Long playing the role of a "discovery entry point and transaction exit," Xiaohongshu has finally decided to keep the last link of secondhand transactions on its own platform. The platform recently quietly launched a "personal selling" feature on its homepage, and as of now there are about 20,000 idle items on the site. Previously, the typical user path was: browse notes on Xiaohongshu, inquire about the price, negotiate a deal, then jump to Xianyu to complete payment.

This is not a new demand within the community. Notes around "secondhand idle items" and "selling items to recoup cash" have long existed in large numbers, and vertical transactions such as anime merchandise, luxury goods, and niche apparel have a strong atmosphere. In addition to physical goods, the platform has also naturally grown a service-based transaction ecosystem: individual skill service providers such as photographers and retouchers showcase portfolios, accumulate reviews, and complete transactions through the "services" page. The page shows that one photographer has completed transactions with 1,556 people and one retoucher with 609 people, with no disputes in the past six months. This type of skill transaction is precisely an area that traditional secondhand platforms have rarely touched.

At the product level, Xiaohongshu offers two paths: "sell idle items" (post a note to start selling quickly) and "run a side hustle" (continuous operation with more complete features), covering categories such as idle home goods, celebrity merchandise, and secondhand digital products. Users can directly attach links to notes or send product cards via private chat. Its transaction logic differs from Xianyu's "people looking for goods": Xianyu is where users search for products with clear needs, while Xiaohongshu is where content stimulates demand and users place an order along the way. The distance from content to transaction is shorter, and trust has already been established in the process of reading notes. The note itself serves as a product detail page, and the trust carrier formed by real photos and usage experience is more intuitive than a credit score. This mechanism is especially well suited to service-based transactions that rely heavily on upfront trust.

External pressure is also emerging. In the first half of 2026, Xianyu raised the service fee rate for Yuxiaopu sellers from 0.6% to 1.6% and removed the 60 yuan cap per transaction—a 20,000 yuan luxury bag that previously cost a maximum of 60 yuan now requires a payment of 320 yuan. Some Yuxiaopu sellers have already chosen to close their store benefits and return to being ordinary sellers. Xiaohongshu's 0.6% fee rate has thus become a low-cost migration option.

Controversy also exists. Whether a community that started with a "beautiful life" atmosphere can accommodate haggling and dispute wrangling in secondhand transactions is the market's biggest question. Xianyu's growth relied both on Alibaba's e-commerce infrastructure and on its "street market atmosphere," but it has also brought trust crises and counterfeit goods problems. On Black Cat Complaints, there are more than 200,000 complaints related to the term "Xianyu." If Xiaohongshu opens C2C transactions, an influx of professional sellers may dilute the original community atmosphere, and poor dispute handling will also erode discovery trust. In addition, incomplete transaction infrastructure and after-sales arbitration systems, community attributes limiting professional merchant entry, and single-category coverage are all realistic constraints on its path to scale.

For the old clothing and resale industry, this means there is another community-style player in the resale traffic entry point: it holds the shortest "content-to-transaction" link, but whether it can find a balance between trust and scale remains to be seen.

Source: Stealing Xianyu's turf? Xiaohongshu quietly lays out in the secondhand trading market, new ways to play in the secondhand business attract attention · Originally published on 2026-09-28