I’ve been watching how fashion brands — from luxury houses to mid-market labels — quietly pivot toward resale for a few years now. It started as an eco-friendly talking point and a way to appease sustainability-conscious shoppers. Now it’s a deliberate strategy to keep millennial customers engaged, extend lifetime value, and capture revenue the primary market has missed. I want to walk through what I’ve learned: why brands are testing resale, the business models they’re trying, what millennials actually want, and the operational trade-offs that can make resale a smart retention tool — or a costly distraction.
Why resale matters to brands targeting millennials
Millennials were the first generation to grow up with both fast fashion and early sustainability messaging. They care about purpose, but they also want good deals and variety. That creates a unique pressure point for brands: how do you persuade a millennial to keep buying your label rather than chasing trends elsewhere — or buying secondhand from a marketplace?
Resale addresses several goals at once:
How brands are structuring resale programs
There isn’t one right way to do this. I see four main models in use, each with different implications for customer experience and margins:
Each approach answers different business questions: do you want to maximize short-term margin, build long-term loyalty, or gain data about your customers’ tastes? Brands often start with partnerships to test demand and then graduate to brand-owned platforms if the economics justify it.
What millennials actually look for in resale
Based on conversations with shoppers and my own experience testing services, millennials care about a handful of clear things:
Examples from the field
Some brands have been more experimental. I watched what Gucci did with a controlled pre-owned program, and how Nike ramped up its SNKRS and resale partnerships around hyped drops. H&M launched a trial take-back initiative in several markets, offering vouchers for gently used items. Burberry and Coach have both experimented with authenticated resale marketplaces and buy-back options.
These pilots help answer practical questions: will resellers flood the market with discounted pieces that erode new sales? Will authentication costs outweigh resale margins? Can a brand’s customer-care team handle disputes about condition and valuation?
Operational headaches brands must solve
Resale sounds neat in theory, but in practice there are significant operational burdens:
Data and the retention case
One of the clearest benefits is data. When a customer sells an item back to you or lists it on your platform, you get visibility into the lifecycle of your products: when they’re traded, which SKUs hold value, and what styles persist. That helps merchandising, forecasting, and targeted marketing.
For millennials, that data can be turned into personalized offers: buy-back alerts when a style they own is trending on resale, or loyalty rewards for selling back in season. That kind of targeted re-engagement beats generic email blasts.
Potential downsides and brand risks
There are real trade-offs. Resale can accelerate cannibalization of new sales if discounts are too deep. It can also complicate exclusivity: limited releases lose their allure if they circulate cheaply right away. From a reputational angle, if a resale program looks like greenwashing — minor take-back pilots while the brand expands production — it can backfire.
Brands need clear metrics to judge success: incremental revenue from resale, net promoter score changes among millennial cohorts, retention rates, and the cost per authenticated item. Without those KPIs, resale risks becoming a PR exercise rather than a retention lever.
Practical advice for brands testing resale
Speaking as someone who watches these experiments closely, here are the practical steps that make the difference:
Where I think this is going
Resale will keep maturing as brands get smarter about the economics and as infrastructure improves. I expect more white-label platforms that let mid-sized brands offer resale without building everything in-house, plus tighter integrations between resale and loyalty programs. Millennials — now well into their prime spending years — will increasingly expect these options as standard. Brands that treat resale as an afterthought will lose ground to those that marry convenience, trust, and rewards into a coherent secondary-market strategy.
If you’re a reader trying to decide whether to buy new or pre-owned, the emerging trend is clear: resale programs that are easy, well-authenticated, and tied to loyalty are worth a look. And if you’re a brand testing resale, measure early, invest in the seller experience, and be honest about the trade-offs. Done right, resale can be less about recycling inventory and more about building deeper, more profitable relationships with millennial customers.
