Most Americans have done it at some point: stuffed a bag with old clothes, driven to the donation bin, and forgotten about it before pulling out of the parking lot.
That ordinary errand turns out to be the quiet engine behind one of the fastest-growing corners of the entire U.S. retail economy.
And a report just released from one of the country’s biggest resale platforms put a figure on it that is hard to ignore.
The pile in the back of the closet that most people never think twice about
Walk into any American home and the math is the same: more clothes come in than go out.
The average closet holds garments that haven’t been worn in years, tags still on some of them, shoved behind the things people actually reach for.
For most of the country’s retail history, that pile was essentially dead money, items too worn for a gift, too good for the trash, and too much hassle to sell.
That calculation is changing fast.
Why shoppers are starting their search somewhere they never used to look first
A shift in shopping behavior has been building quietly for several years, but the numbers from 2025 make it impossible to dismiss.
About 60% of American consumers purchased secondhand in 2025, according to ThredUp’s survey of approximately 3,300 adults.
That is not a niche habit. That is most of the country.
Before buying new, 46% of consumers now say that if they can find an item secondhand they won’t buy it new; among younger shoppers, that figure rises to more than half.
For a lot of younger shoppers, the thrift aisle, or its digital equivalent, has become the first stop, not the fallback.
Resale value has also become a key purchasing factor when buying new apparel, with year-over-year gains in the share of consumers who say they think about future resale before they buy.
Buying something new now comes with a question attached: what will this be worth when I want to sell it?
The growth rate that left the rest of retail standing still
Speed matters here, because the secondhand clothing market is not just large, it is accelerating in a way that most other retail categories are not.
The secondhand clothing market in the U.S. is taking measurable share from new retail, growing nearly four times faster than the broader retail clothing market in 2025.
That four-to-one pace gap is the kind of divergence that reshapes an industry.
Younger shoppers are at the center of it: Gen Z and millennials are expected to drive more than 70% of the market’s growth through 2030.
It is worth noting that cost pressure is driving new converts into the market. With more than four in five Americans tracking their spending more closely, the appeal of paying roughly 60% to 75% less for the same item is not a hard sell.
With tariffs and rising prices reshaping household budgets, an increasing share of consumers say economic pressure is nudging them further toward secondhand options.
The $55.5 billion number, and the even bigger one hiding behind it
Here is the figure that anchors everything: with sales reaching $55.5 billion in 2025, the U.S. secondhand apparel market now accounts for 12% of the $458 billion that Americans spent on clothing, footwear and accessories last year, according to ThredUp’s 14th annual Resale Report and GlobalData’s industry analysis.
Twelve cents of every clothing dollar now goes to used goods. That is not a rounding error.
But the number that surprised even industry analysts is not the $55.5 billion. It is the gap between what the market is and what it could be.
Supply is now the binding constraint: with demand growing rapidly, the industry is racing to find enough stock, and unlocking an additional $23.3 billion in U.S. market value depends on making the act of selling as easy as clicking “buy.”
That $23.3 billion is sitting in closets right now, in the back, behind the things people actually wear, waiting on a seller who hasn’t gotten around to listing it.
The full findings are published by ThredUp’s investor relations newsroom, with market modeling by GlobalData.
Growing nearly 14% last year, secondhand retail is expanding roughly four times faster than the primary fashion market and is expected to reach $78.8 billion by 2030.
Why the person who never considered selling old clothes is now the person the whole market is counting on
The resale industry’s next phase does not hinge on convincing more people to buy used, that battle is largely won.
It hinges on making selling effortless.
In the U.S., growth is increasingly driven not just by new participants but by share shifts between resale and new, and three forces are reshaping the market: technology reducing friction, consumers embedding resale into their financial lives, and brands playing a growing role.
Marketplace apps are no longer the only destination; nearly 50% of shoppers now discover their next secondhand find through social media, creators, and influencer feeds rather than traditional search.
For shoppers already watching every dollar, and with nearly half of Americans saying leisure spending feels squeezed, a T-shirt that cost $40 new and sells for $15 used is real money recovered, not just clutter cleared.
The pile in the back of the closet, it turns out, has a very specific price tag on it. The market just needed enough people to finally go dig it out.
