Introducing the Recommerce 100
In the world of fashion resale, 2022 is shaping up to be a year like no other. Resale is expected to grow 11 times faster than the broader retail clothing sector by 2025. With 1 in 3 retail executives saying resale is becoming table stakes for retailers*, it's no surprise the words ‘resale’ and ‘recommerce’ are showing up in retail headlines everywhere.
On thredUP’s Resale-as-a-Service™ team (Resale-as-a-Service is thredUP’s B2B platform enabling leading brands and retailers to deliver custom, scalable resale experiences to their customers), we wanted to better understand how the momentum and excitement around resale is showing up in the form of brands hosting their own resale shops—what we call branded recommerce or branded resale. So, we rolled up our sleeves to create a first-of-its-kind data set to identify and count brands playing in the space. We were curious: how many branded recommerce shops are out there? And how big are these shops?
The result? The Recommerce 100. Although our first iteration doesn't feature 100 brands, we anticipate that number isn’t far off given the rapid pace of branded resale launches. We’ll be tracking monthly! Here are the biggest takeaways from the first-ever Recommerce 100:
Brands are jumping into resale, and quickly: In the first three months of 2022, at least 11 fashion brands announced branded resale shops. Our analysis identified 22 brands that launched resale shops in 2021.
Small brands are demonstrating leadership: Of the 41 branded resale shops identified, at least 25 are small, non-public companies.
Brands are barely scratching the surface of recommerce’s potential impact: 20 brands had fewer than 200 resale shop listings. Where we found publicly available brand revenue data, we estimate the resale value of those listings to represent, on average, less than 0.1% of a brand’s total annual revenue. A good start, but so much more to do.
The Recommerce 100 aims to shed light on resale shop penetration and recognize the brands making the biggest impact through resale. The momentum we're seeing is positive, but we're also calling attention to the massive opportunity for more brands to power resale at scale in order to drive meaningful impact. Check back in May as we publish our next version of this monthly report. We expect some exciting updates!
Note on methodology: The Recommerce 100 compiles publicly available information to identify fashion brands selling their own pre-owned products online to US shoppers. See the full methodology.