The $367B Secondhand Market Has a Supply Problem, Not a Demand One

01 /The Concept

Minimist is an app that helps secondhand clothing sellers sell more online.

It addresses the three core problems that hold those sellers back.

Catalog creation is the first barrier – "Creating an online catalog of my inventory takes too long and is too complicated." With the app, sellers photograph an item and within 30 seconds receive a complete product listing: name, brand, human-readable description, material, category, and tags, all built from what the AI finds by searching the web for the original item.

Pricing is the second – "I don't know how to price this." The AI finds comparable items listed on other secondhand marketplaces and suggests a range based on live market data, filtering out obviously unreasonable prices typically attached to counterfeits.

Conversion is the third – "Why bother listing online if items just don't sell there anyway?" The biggest culprit is bad product photos: a garment photographed flat doesn't sell, but one shown on a person does. Minimist automates exactly that, placing the clothing item onto a human model automatically.

Sellers can preview how the item looks on different model profiles, and choose different models for different stores or markets – one for a youth-focused shop, another for an Asian marketplace, and so on.

According to the startup, adding a human to a clothing photo increases purchase conversion by 40% and reduces returns by 30%, because buyers can see how the item actually fits before purchasing.

Minimist was founded in Austria in 2024. It was [covered previously](/review/v-jetoj-teme-mozhno-sdelat-novyj-shopify) in December of that year when it raised its initial €350,000. It has just closed a new round of €1 million.

02 /Why It Matters

Let's start with the market context – because without it, the automation that today's startup offers wouldn't make nearly as much sense.

The secondhand clothing market is growing. In 2024, it reached $227 billion in global sales – up 15% from the prior year.

Resale is growing roughly three times faster than new clothing sales. That pace is expected to moderate to around 10% annually by 2029 – but by then the market will have reached $367 billion.

The primary reason people buy secondhand is cost savings – 78% of respondents in a Boston Consulting Group study cited this as a factor.

But 55% said secondhand shopping gives them access to more unique items and better personal style expression than what's currently hanging in mainstream retail.

And 49% described browsing secondhand as genuinely enjoyable – not just a bargain hunt, but an experience in itself.

Gen Z is particularly enthusiastic: secondhand now makes up a third of their wardrobes. For this demographic, the motivation goes beyond saving money – it's about self-expression and standing out. A habit they're likely to carry into adulthood.

Resale is a trend – a large, growing market driven by structural shifts in buying behavior that are already underway.

But as in any market, supply and demand are inseparable. More supply enables more demand. If fewer people wanted to drive for ride-sharing platforms, there would be no Uber.

In some markets, you can deliberately increase supply by producing more. But you can't manufacture secondhand clothing. You can only source it. And that's where there's a real bottleneck.

The staggering statistic: 93% of secondhand clothing that has already been brought into consignment shops never makes it online. For an embarrassingly simple reason – digitizing inventory for online listing is too much of a hassle for sellers. Today's startup is tackling exactly that.

03 /Opportunities

The main direction here is building platforms and tools that increase the volume and variety of supply on a large, fast-growing secondhand clothing market.

Minimist is one approach – but far from the only one.

Croissant ([covered here](/review/tupo-delat-obychnyj-magazin)) raised $28 million earlier this year for a platform that makes it easy for people to resell things they've purchased. The product is a browser extension that logs online purchases in the app – and then offers to buy back items at an AI-estimated price when the owner is ready to let them go.

Brandback ([covered here](/review/v-borbe-mezhdu-jemocijami-i-zdravym-smyslom-vse-vyigryvajut-a-my-zarabatyvaem)) runs on a similar model – raising $7.4 million in its first round last summer. The difference: the model requires online retailers to integrate with Brandback's platform directly, which was also Croissant's original approach before it switched to the browser extension model.

Bought ([covered here](/review/ustrani-trenie-i-vzletaj)) raised $1.5 million in its first round for a platform that automatically pulls purchase receipts from a user's email, adds them to the Bought app, and lets the owner resell any item they no longer want in a single tap through the same interface.

What mechanism could you design to cheaply and at scale collect secondhand clothing supply? Whoever solves the supply side has a real shot at building a strong position in this market – where the key friction is inventory availability, not buyer demand.