Independent Retail

What the Resale Boom Means for Independent Fashion Retailers on Shopify

A new Barclays report shows that 38% of UK consumers bought from a resale platform in the past year, and that Vinted now has more users in the UK than most high street chains. For independent brands selling new clothing online, these numbers demand a response.

Billy Lindon · LetsGetDigital · April 2026 · 6 min read

A recent Barclays Corporate Banking article, The pulse of fashion: How the growth of the resale market has changed the game for retailers (March 2026), sets out a picture of UK fashion that any independent brand owner should pay attention to. The headline figures are striking, and they point to a shift in how shoppers think about clothing, value and ownership.

What the Barclays data actually says

Vinted now reportedly has more than 17 million UK users, putting it just behind Primark and Next on customer reach.

According to Barclays, 38% of UK consumers said they had bought something from a resale platform in the last year. OC&C Strategy Consultants research cited in the same piece values the UK second-hand fashion market at more than £7bn, with close to one in four fashion transactions now involving resale.

Barclays also reports that UK clothing and footwear spending grew 1.7% year on year in 2025. That growth is real but modest, and it means most of the competitive action is fought over share rather than a rising tide. Resale adoption skews young, with around one in four 16 to 24 year olds using platforms like Vinted and Depop to save money, compared with 9% of over 55s.

These figures come from the Barclays article linked at the bottom of this piece, which draws on Barclays card spending data, Opinium research commissioned by Barclays, and the OC&C figure cited within the piece.

Why this matters if you sell new clothing online

A growing slice of your customer's wardrobe budget is going to second-hand purchases on platforms you do not control, and your new-season stock has to justify its price against a Vinted listing of the same item from last year.

If you run a small or mid-sized fashion brand, the temptation is to read these numbers and feel squeezed. There are a few practical implications worth thinking about.

The first is resale value as a buying signal. When a shopper is weighing up a £180 jacket, part of the calculation is now what they could recoup on Vinted in two years. The obvious problem for small brands is that they do not have the recognition of a Zara or a Levi's, and recognition is part of what holds resale value. What small brands can compete on is the thing big retailers tend to give up as they scale: attention to detail and build quality. Large brands routinely cut costs on fabric, finishing and construction over time. A smaller label that holds the line on quality is making a direct argument for long-term value, especially when it talks honestly about how its pieces are made and how long they should last.

The second is the rise of brand-led resale. The Barclays piece notes that Zara has launched Zara Pre-Owned, and that H&M, Marks and Spencer, COS, Levi's and Baukjen have all run their own pre-owned schemes. McKinsey and the Business of Fashion's The State of Fashion 2026 report similarly argues that resale is moving from experiment to expectation. Whether or not you ever run a resale programme yourself, your customers will increasingly expect brands to have an answer to the question of what happens to their clothes after they are done with them.

The third is product detail and longevity messaging. If shoppers are thinking about resale value at the point of purchase, then the information you give them on fabric composition, care, sizing and construction matters more than it used to. Vague product copy and missing measurements hurt your SEO and lower the perceived long-term value of the item in the shopper's mind.

Where smaller Shopify brands actually have an edge

Big retailers have scale and brand awareness. Independents have the ability to act quickly, write honestly about their products, and build a direct relationship with customers without going through an aggregator.

A few things that are within reach for most Shopify stores:

Honest, specific product descriptions that tell a shopper exactly what the garment is made of, how it fits, and how to look after it. This is also the kind of information a future second-hand buyer will rely on, which feeds back into perceived resale value.

Email and CRM that talks to existing customers like adults. The Barclays data on cost-conscious shoppers suggests people are not cutting brands they trust; they are cutting brands they feel indifferent about. Owned channels are where trust gets built.

A site that loads quickly, behaves properly on mobile, and does not throw up friction at checkout. None of this shows up in a trend report, but it is where the actual conversion happens.

A clear point of view on sustainability and longevity that is grounded in what you actually do, rather than language borrowed from a sustainability consultant's slide deck.

How LetsGetDigital can help

The practical work that changes how your store looks, performs and converts, without adding unnecessary apps or cost.

• Shopify build and theme work

  Size grids on collection pages, dispatch messaging on product pages, cart and checkout tidying, and variant selectors that behave properly on mobile. Changes made directly in your theme rather than layered with additional apps, which keeps your store faster and cheaper to run.

• Product copy that sells

  Fabric, fit, measurements and care alongside the things that move someone to buy: how it feels on, what it goes with, where they would wear it, and why it is worth the price. Written in British English, without filler or borrowed marketing language.

• Email campaigns and CRM

  Designing and writing the emails that go out to your list, planning them around launches and seasonal moments, then reviewing what happened after each send so the next one performs better.

• LGD Dispatch Promise Badge

  Puts a clear dispatch message on your product pages. Shoppers are more likely to buy from a store that ships quickly, and if you can ship the same day and say so on the product page, you take that advantage off Amazon and put it on your own store.

• LGD Sizes in Collections

  Shows available sizes for every product directly on your collection and search pages, before the shopper has clicked in. The most common reason a fashion shopper bounces is finding out three clicks deep that their size is sold out. Showing it upfront saves them time and pushes them toward what they can actually buy.

• Shopify analytics in plain English

  Where your customers are actually coming from, which products are pulling their weight, where people are dropping out before they buy, and what is worth doing something about.

• Strategy conversations

  Sometimes the most useful thing is an hour talking through what is and is not working before any code gets touched.

Source: Barclays Corporate Banking, The pulse of fashion: How the growth of the resale market has changed the game for retailers, March 2026. Read the original article. The Barclays Consumer Spend research was carried out by Opinium Research on behalf of Barclays, with 2,000 respondents per round, providing a representative sample of UK consumers by age, gender, region and income group. Market valuation figure from OC&C Strategy Consultants, as cited in the Barclays article. Additional reference: McKinsey & Business of Fashion, The State of Fashion 2026.