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The Street

Samanda Dorger

The Best U.S. Cities for Vintage and Thrifty Shoppers

ThredUp United States Ore (Geopolitical Entity)

Used is the new new.

The secondhand merchandise industry is expanding as more consumers, concerned about both cost and wastefulness, turn to buying used instead of new.

The U.S. secondhand market is coming into its own and expected to more than double by 2026, reaching $82 billion, according to a report by thredUP (TDUP), an online resale marketplace.

As inflation puts pressure on consumers’ wallets, and the negative environmental impacts of fast fashion become more apparent, shoppers made secondhand clothing purchases in 2021 that displaced nearly 1 billion new-item buys, thredUP says.

Winmark, (WINA) the franchiser of resale stores including Plato’s Closet, Play It Again Sports, and Music Go Around, had about 1,293 franchises in operation in 2022, with sales of $1 billion or more a year since 2015. They have recycled nearly 1.5 billion items since 2010, according to the National Association of Resale Professionals.

Other facts from thredUP’s report include:

74% of consumers have shopped or are open to shopping secondhand apparel
Cleaning out their closets in the pandemic, 57% of consumers resold apparel in 2021
62% of Gen Z and millennials say they look for an item secondhand before purchasing it new, and 46% consider the resale value of an apparel item before purchasing.

Across the nation, southern states make up the region with the most first-time thirfters, while in the Midwest residents are most likely to consider themselves thrifters. Northeastern shoppers are the most tech-savvy, and thrifters in western states are most conscious of their carbon footprint, thredUP says.

There’s no shortage of online resale sites like eBay (EBAY), Etsy (ETSY), Poshmark (POSH), thredUP, Facebook Marketplace, Depop and Mercari, but when you’re into pre-loved items, digging around a shop for rare finds is half the fun. There are around 25,000 thrift stores in the U.S., according to the National Association of Resale Professionals. Goodwill industries has 4,245 thrift stores across the nation, and Salvation Army has nearly 8,000.

To find the metro areas where vintage lovers can have the best thrifting experience, StorageCafe, an online platform that provides storage unit listings across the nation, analyzed data from the 50 largest metro areas and ranked them based on a weighted score that included the number of thrifting venues per 100,000 people, the percentage of big thrifting venues, thrifting sales per household, thrifting Google searches, and self storage inventory.

Thrifting venues include thrift shops, consignment stores, antique shops, used clothing stores, used furniture stores, flea markets, used bookstores and others.

While the New York metro area comes in first for the sheer number of resale venues with nearly 700 stores, it doesn’t make the top 30. Denver, with more than 190 resale stores, the most per capita, tops the list of best places for thrifters, with popular stores like Thrift Cult and a large Goodwill presence.

Based on StorageCafe’s analysis, these are the best metro areas in the U.S. for resale shopping.