23 May 23
For one month, I set out to buy everything I needed used and online. A wooden train set for my son? EBay. Salad tongs? Mercari. Fishing rod? Goodwill. Running shoes? Amazon Warehouse. Replacing a torn wet-suit glove? I’m still looking for that one.
Across the internet, I discovered a bustling secondary market ready to fulfill nearly all my shopping needs with something someone else had once owned. These were not tattered castoffs or bargain-bin specials. The online “recommerce” ecosystem was full of premium, quality goods at a price and, at times, convenience, rivaling Amazon’s shopping cart.
A growing number of shoppers like me are discovering the possibilities, and savings, of buying old stuff. In the past year, roughly half of Americans have bought used clothing, according to GlobalData, a market research firm, a figure expected to rise. Big brands from H&M to Patagonia are collecting and reselling their used and returned goods.
This massive shift, powered by changing attitudes and advances in computer vision and artificial intelligence, is redirecting billions of dollars worth of used goods back into the marketplace. In the process, “used” has shed much of its stigma.
We’re headed for a world where buying used may become nearly as easy as buying new for many goods, and maybe even preferred. If we do it right, we can slash the monumental environmental impact of all the stuff we buy.
Grab a cart.
The rise of stuff
Americans have never bought so many new things. U.S. retailers churn out a record $5 trillion in new goods each year, according to the National Retail Federation. At the same time, the surge in e-commerce is flooding the market with unsold inventory, returns and secondhand items. Whereas only about 8 percent of goods bought in a store are returned, more than 20 percent of items bought online are sent back. For clothing, that number can soar as high as 40 percent.
That has left a mountain of stuff that needs to go somewhere. Until recently, that mostly meant donation bins, landfills and thrift stores. But changing attitudes mean more people, especially members of Gen Z, are embracing used items, and technology is radically reducing the processing costs.
Craigslist and eBay were once the biggest games in town. Today, dozens of companies are competing to resell goods online targeting products including clothing, furniture and electronics. Shoppers attracted to lower prices, unique finds and sustainability have been happy to splurge.
In 2021, they spent about $178 billion on returned and reused items, according to recommerce firm thredUP and GlobalData. Apparel has seen resale growth double in the past five years as big brands embrace the trend.
“This is the natural reaction to the crazy growth in e-commerce,” says Zac Rogers, a supply chain researcher at Colorado State University, noting that living an “all-recommerce life” has gotten easier.
How it works
A complex supply chain called reverse logistics powered by computer vision and AI has emerged to handle the tsunami of used goods.
Take Goodwill. Before now, it sorted through billions of pounds of used goods by hand, deciding what to sell, toss or ship overseas. Only about half of the load deemed “suitable for retail” made it onto shelves, according to the company. Less than 1 percent of Goodwill donations were listed online via eBay or its own sites.
Machines are now doing more of the work. Several Goodwill sites use technology from the start-up Hammoq to deploy cameras and AI that automate the sorting and listing of secondhand goods. In places like West Palm Beach and Miami, workers feed clothing into machines that photograph it, set the price and post it online. Hammoq says it can process a piece of clothing every seven seconds.
If scaled up, that’s potentially transformative. Using technology like this, Goodwill has launched a new site, Goodwill Finds, to process and sell thousands of items from across the country, emulating the experience of shopping at Amazon. The site has sold nearly 200,000 items since launching in October, and it plans to reach nearly 1 million by the end of this year. “I’d say in most categories, 99 percent of what’s available out there new, you can find something comparable used now,” said Matt Kaness, a former e-commerce executive at Walmart now running Goodwill Finds.
Hammoq CEO and co-founder Sid Lunawat foresees the technology making Goodwill and other resellers efficient enough to profitably sell items for as little as $1. Eventually, a version of it may make its way into your phone. An app will photograph an object, recognize it, price it, post it online and dispatch someone to pick it up once it has sold.
“If you could just take a photo of a product, and it would sell itself, that’s what we want to do,” says Lunawat, even if he admits that big advances in processing and shipping costs must happen to make that a reality.
How you buy used now
For my used-goods shopping spree, I started where most internet users do: Google. By using the “used items” tab on Google Shopping, you can search multiple sites simultaneously. Google scans many of the largest retailer sites including eBay, Etsy, Mercari, Poshmark and Amazon, as well as physical chains like Play It Again Sports. It won’t find every option online, but it’s the easiest way to start.
Here’s what you need to know as you navigate the online marketplace for used goods:
Many used items are virtually new
Alongside thousands of individuals hawking used items, brands from Adidas to Nike are using the sites as a storefront to resell returned items. These may only have been tried on, and still have their tags. That’s especially true on massive sites like eBay, Mercari and Etsy. These primarily peer-to-peer marketplaces offer the widest selection. EBay alone has more than 1 billion listings — with deep inventories of even the most obscure items.
Try these places if you want more vetting.
Big centralized marketplaces such as Goodwill, Amazon Warehouse and Amazon Renewed are clearinghouses for used, returned and refurbished items. Amazon, in particular, has set up branded “pre-owned” stores. The selection is not as vast, but the consistency and quality is often higher since items are vetted and managed by retailers.
Search in your category, especially clothes
New companies are specializing in furniture, electronics, baby gear and, above all, clothing. If you’re looking for something a cut above the rest, these might be your best bet. Resellers like Poshmark, Depop (now owned by Etsy) and thredUP curate vast virtual inventories at every price point, including storefronts by the brands themselves. Platforms like thredUP host more than 100 resale shops managed by brands from mall-rat favorite Hot Topic to H&M, while other retailers are opening their own resale outlets like REI and Patagonia Worn Wear.
Buy from your neighbors.
Garage sales have gone online thanks to companies like OfferUp, Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist and Nextdoor. Buy Nothing groups let you give, and receive, free of charge. Because there’s no shipping and less competition, these are often the best deals, even if you have to wait awhile. One trick: Search for what you want, bookmark it in your browser and check back — I usually find what I want within a few days, often at a deep discount.
Again, lines are blurring. As shipping options, new items and financing have crept onto the platforms, they’re becoming more like their national counterparts.
Is the used online market ready for prime time?
So where did the online resale experience fall short for me? Quality varied. My preferred styles weren’t always available. Returns and shipping weren’t as seamless as Amazon. For low-cost items, it was sometimes cheaper to buy new than pay to ship even discounted used items.
But overall, I found buying new offered fewer advantages over buying used in many categories.
As a result of my one-month experiment, my shopping habits have started to change. Instead of buying new as the default, I’m searching first for used. If I do buy new, I often buy a higher-quality item since I know I’ll either keep it for as long as possible or sell it when I’m done.
Sandra Goldmark of Columbia University’s Climate School is already fully living in this resale world. The author of the book “Fixation: How to Have Stuff without Breaking the Planet,” says almost everything she buys was once owned by someone else (shoes, underwear and socks are the exceptions).
In the not-too-distant future, she thinks, we should be able to walk into a Target, Walmart or a local small business to see a comparable display of new and used stuff, as well as a good repair service. “Why are we ever buying anything new in this day and age?” she says. “It’s so easy now, especially with this incredible glut of new goods coming into the pipeline, just to turn up the volume on used goods and turn down the volume on new.”
Goldmark says ownership should be something less permanent. We can have fewer, better things in our lives. Once they’re no longer needed, we let them go to the next owner. Consumption becomes something circular.
Riffing off author Michael Pollan’s famous formulation for food (Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.), she has redefined her own relationship with things: “Have good stuff (not too much), mostly reclaimed.”
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