Join Puck to listen to this article
Something has shifted in resale shopping, and one solitary statistic tells the story: Nearly half of American shoppers, 47 percent, now consider the resale value of a clothing item before making a purchase, as The RealReal C.E.O. Rati Sahi Levesque was happy to point out on the company’s Q2 earnings call. It’s the latest signal that resale has officially moved from the margins into the mainstream—fueled in part by the addictive, online hunt for the one item at that once-in-a-lifetime price, in an adrenaline-fueled gamification of shopping that traditional retail just can’t match.
