Resale Sites Try a New Strategy: Sell Less Stuff

Since its inception, online resale has been about the art of the hunt.

For the last decade, shoppers on sites like The RealReal, Poshmark or Depop didn’t mind scavenging endless feeds of pre-owned products if it meant potentially scoring a vintage Armani tuxedo blazer or a Tom Ford-era Gucci bag. The resellers, in turn, enabled this behaviour by continually flooding their marketplaces with treasures.

“There was definitely a period where the strategy was more and more,” said James Reinhart, co-founder and chief executive of online resale site ThredUp. “The more stuff people put up there, even if it wasn’t great, it could drive [gross merchandise volume] growth.”

But consumer expectations have changed. For one, TikTok’s “For You” page and similar personalised algorithms have trained customers to expect digital experiences curated to their specific taste. And as tariffs and inflation-driven price increases have pushed more shoppers to try secondhand, online resale is reaching a new peak — revenue in the sector is expected to grow more than 10 percent year on year in 2025, up from 7 percent in 2024, according to eMarketer. Those factors combined have turned up the pressure for companies to offer a more streamlined shopping experience.

Product curation, however, is vastly more complicated for resale platforms than it is for primary market retailers. Resale companies are constantly receiving new pieces, and listing thousands of individual items on their sites each day. The current boom has only increased inventory. Luxury-focused Fashionphile has seen its number of potential sellers more than double to 2,000 a day in the last five years. During that same period, Grailed, the go-to resale site for hypebeasts, has seen its number of new product listings rise to 13 million in 2025, up from 6 million in 2020.

New technology is making it easier for resellers to improve curation. Companies are investing in AI tools to quickly identify the items that are most likely to sell and attract the sellers who might have them, as well as track consumers’ browsing behaviour on their sites so they can recommend products they’re more likely to buy. They’re also maintaining the human element of curation by introducing product selections from staffers, top sellers and celebrity partners.

Doing so is proving an effective strategy. ThredUp, which has steadily integrated AI-powered search tools onto its site, saw revenue grow 13 percent to $149 million in the first six months of 2025, after growing only 1 percent in 2024. Gen-Z favourite platform Depop saw its sales jump 35 percent year on year in the second quarter of 2025; parent company Etsy cited improvements in its recommendation algorithm as a contributor to the bump.

“A lot of the companies now are using data and analytics to better predict what the consumer wants to see,” said Jay Sole, a managing director at investment bank UBS. “Every year there’s new insights around how to make the presentation better.”

Overcoming Operational Challenges

Online resale sites have historically looked cluttered because their selling models don’t neatly lend themselves to tight curation. The two most popular are the peer-to-peer model, where people sell directly to buyers, like eBay or Poshmark, or consignment, where sellers give platforms their items and they handle the rest, from determining what to actually list and photographing goods for their websites, like The RealReal or Fashionphile.

New AI tools, however, have allowed both types of sellers to sift through all their data to make inventory decisions that will more likely lead to sales. Fashionphile added a tool that can quickly identify what products are the most in demand — a Louis Vuitton Speedy 35 bag in epi leather, for instance, consistently sells on its site in less than ten days. The tool will then prompt the company’s in-house buyers to offer a seller a higher rate for that item, said Ben Hemminger, the company’s co-founder and chief executive.

“We have 30 different buyers, all with their own [knowledge]. But it’s easier to apply some digital tools and algorithms to help them know what’s trending,” Hemminger said.

Platforms are using AI to condense the steps it takes to sell with them, a strategy that attracts higher quality sellers who have coveted items but little time. In 2021, Rebag introduced Clair AI, where sellers can quickly upload product images and get a quote in minutes, said Elizabeth Layne, Rebag’s chief marketing officer.

Companies are also implementing AI search tools to give customers a comprehensive list of items they’re likely to be interested in. In the last 18 months, ThredUp’s used AI to increase the number of attributes — from brand name and season to colour, fabrication and silhouette — that it can apply to an individual item which helps users find more of what they’re looking for when searching the website, Reinhart said. If a shopper is looking for New York Knicks merchandise, the results will show those items along with athletic wear in the same colour palette as the famous basketball team’s uniform, he added. ThredUp’s conversion rate from new customers grew 18 percent year on year in the second quarter of 2025, and Reinhart cites the tool as a reason why.

“Great curation means you’re able to distill down the handful of things that might be what the customer might be searching for,” Reinhart said. “But great curation is also about helping customers find and reveal things that they might not intuitively even know that they’re looking for.”

Enhancing the Human Touch

While AI is playing a larger role, platforms are also looking beyond technology to refine their product curation, leaning on style advice and inspiration from celebrities, stylists, influencers and even top sellers.

For Grailed, that means pushing out weekly edits of specific designers or trends curated by its staffers. Those edits sometimes generate higher sales than personalised recommendations — which are tailored to individual shoppers based on their browsing and purchase history — especially when they highlight an expensive designer or out-of-the-box trend.

Users “want the social proof of ‘hey, someone at Grailed saw this and thinks it’s worth investing in,’” said Lexi Tollefsen Eberhart, Grailed’s global brand director.

In recent years, eBay’s ramped up the human touch in its curation process by partnering with “tastemakers” like content creator Emma Chamberlain and stylist Brie Welch to create storefronts that feature personal favourites or a roundup of trending items, said Alexis Hoopes, eBay’s vice president and global head of fashion.

“There’s a certain set of consumers who want the celebrity angle or they want a stylist to be helping them; they want something different,” Sole said. “If [a company can] do that really well in a way that other people aren’t, that’s how they can attract a loyal customer base.”

Some companies are enhancing the human element of curation by encouraging consumers to buy from sellers in their area, which can also lessen the impact of tariffs. Since 2022, sneaker resale site StockX has been showing users items popular with shoppers in their locale, based on its sales data in that region, said Drew Haines, StockX’s senior director of marketplace.

“Our customers want to be on the cutting edge of what’s going on,” Haines said. “If you’re purchasing something that’s very popular in your area, you’re getting something that other forward-thinking customers are thinking about.”

However online resale firms approach curation, they’ll need to invest in the right tools to fulfil the modern consumers’ expectations of a refined shopping experience.

“There are tailwinds to the resale industry at a macro level, but you need the right sail to capture the tailwind,” Reinhart said.