For a long time, second-hand was treated as something that happened after the “real” purchase. You bought something new, used it for a few years and maybe – if you were organised enough – sold it when you no longer needed it. But Gen Z isn’t simply buying more second-hand. By treating resale as a normal part of the consideration set and factoring resale value into the original purchase, it is changing the economics of ownership itself.
Second-hand is becoming a default option
Gen Z is becoming too economically important for retailers to treat its shopping habits as a niche trend. Global Gen Z spending is expected to reach around $12 trillion by 2030, accounting for ~19% of global spending. By spending more per capita than any prior generation of that age, they have increasingly become a powerful force in consumer markets that have to be accounted for.
At the same time, second-hand has become remarkably normal for them. According to the ThredUp 2025 Resale Report, 62% of Gen Z shopped second-hand in 2025, while 68% of Gen Z and Millennials buy second-hand. With second-hand shopping as a staple in their shopping routine, these two generations are expected to account for 71% of all resale market growth by 2030.
That changes the competitive landscape for retailers. If someone wants a pair of trainers, a handbag or a jacket, the choice is no longer simply Brand A versus Brand B. It might be new versus second-hand. Or your new product versus your own product from six months ago. For brands, that is a very different kind of competition.
Your biggest competitor might be your own product
Traditionally, retailers think about competition horizontally. Nike competes with Adidas. Zara competes with H&M. Samsung with Apple. But once second-hand becomes a normal part of the consideration, competition starts happening vertically too.
A customer considering a new €300 jacket might also find the same jacket from last season for €160, or a barely worn version of the current collection for even less. And for the customer, this won’t be considered a downgrade, it’s simply different ways of solving the same need. A well-made item can re-enter the market again and again, creating value for future owners but also competing with the brand’s newest assortment. For retailers, this can easily mean that resale of your own brand will cannibalise your sales. And this is where the economics of resale start to affect the original purchase itself.
They aren’t price-sensitive. They’re value-literate.
One of the most interesting shifts is happening before the purchase even takes place. 67% of Gen Z consider an item’s resale value before buying it. That sounds like a small behavioural detail, but economically it is a pretty fundamental change. If you expect to resell something later, the sticker price is no longer necessarily the number that determines whether something feels expensive. A consumer might start thinking more like:
purchase price – future resale value = effective cost of ownership
A €400 product that can later be resold for €250 can, in that sense, look very different from a €150 product with almost no resale value. This is why describing younger shoppers as simply “price-sensitive” doesn’t represent their reality. The same shopper might be buying a 400 € bag, while buying their festival outfit from Temu. They’re both extremely willing to spend, while remaining conscious of value.
In our DMEXCO presentation in Cologne 2026, we described this as buying with an exit strategy: resale is no longer only what happens after someone gets tired of a product. It can influence whether that person buys the product in the first place.
Resale fits Gen Z’s new way of discovery
Gen Z is not only more open to buying second-hand; it is also less attached to the traditional idea of starting a shopping journey with a specific retailer. Discovery can begin on TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest, with a creator, on a marketplace or increasingly through an AI assistant. By the time someone arrives on a retailer’s website, the product idea – and sometimes even the shortlist – may already have been formed somewhere else.
That behaviour makes resale particularly interesting. Once a shopper is comfortable moving between platforms and comparing products regardless of where they are sold, the distinction between new from this retailer and second-hand somewhere else becomes much less important. The consideration set suddenly becomes much larger: not just the products currently stocked by a handful of retailers, but potentially millions of individual items spread across dozens of resale platforms.
The problem is that this much larger universe is also far harder to navigate. Second-hand inventory is fragmented, listings are inconsistent and the same or similar product can be described in completely different ways. A shopper might know the look they want without knowing the brand, model name or exact keywords that would surface it. This is where visual and conversational search help bridge the gap between how people naturally express what they want and how resale inventory is actually structured.
You can already see that behaviour emerging. According to ThredUp data, 51% of Gen Z use AI in resale for things such as visual search, price comparison and fit, while 63% are comfortable with agentic or automated buying experiences.
At faircado, this is a problem we encounter every day. We aggregate and normalise millions of second-hand listings across dozens of resale marketplaces, where product information, imagery and availability can vary enormously from one listing to the next. By focusing on image search and integrating Pinterest boards, we made that inventory searchable, understanding products beyond the keywords. That is also why resale gives us an early view of where retail generally is heading. Gen Z customers are pushing for visual and conversational discovery, while at the same time being the ones to push resale into the mainstream.
So what does this mean for brands?
Brands by now know that they have to take resale seriously. From retailers building their own resale platforms to luxury groups like Kering exploring how its brands can participate in the secondary market. The response is clear: if customers are buying second-hand, companies want to remain part of that relationship.
But launching a resale programme is arguably the easier part. Resale also exposes much bigger questions about how a company operates in the first place. If products are expected to have a second or third life, durability matters differently. So do repairability, materials, product information and the ability to identify and authenticate an item years after its original sale. If resale value starts influencing what consumers buy new, even pricing and brand equity begin to look slightly different.
This is where resale becomes more than an additional sales channel or sustainability initiative. Taken seriously, circularity asks companies to think beyond maximising the value of the first transaction and towards maximising the value of a product across its lifetime. That can sit uncomfortably alongside a retail model still largely built around selling more units, shortening replacement cycles and encouraging the next purchase.
The real question, then, is not whether brands will participate in resale – many already are. It is how far they are willing to let the logic of resale influence the rest of the business. Will durability, residual value and multiple ownership become meaningful considerations when products are designed and commercial decisions are made? Or will resale remain a circular layer added onto an otherwise linear model?
About the author
Evoléna de Wilde d’Estmael is Co-founder & CEO of Faircado, a resale discovery platform that aggregates and normalises millions of second-hand listings across European marketplaces. She writes about resale, Gen Z consumer behaviour and the future of ecommerce. This article expands on a post Evi originally shared on her LinkedIn.
