Secondhand clothing is on track to outpace new-clothing sales growth by a 2-to-1 ratio over the next five years, according to ThredUp’s own 14th Annual Resale Report, released through the company’s investor relations newsroom. It’s the clearest signal yet that thrifting has stopped being a side hustle for bargain hunters and started eating into the business model of fast fashion itself.

The numbers ThredUp is putting on the table

The global secondhand apparel market is projected to hit $393 billion by 2030, with the U.S. slice alone reaching $78.8 billion, per ThredUp’s report. That growth isn’t happening in a vacuum — resale is now expanding roughly twice as fast as the rest of the apparel industry combined, and in the U.S. specifically, the secondhand market grew nearly four times faster than broader retail clothing in 2025 alone. ThredUp CEO James Reinhart put it plainly in the company’s own release: “In 2025, the U.S. secondhand market grew nearly 4X faster than broader retail clothing,” and he framed the next phase as a battle over “who can best unlock supply and use AI to connect inventory with the next generation of shoppers.”

Independent reporting backs up the scale of the shift. Retail Brew’s breakdown of the report notes the U.S. secondhand clothing market hit $30 billion in 2025, growing 13% year over year compared to just 3.6% growth for new apparel — a gap wide enough that ThredUp’s own leadership frames the shift as structural rather than a passing cycle, not something retailers can wait out.

Why resale is suddenly outrunning retail

Part of the answer is generational. ThredUp’s data attributes 71% of the market’s growth through 2030 to Gen Z and millennial shoppers, and the behavior isn’t limited to actual purchases — Retail Brew’s coverage notes 46% of all consumers now browse resale before buying something new, a figure that jumps to 58% among Gen Z shoppers specifically. Secondhand has quietly become step one in the shopping process rather than a fallback.

The other driver is technology. ThredUp’s report leans heavily on AI-assisted pricing, authenticity checks and search as the infrastructure making resale fast and reliable enough to compete with a same-day Amazon order — the report’s own subtitle calls this “AI-Driven Discovery.” Nearly half of shoppers now find secondhand pieces through social platforms rather than a traditional search bar, according to the report, which changes how retailers have to think about merchandising a used $12 sweater against a new one.

What this means beyond the thrift store

ThredUp’s own numbers put resale at roughly 10% of total apparel spend already — no longer a rounding error next to fast fashion, and closing in fast. Sixty percent of shoppers say they now factor in resale value when they buy something new in the first place, a habit that barely registered a decade ago when “vintage” mostly meant a rack in the back of a strip-mall consignment shop.

That’s the real headline buried under the percentages: resale isn’t winning because shoppers are broke. It’s winning because an entire generation now treats a garment’s resale value as part of the original purchase decision, and the company with the most detailed data on that shift just told its own investors the trend line points at new clothing’s market share, not around it.