As demand rises, new resale-adjacent services pop up

Notably, these companies aren’t online consignment or thrift stores like ThredUp, Depop, The RealReal or Poshmark. They don’t sell secondhand goods on behalf of sellers, nor do they create branded resale programs for brands. Instead, they are platforms that purport to speed up and streamline the resale process, while increasing transparency about the buying and selling of used goods. In this way, they help support the re-commerce market, which is expected to reach $291.6 billion by 2029, per OfferUp.

One of these services is Paloma, an e-commerce platform that allows people to resell items directly through Instagram. Paloma’s sellers typically showcase their products via an Instagram Live, Story or grid post. Shoppers leave a comment to bid on or claim items, then check out via Instagram direct messaging. Sellers get their payments within two days, either through Paloma’s partnership with Stripe, a payments app like Venmo or a buy now, pay later service.

Paloma launched in 2017 but began working with resellers in January 2024. In the first quarter of 2024, Paloma processed $1.2 million in gross merchandise value. It then processed $1.7 million in GMV in the second quarter. Paloma had 60 active sellers in the second quarter but expects that number to be higher for the third quarter. “Our seller base is growing pretty rapidly,” Kelsey Hunter, Paloma’s founder and CEO, told Modern Retail.

Paloma “is not a marketplace,” Hunter said. Instead, Paloma keeps track of things like inventory and shipping and automates processes like creating invoices and receipts.

“[With Paloma,] you get what you would get with Shopify for a website, but you’re getting it for an Instagram page, and it takes 10 minutes to set up,” Hunter said. “We’re not a middleman. We facilitate. And you set your policies.”

Paloma is also not a marketing service, meaning its fees can be lower than those on resale marketplaces, Hunter explained. Paloma has different tiers with different tools. Its Basic tier has no fees, its Starter tier is free with the exception of a 4% transaction fee and its Professional tier costs $29 to $39 a month, with a 2% transaction fee. Another tier, Growth, is more customizable and is for sellers racking up at least $300,000 a year in GMV.

Another resale-adjacent business that’s gaining speed is Croissant. Croissant, like Paloma, is not a resale marketplace. Rather, Croissant is an app and browser extension that provides “guaranteed resale prices” on items from more than 100 retailers and brands, including Reformation and Shopbop. In other words, Croissant lets shoppers know how much money they would make if they bought a product new and then resold it sometime later. Croissant then works with platforms like Poshmark and eBay to facilitate the resale process.

Croissant, which launched in 2023, brings a “fin-tech approach” to resale, co-founder and CEO John Howard told Modern Retail. Howard was interested in the rise of BNPL services like Klarna and Afterpay, which allow customers to pay off purchases in several installments. But, he said, those services were more “debt-focused” than “asset-focused.” This sparked a question for Howard: “How do we help [people] think about their stuff as a positive, rather than take on more credit to fuel consumption?” he asked. Croissant encourages consumers to think of their closets as “part of their individual net worth” and thus treats resale like a stock portfolio, Howard said.

It’s not just customers that stand to benefit from this way of thinking, Howard stressed. The retailers and brands that Croissant works with are getting returns, too. Many find that customers who use Croissant spend more upfront because they know they can recoup some costs later. “The same customer at the same retailer spends 45% more on average when they’ve opted into Croissant,” Howard said. “And once people start shopping with our extension, they shop seven times with it within the first six months.”

Croissant receives a commission from the retailers and brands it works with. It doesn’t sell the resold products directly, and it doesn’t plan to build resale programs for companies. Instead, Howard said, Croissant is trying to make shoppers think about resale from the get-go. “We’re bringing that idea that you should shop with guaranteed resale values in mind all the way to the first transaction,” he said.

There are other industries that step in to support resale. One involves authenticating secondhand items. Many marketplaces do this process in house; The RealReal and StockX, for example, vet products using a combination of machine learning and human oversight. But retailers and brands also work with outside technology providers to sign off on resold items. Entrupy, for example, is a company that uses AI to safeguard against and flag counterfeits. One of its plans authenticates 10 pairs of sneakers a month for $69.

There are also platforms that make it easier to cross-list secondhand products on platforms like Etsy and eBay. One of these is List Perfectly, whose most basic plan starts at $29 a month. Another is Oly, which starts at $39 a month. Both say that they help sellers save time and increase sales. List Perfectly says sellers have cross-posted more than 15 million products using its software in the last year alone.

Ultimately, resale-adjacent businesses can act as a gateway into the industry, Ken Murphy, svp of product at OfferUp, told Modern Retail. OfferUp found that 72% of shoppers believe the stigma around secondhand shopping is decreasing, and 63% said they admire those who choose secondhand over new. “The rise of resale-adjacent businesses has the potential to help attract new customers who may have been hesitant to try secondhand shopping or didn’t know how to get started,” Murphy said.

“Giving people a better idea of what resale is all about and making it more approachable can help shift the perception of resale from a last resort to a desirable first choice,” he added.