Resale Is Rising, But Product Data Could Determine What It’s Really Worth

The market for second-hand fashion, in the UK alone,  is expected to reach over £4.8 billion this year. From a trend analysis perspective, that growth can be read as a preference for thrift (or “vintage” as we’d call it on this side of the Atlantic), but taken as an indicator of a shift in consumer mindsets and business models, the same data tells a deeper story: shoppers are saving billions per year by buying used (through whatever platform is available to them) and close to 200 million products per year are remaining in circulation. Both of these will substitute, to some degree, for first-hand purchases, slowly eroding the business of selling new products.

As we’ve seen in previous weeks’ analysis, this scaling up is not just regional: the volume of listings on resale platforms like Vinted (now the biggest apparel seller in France by volume)  show both the seller and the buyer side of the equation. On the supply end: some are trying to make room, some are trying to make enough to cover bills, and some are practicing personal values and virtues. On the buyer end, people are either shopping with a conscience, with a budget, or both. 

So it stands to reason that fashion brands would seek to have a relationship with, and an understanding of, both sides. Most resale, though, still happens in ways that are disconnected from brands. Peer-to-peer listings rarely interact with original product information, design intent, material composition and so on. Take-back schemes run separately. A sweater that’s been repaired twice and sold three times leaves little trace of that extended journey behind – at least not in ways that the company behind the original garment can interact with or, crucially, extract value (either monetary or in relationship terms) from.

A recent report offers some useful signals for how that gap might get closed. Garments with a digital product passport (tracking materials, ownership, authenticity, composition, condition etc) could generate up to twice the value over their lifetime, through resale and services like repair. 

From an authenticity point of view, this idea isn’t radical, and it’s been tested time and again. When buyers can see what they’re getting, they tend to trust it more. And when they trust it, they’ll often pay more. And this behavioural pattern transcends the original point of sale. 

But the pattern isn’t consistent. That value lift shows up most clearly in luxury, where authentication and condition matter more than they do in mass market categories,where most listings sit under £20 and where speed, convenience, and cost matter more than authentication and traceability. 

For readers who have ever listed something second-hand (at least on most platforms) you already know how patchwork the process can often feel: taking photos, describing condition, and reading care and composition labels to attempt to list the product in a way that’s accurate. Despite all the talk of passports and platforms and structured data, most of this ad-hoc resale activity still happens in bedrooms or on sofas, in the few quiet hours at the end of the day. It’s quick, reactive, often driven by need.

That doesn’t mean better systems can’t help, but it does likely set the terms. If tools like DPPs are going to work across the board, they have to show up where this behaviour already exists, and do something useful in that moment.

Some of that usefulness is already visible. DPPs can support authentication and composition data, making resale listings easier to build and easier to trust. We know this. That’s part of the appeal behind brand-led resale pilots: the listing effectively itself, the buyer feels confident, and the price is set in a way that benefits everyone. Here, having access to an accurate store of product information both eases the processes for seller and buyer, and provides an incentive for the brand to participate in an economy that might otherwise be eating into their net-new sales targets..

Repair is another use case. A brand that offers aftercare could use a DPP as a way to log each service event to its own centralised database. If a sweater has been patched twice and cleaned professionally, that record helps set expectations for its condition at the point of resale. It could also unlock future care, something along the lines of discounted mending, perhaps, or warranty eligibility. The point isn’t transparency for transparency’s sake, It’s continuity.

Other models are less developed but still plausible. If a garment returns to the brand via a recognised resale channel, that interaction could trigger a loyalty credit or similar gesture. 

You could also point to rental and leasing models, though those remain harder to ground. Real-time usage tracking is messy without embedded sensors or regular user input (and we’re aware this is far from realistic in practice). Still, fixed-term leasing might prove itself to be a feasible way for brands to extract value from garments outside of selling them new.

The reality, though, is that most fashion businesses still rely on tech stacks that were never designed for circularity. ERP, POS, PLM, CRM and other systems were built for linear business models, and the “product journey” from their perspective ends when a product makes it to market and reaches a consumer.

There’s also the question of what happens when the brand is no longer in the loop. If a garment is resold privately, or repaired at home, where does the information that would be housed in a centralised record (and accessed via the DPP) reside? Who’s responsible for the data? What’s the value exchange that makes that curation and interoperability work?

Other industries have at least started to answer this. In automotive, service histories follow the vehicle. Resale value is informed by what’s recorded, not just what’s visible, and while that system can certainly be gamed, it only takes a cursory glance to see how the “approved used” model was founded as a response to changing consumer behaviours and the rising price of buying (or financing) something new.

This would be an extremely different proposition for fashion brands to think about (requiring a cultural shift and a reevaluation of a good slice of the tech estate), but not one without precedent in other sectors. 

For years, fashion marketing has framed ownership as identity. The idea that a jacket could pass through four owners and still hold value runs counter to how brands have traditionally sold newness, and how the industry has anchored its definition of value in the concept of self expression – something that people have believed for a while runs the risk of feeling cheapened if it’s filtered through someone else first. There’s still anxiety around whether resale cannibalises full-price sales. But at this point, resale is happening with or without participation. Opting out doesn’t stop it. It just means less visibility and less control.

If fashion’s circular economy is going to scale, it will need to meet people in the places resale happens, couched in terms that acknowledge why it’s happening, and drawing on systems that support the decisions the open market is  already making.