Report: Shoppers Continue Buying Secondhand Items

In a research note released Tuesday by Wells Fargo (San Francisco), and reported by Retail Dive, the financial firm said a small segment they call “miscellaneous store retailers,” has seen a 8.5 percent year-on-year increase over the past 10 months. This equates to $147.5 billion – and according to Wells Fargo, it could be coming directly from secondhand goods sales.

“We suspect at least some of the increased traffic in this category is attributable to households seeking to blunt the impact of tariffs by buying used merchandise. Big retailers like Patagonia and even luxury brands have launched resale programs,” the note read. (Indeed, VMSD has reported on Coach’s resale programs as well as Patagonia and REI in recent years.)

This past October, ThredUp (Oakland, Calif.) and GlobalData (U.K.) reported that shoppers this year had decided to allot at least 40 percent of their holiday spending budgets toward the purchase of secondhand items.