Secondhand clothing is shifting from a money-saving tactic to a fashion statement, and the companies turning it into a high-tech business are concentrated in California's San Francisco Bay Area. According to McKinsey's State of Fashion report, the global secondhand apparel market has grown 20% over the past five years, now exceeding $240 billion, growing at roughly four times the rate of traditional retail, or about 12% annually.

From San Francisco to Oakland, platforms like RealReal, Poshmark, and ThredUp have used Silicon Valley-style innovation to overhaul the listing, search, and delivery steps of secondhand transactions, moving the once "digging through racks" experience online. RealReal founder Rati Sahi Levesque describes resale practice as very "Californian": taking an existing behavior and using technology to completely transform its scale and possibilities. Today, features like livestream shopping and AI search keep rolling out, making "thrifting" faster and more fun.

Changes on the consumer side are equally clear. USC student Julia Ho searched multiple platforms for months for a 1990s Gucci watch, finally buying it on eBay at her ideal price; celebrities like Phoenix and Jennifer Aniston have also worn secondhand or redesigned clothing on red carpets, and at this month's Emmys, Odessa A'zion's 1996 Jean Paul Gaultier suit landed on best-dressed lists. Los Angeles-based Reformation, positioned around secondhand and regenerated apparel, became a billion-dollar company after its IPO last month.

The industry has also gone through its own "adolescence." ThredUp CEO James Reinhart recalls that when he founded the company in 2009, resale still meant a pile of clothes that needed to be "persuaded" into being worn. In 2011, C2C-focused Poshmark and luxury authentication-focused RealReal emerged in succession. In 2021, several companies went public one after another, with South Korea's Naver acquiring Poshmark two years later for $1.2 billion; in July of this year, eBay also bought London-based secondhand fashion platform Depop for $1.2 billion.

Still, the secondary market is not easy. RealReal's stock has fallen more than 35% this year, while ThredUp has dropped over 60% in the same period, with the latter's revenue outlook last month disappointing investors. McKinsey senior partner Anita Balchandani points out that resale is still in a "lanky teenager" stage, with a difficult economic model, complex operations, and low returns. To address this, platforms are betting on AI to cut costs: ThredUp uses AI to sort millions of garments in its warehouses, RealReal launched MyCloset this year to track wardrobe value, and Poshmark has partnered with Venice-based AI shopping assistant platform Silvr, uploading more than 100 million product listings for users to search and match outfits.

These companies are betting that as the "resale native generation" grows up, secondhand fashion will capture a larger share of their wallets. As Reinhart puts it, this generation doesn't know any other world—in their minds, buying and selling secondhand is simply normal.

Source: How California tech turned thrifted clothes into fashion's hottest status symbol · Originally published 2026-09-19