The Economics Of... Second-Hand Shopping
The growing popularity of second-hand shopping, or thrifting, is spearheaded by young consumers as a method of obtaining vintage or modern clothing and items responsibly. The main benefits supporting this trend are based primarily in cost savings and limiting the negative environmental impact of “fast fashion.” There are three main ways of selling and buying second-hand items: temporary venues such as garage sales, established brick-and-mortar businesses, and online facilitators of business or individual reselling.
The American resale market emerged from flea markets and charity fairs in the mid-1900s as residential “rummage sales” increased in popularity. “In 1950s and 1960s America, increased affluence led many consumers to accumulate household goods in excess; concurrently, increased home-ownership created the venue from which to sell these goods” (Encylopedia.com). As these sales became increasingly operated from garages, there was a widespread linguistic shift to the name “garage sales,” otherwise “known as yard sales in the Midwest, porch or ‘gimme’ sales in the South, [or] tag sales in the East.”
Two of the most established second-hand retailers are Goodwill and The Salvation Army’s Family Stores, both of which rely on donations to stock their brick-and-mortar locations; their profits are used to fund adult rehabilitation, job training, and a variety of other humanitarian services. According to the Goodwill 2018 Annual Report, “these organizations collectively diverted nearly 4 billion pounds of clothing and textiles by recovering the value in people’s unwanted material goods.” The Goodwill Your Impact calculator can estimate the personal tax savings, community career support, and global environmental benefits that your donation would provide (Goodwill). Their online auction site, shopgoodwill.com, provides optimized consumer pricing and serves as the nonprofit’s answer to increasingly popular online second-hand facilitators. The Salvation Army’s programming is much broader than its retail services with a focus on community groups. Furthermore, they consider themselves “an international movement [and] an evangelical part of the universal Christian Church” (The Salvation Army). According to their 2019 Annual Report, The Salvation Army provided a “total combined relief services to nearly 800,000 people” and “distribut[ed] of more than 200,000 prepared meals to migrant families.”
The original individual-based online resale site, eBay was founded as The AuctionWeb in 1995 and was the first online auction site to allow person-to-person transactions. Today, their circular commerce goals seek to create positive economic impact and avoid carbon emissions through individual sales of pre-owned electronics and apparel on their site. In 2019, they “created an additional $820 million in positive economic impact, bringing the cumulative total to $2.9 billion from 2016[, and were on track to avoid] an additional 625,000 metric tons of carbon emissions, resulting in 2.4 million metric tons avoided since 2016” (ebayinc.com).
Most popular second-hand sites or mobile apps are focused specifically on clothing and fashion accessories, such as Thredup, Poshmark, or Depop. The “world’s largest resale marketplace,” ThredUp is a private business that markets and sells items much like a traditional retailer. In partnership with TreadUp, “Walmart is diving into the $32 billion resale market through a partnership with the second-hand-sales site,” according to Business Insider. Poshmark and Depop, contrastingly, are online resale retail apps reliant entirely on individual price-setting and shipping wherein the platform makes a small amount of profit for each transaction while providing insurance and support for both individual parties involved. These types of apps are making a huge cultural impact on the adult consumers, especially those of generation Z, as the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce (RSA) found that “28% of people are recycling or reusing more clothes than normal and 35% of women intend to buy fewer clothes in the future,” according to The Guardian. They claim that “Depop – a peer-to-peer shopping app that allows shoppers to buy secondhand items from each other – has seen a 90% increase in traffic since 1 April [2020]” in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Business Insider claims that “[o]verall, the resale market is expected to expand from $32 billion this year to $51 billion by 2023, according to research from ThredUp and GlobalData Retail.” As this increases the economic opportunity for large corporations such as Walmart, the environmental impact will be substantially important to addressing global climate change. Reduced production of garments and household items in addition to the responsible repurposing are tackling carbon emissions and pollution simultaneously through second-hand shopping. As a new generation promotes trending of social responsibility, the personal decision to shop sustainably will become easier to make for consumers in an evolving global market.
"“[Goodwill] organizations collectively diverted nearly 4 billion pounds of clothing and textiles by recovering the value in people’s unwanted material goods.” " -- Goodwill’s 2018 Annual Report
Works Cited
“2018 Goodwill Industries International Annual Report.” Goodwill, 2018, www.goodwill.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/2018-Annual-Report_web.pdf.
“2019 Annual Report.” Salvation Army Annual Report, 2019, salvationarmyannualreport.org/.
“Donate.” Goodwill Industries International, www.goodwill.org/donate/.
“EBay.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 26 May 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay.
Elan, Priya. “Shopping Habits of Generation Z Could Spell the End of Fast Fashion.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 25 May 2020, www.theguardian.com/fashion/2020/may/25/shopping-habits-of-generation-z-could-spell-end-of-fast-fashion.
“Garage and Yard Sales.” Encyclopedia of Recreation and Leisure in America, Encyclopedia.com, 23 May 2020, www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/garage-and-yard-sales.
“Goals & Progress.” EBay Inc., www.ebayinc.com/impact/goals-progress/.
Peterson, Hayley. “Walmart Is Now Selling Used Goods from Nike, Coach, Michael Kors and More as It Dives into the $32 Billion Resale Market.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 27 May 2020, www.businessinsider.com/walmart-enters-the-booming-resale-market-with-thredup-2020-5.
“Ways We Help.” The Salvation Army USA, salvationarmyusa.org/usn/ways-we-help.