A World Tour of Secondhand Culture: How Resale Became Global

Secondhand isn't one trend spreading around the world. It's a practice that the world invented over and over again.

Some see it as philosophy. Others as charity, necessity, opportunity, or simply the thrill of finding something unexpected. The names change and the traditions differ, but the idea underneath is remarkably consistent.

Products don't stop having value after their first owner.

Looking across these different traditions reveals a pattern that says as much about the future of retail as it does about its past.

Seven Places, Seven Reasons to Resell

Japan: Secondhand as Philosophy

There is a word for the feeling of letting something useful go to waste: mottainai. It's an old idea, much older than the modern environmental movement, and it still shapes the way Japan shops today. What's remarkable isn't just the mindset but the infrastructure built around it. Chains like Bookoff, Komehyo, and 2nd Street turned secondhand into a graded, warrantied, department-store experience, while flea-market apps made person-to-person selling the country's largest resale channel. Now, this model is a major export. With these chains rapidly expanding into new international markets, Japan is betting that its orderly, highly trusted version of secondhand translates perfectly across borders.

UK: Secondhand as Tradition

The earliest known charity shop opened in 1899, run by the Wolverhampton Society for the Blind. During the Second World War, the Red Cross operated more than 200 gift shops, and Oxfam opened its first shop on Broad Street in Oxford in 1947. Today the UK has more than 10,000 charity shops, accounting for over 3% of all retail units in the country. They're stocked almost entirely by donations and largely run by volunteers. Buying secondhand there isn't an underground subculture. It's a high-street institution with its own trade association, and it taught three generations of British shoppers that a used item is a perfectly respectable thing to carry home.

Philippines: Secondhand as Ingenuity

Ukay-ukay comes from hukay, meaning "to dig up." The practice began in Baguio, in northern Luzon. There, it is also called wagwagan, a name inspired by the motion of shaking dust off clothes. The trade started with post-war relief clothing, grew quickly during the 1980s, and many credit Filipino overseas workers for helping it spread by sending secondhand clothes back home. But the Philippine story is not just about where used clothing came from. It is about how people turned limited resources into opportunity through creativity and adaptation. Over time, what began as a necessity became a tradition. Today, for many young Filipinos, spending an afternoon digging through the racks is part of the experience. The thrill is in the hunt, and finding something special is the reward.

East Africa: Secondhand as Economy

Imported secondhand clothing has its own name across the region: mitumba in Kenya, okrika in Nigeria, and salaula in Zambia. The scale is easy to underestimate. Kenya alone imported more than $200 million worth of used clothing in 2021. Trade groups estimate that millions of East Africans earn a living from the sector, most of them women. In Kampala, Uganda, the Owino Market alone supports an estimated 100,000 livelihoods. Here, secondhand clothing is more than a shopping choice. It is a vital economy, supported by sorters, graders, tailors, transporters, and thousands of small traders.

America: Secondhand as Hobby

The United States shares Britain's charity-shop roots, but what grew from them feels uniquely American: garage sales, estate sales, and thrift shopping as weekend entertainment. Ask American shoppers why they buy secondhand and the answers usually come back in the same order: better deals, the thrill of the hunt, and access to brands they otherwise couldn't afford. A record 58% of US consumers bought secondhand apparel in 2024, while 48% of younger shoppers now check secondhand before buying new. The hobby has professionalized along with demand. eBay turned the neighborhood garage sale into a global auction in 1995, and newer resale platforms added authentication and pricing data. Today the US resale market is growing roughly four times faster than the broader apparel market and is projected to reach $78.8 billion by 2030.

China: Secondhand as Value

China largely skipped the charity-shop tradition and went straight to digital marketplaces. Alibaba's Xianyu, with more than 600 million registered users, doesn't market "used goods." It markets "idle items." The distinction matters. Unused purchases aren't framed as something to feel guilty about. They're simply value waiting to be unlocked. That idea resonated with a generation that sees dormant possessions as assets rather than clutter.

The numbers reflect that shift. China's resale market grew at a 33% compound annual rate between 2020 and 2025, compared with 7% in Europe and 12% in Japan. At the same time, the stigma around buying used continues to fade. Mintel found that 21% of Chinese consumers were open to buying secondhand luxury in 2024, up from 18% in 2019. Xianyu has even begun opening physical stores in cities including Hangzhou, Chengdu, and Nanjing. It's an interesting reversal. One of the world's newest resale cultures is opening brick-and-mortar stores just as some of the oldest resale markets have moved online.

Europe: Secondhand as Infrastructure

Vinted, founded in Lithuania, facilitated €10.8 billion in transactions in 2025, up 47% from the previous year. Its strategy isn't built on nostalgia. It focuses on making resale cheap, reliable, and convenient, even operating its own parcel network. At the same time, France's anti-waste law bans companies from destroying many unsold goods and requires repairability scores for electronics. Together, platforms that make resale effortless and policies that make waste more expensive are steadily turning secondhand from an alternative into the default.

Different reasons, one direction

Whatever brought people into secondhand, the numbers now tell the same story. The projections from ThredUp and GlobalData and BCG all point in one direction:

Those two generations grew up with marketplace apps, embraced the thrill of the hunt, and largely moved beyond the stigma that shaped previous generations.

The motivations matter. Think back to the American shoppers: they buy secondhand for better prices and the excitement of finding something unexpected. Not out of obligation. People buy because the item is beautiful and the price makes sense.

At the top of the market, something stronger is happening. The most sought-after products are not just holding their value; some are actually appreciating. The RealReal reports that 47% of consumers now consider an item's resale value before buying it new. Once shoppers start viewing a price tag as a two-way equation, what they pay today and what they may recover later, resale value stops being a bonus and becomes part of the purchase decision.

The one thing every secondhand culture has in common

Read the seven stories again and notice who is missing.

In Tokyo, Oxford, Manila, Nairobi, Hangzhou, Vilnius, and thousands of American thrift stores, products change hands for years, sometimes decades, without the companies that made them ever being involved. The brand earns no revenue, receives no customer data, and has no influence over how the product is priced, authenticated, or presented. Why that absence matters deserves its own discussion. The important point is that it is universal.

Every secondhand culture, regardless of how it developed, grew around a system where brands had no role.

That is finally beginning to change.

Eileen Fisher has been buying back and reselling its own garments since 2009. Patagonia's Worn Wear program has grown into a profitable business of its own. Rolex now certifies pre-owned watches through authorized retailers. Around them, a growing number of companies, including Levi's, Lululemon, IKEA, Timberland, and Allbirds, have launched their own resale programs. The infrastructure helping companies participate in resale has become an industry in itself.

Consumers, unsurprisingly, are already there. Nearly half (47%) say they are more likely to make a first purchase from a brand that offers trade-in credit, a figure that rose 25 percentage points in a single year. In BCG's survey, 66% of resale buyers said secondhand introduced them to a brand they had not purchased from before. Each of those purchases represents customer acquisition that did not require traditional marketing spend, happening in a market where many companies are still absent.