established programs like Patagonia with Worn Wear and Coach with (Re)Loved, as well as newer programs like Cotopaxi’s “Gear for Good.”

ThredUp, which powers many of these channels, saw a 37% increase in branded resale last year, adding 60 new brands that offer secondhand through their own stores.

“Resale is no longer a niche trend; it is a fundamental new way to shop,” said Samina Virk, a former eBay and Vestiaire Collective executive who is currently on the board at ThredUp. “The next evolution is branded resale, where the brand itself takes the lead in the circular journey.”

But many of these channels are cordoned off from the new product, usually on separate websites that are, at best, accessible from a link on brands’ homepages. Resale experts have previously told Glossy that the next step in resale’s evolution will be to mix new and secondhand products in the same shopping feeds.

Eileen Fisher is one of the first brands to take that step. After recently hitting a milestone of selling 3 million garments through Eileen Fisher Renew, the brand is now planning to move away from a separate Renew site. Instead, later this summer, Eileen Fisher will integrate both new and secondhand products into the same shopping feed on the main Eileen Fisher online store.

Vinted’s US ambitions

The Lithuanian resale platform Vinted has swiftly come to dominate the European market. At the end of last month, after raising nearly $900 million through a secondary share transaction, Vinted reached a valuation of $9.4 billion.

But despite being available in the U.S. since 2013, Vinted has yet to make a major splash in the states, where market share remains low. That may soon change. In January, Vinted quietly relaunched in the U.S. and is reportedly eyeing an IPO in the future.

Vinted plans to spend tens of millions of dollars on its U.S. expansion over the next few years, according to the company.

Resale is everywhere

The global secondhand market is projected to reach nearly $400 billion by 2030, growing more than twice as fast as the primary fashion market, according to a ThredUp analysis of GlobalData information.

The U.S. secondhand apparel market alone will be almost $80 billion, growing by over 7% per year. Nearly 60% of U.S. consumers are shopping secondhand now, with the vast majority saying that price is the primary motivator. At a time when economic pressure is driving up the cost of living and making everyday goods more expensive, resale’s appeal is only increasing.

“As much as people love circularity and affordability, the No. 1 thing driving people to resale is price,” Davis said. “Resale opens the door for people. The market has blown up. Men, women and children of every age and demographic are shopping resale.”

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