Strategies For Second-Hand Retailers

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The market for global resale apparel alone reached $227 billion in 2024 and is projected to hit $367 billion by 2029.

This once traditional way of shopping in thrift stores and auction houses has changed drastically. U.S. online resale is expected to nearly double by 2029, reaching $40 billion .

What⁘s referred to as the ⁘ second-hand economy ⁘ represents a shift in how people shop, their adaptability to economic changes, and a way of acting on growing sustainability concerns by buying pre-loved items.

As this market expands at pace, brands are ramping up their investment in paid search, with major players like eBay spending over $150 million per year on Google Ads alone.

However, running PPC for second-hand or resale ecommerce is a very different ballgame from a traditional ecommerce model, where brands are either manufacturing the items they sell or reselling new items.

In this post, I⁘ve shared five ecommerce PPC strategies for second-hand retailers that will help find success.

Before we jump into them, let⁘s dig into a few key challenges that are unique to managing paid search in this market.

Take eBay, for example. It likely has hundreds (even thousands) of certain items, but for smaller retailers or specialised brands (such as antique or vintage resellers), it is most likely dealing with one-of-a-kind products.

Bidding algorithms get little time to learn which products convert the best, as many items may only be in the feed briefly, whereas others may remain in the product feed for a long time and be deprioritized by newer items.