“In 2020, Etsy reported having doubled its revenue in comparison to the prior fiscal year, yielding 1.7 billion in revenue,” said Erynn A. Grifford from blog.vendoo.co. She also mentioned that “in the most recent reports, eBay’s annual net revenue exceeds 10 billion dollars, a significant rise in revenue in comparison with prior years.”

Buying and reselling items has now become one of the most popular ways to shop both online and in-person. However, it seems as if this form of shopping has come out of nowhere in the past few years. How has it become so popular within this generation? Where are the best places that people can shop for resold items?

A reseller is a person or a company who buys a product from one place and then sells it themselves for either a higher or lower price. eCommerce refers to the buying and selling of items that happens online, and stores that resell items online also fall into this category.

To the question of how it has become so popular, Jonathan Pierron from waste360.com explains that “while the idea of selling used items has been around for centuries, it is the prominence of these digital reselling platforms that are allowing this waste-reducing tradition to permeate the 21st century during the age of online commerce.” 

This then brings in the factor that by reselling items, not as many things are being thrown away just because they’re old. Lots of people are behind the idea of saving the planet in many different ways, and reselling items lets people be able to help the environment in a fun and sometimes money-saving way.

Pierron shows the statistics of Clara Albornoz, co-founder and co-CEO of an online store called List Perfectly that strengthen this factor: “The website is responsible for more than one hundred million cross-posted items for sale, which translates to 100 million items that would otherwise presumably end up in landfills.”

There’s also the fact that most websites or stores that do resell items like clothes or accessories are selling them for much cheaper than they were originally. An example of a website like this is “The RealReal”, where they sell luxury brands like Chanel, Gucci, Louis Vution, Dior, and many more for less than they originally were. 

On the website cnbc.com, writer Trina Paul, over the summer, posted an article that lists a bunch of different resale places to shop online, including Facebook Marketplace, Depop, Mercari, and eBay. These places are well known for their great prices and their really cute products. Plato’s Closet is also an example of a good, in-person resale store that offers the same things regarding prices and products.

People also create their own shops where they resell items. This is what Casey Thompson, founder and owner of Vintage405, decided to do. At Vintage405, Thompson resells vintage clothing. These clothes range all the way from formal wear to old t-shirts, (some of these items going all the way back to the 1920s!). There’s also clothes for both men and women.

“Back in 2018, mom jeans were a huge fashion trend. My mom had kept over 20 pairs of her denim from the 80s including brands such as Levi’s, Rocky Mountains, Lees, etc,” said Thompson. “My grandparents also kept all their clothes dating back to the 1920s, really helping me start my inventory for free.”

Like Pierron, Thompson also thinks that it is important to reuse and recycle old clothes. She believes that fast fashion creates a lot of waste, and she believes that since “clothes are made so cheaply now, they do not last and rip therefore they are being left to rot in landfills.” 

Even the popular brand Patagonia realizes this problem of wasting clothes and chooses to create products that are made from recycled materials. Through reselling clothes, the world can avoid this problem of wasting tons of fabric, beads, and other materials used for clothing. 

Now knowing this information about different places to shop resale, which place is the best of the best? Here’s what some students at Westminster had to say:

Senior Ava Hornburg said, “I got a Fleetwood Mac vinyl from a store in the West County Mall, and I got a Princess Polly dress from Depop.” 

“I guess my best item that was resold that I bought was my iPhone XS,” said senior Kerriann Davis. “It is called a ‘refurbished’ phone.” 

Horburg went on to say, “I think that in-person stores are the best places to buy resold items. When you order something online, there is no guarantee that it is your size or to your liking.”

Senior Mae St. John believes that the best place to get resold items is “Plato’s Closet because they only sell name brand items that are in good condition.”

At the rate in which the process of reselling items is increasing, it could potentially become even more popular than it is to regularly shop at a store or online.