Tariff and inflation woes have millennials thrifting more. Here's how to start.
Kelsey Meyers started thrifting baby gear and clothes when she had her first child 20 years ago. A teen mom at the time, she said the only new items her daughter had were a stroller gifted by Meyers' coworkers and a car seat.
Meyers, of Minnesota, is 38-years-old now and still buys most things secondhand. She has four kids and said she's seen the secondhand market change dramatically over the past two decades. The biggest shift she's noticed happened just after the COVID-19 pandemic. Suddenly, she said, thrift stores and estate sales were inundated with younger shoppers: high schoolers, college students and millennials.
“Sometimes I can’t even find a parking spot," said Meyers, whose youngest child is 7 years old. "I think the word is out."
Inflation and looming tariffs threatening to raise prices for clothing and household items are sending more and more parents to secondhand stores. The thrifting industry was already booming as social media personalities, Meyers included, have destigmatized buying secondhand. The result? Thrifting is trendy now. But with rising demand for thrifted goods, some shoppers and retailers are anticipating price hikes at the secondhand level, too.
Meyers posts content on TikTok about parenthood, cooking and decluttering her home. She recently posted about thrifting, and has more than 100,000 followers and more than 3.5 million likes on her videos. She told Paste BN that she's already noticed, in the past couple of years, price hikes at the thrift shops she frequents.
"You're still getting a deal, but ..." she said.
It's not what it used to be.
Sheng Lu, a professor and director of graduate studies at the University of Delaware's Department of Fashion and Apparel Studies, said secondhand clothing stores are "not totally immune to the tariff impact" and that the trade war will result in several unintended consequences for the fashion industry. Lu anticipates consumers will seek out more secondhand options, that demand at thrift stores will mean fewer options and higher prices, and that, overall, consumers might make do with less.
Demand for kids' clothing is always higher, Lu said, because children have more consistent needs for new items as they grow.
"I'm afraid that the supply can be more limited," Lu said of children's items.
Kristin Langenfeld, CEO and cofounder of GoodBuy Gear, a resale site for baby gear, said she hasn't yet seen the impact of tariffs on her business, but that she's getting ready. GoodBuy Gear partners with more than 50 popular brands and retailers to inspect and sell their returns.
“Every one of them that we’ve talked to has either already or is in the process of increasing prices on almost all of their products," Langenfeld said.
Items on GoodBuy Gear are priced by an algorithm that assesses several factors including interest in the product and its manufacturer's suggested retail price. So if tariffs mean price hikes for goods, they'll likely mean price hikes for secondhand goods, too, Langenfeld said.
Alon Rotem, chief strategy officer for ThredUp, a managed marketplace for secondhand kids' and women's clothing, said tariffs won't impact ThredUp at all.
“All of the clothes that we sell come from the closets of Americans," Rotem said.
Tariffs won't impact how ThredUp does business, Rotem said, and he's not anticipating surges in shipping and labor costs anytime soon. Still, Rotem said the company is anticipating an influx in interest for secondhand shopping. He said he hopes their inventory can keep up.
“We think that there’s a really compelling reason why consumers are choosing secondhand, and now in the era of tariffs, it’s even more of a unique way to shop and get what you’re looking for, and see prices not rise," Rotem said.
How popular is thrifting? 'Nice, name-brand clothes' don't need to be bought new
Nearly one-third of baby gear is now bought secondhand, Langenfeld said, based on a soon-to-be released resale report from her company.
In a recent poll by Babylist, a registry site for new parents, 67% of expecting parents said that buying or receiving secondhand is their primary strategy for saving money. Babylist is launching a new feature in April to meet the rising interest in thrifted goods, where users can mark their registry as "open to secondhand." The feature was soft-launched in December, and in just a few months users have added over 350,000 secondhand items to their registries.
For apparel, an all-time high of 58% of consumers shopped secondhand last year, according to a recently released resale report from ThredUp. Among Gen Z and millennials, 68% shopped secondhand and nearly half said they looked to thrift first when shopping for clothes.
The survey also asked shoppers and retail executives about government policies around tariffs. More than half of the retail executives surveyed said they believe resale offers a more stable and predictable source of clothing in the face of potential tariff fluctuations. Nearly 60% of consumers said they would seek more affordable options like secondhand if tariffs make apparel more expensive.
“Secondhand prices are going to be much more compelling in relative terms," Rotem said, looking at tariffs for Chinese goods in particular that could more than double the price of some items.
Millennials and younger generations are focused on value, Rotem said. And secondhand shopping also scratches another itch for younger shoppers: sustainability. Rotem said he thinks shoppers are starting to care more about the environmental impacts of their consumer habits.
That's true among Lu's students at the University of Delaware, most of whom are Gen Z. Lu said those students have expressed that regardless of price changes, sustainability remains important to them.
"This is a reminder to a lot of brands and retailers," Lu said. Mitigating the cost of production with cheaper textiles, Lu said, "may not be a good strategy."
Rotem and Langenfeld said thrifting offers parents and kids an opportunity to shop high-quality items and aspirational brands at an affordable price. Nearly all of Meyers' kids' clothes are thrifted, she said. But she's confident no one would ever know that by looking at her kids' style.
“They have nice, name-brand clothes,” Meyers said.
When her kids were younger, Meyers said, she often shopped at Once Upon A Child. Now she shops for clothes at Savers, The Salvation Army, Goodwill and local community thrift stores. She gets her kids' sports equipment from Play It Again Sports.
Rotem and Langenfeld said they have empathy for parents trying to make ends meet with rising costs. These aren't items families can do without, Langenfeld said. She doesn't want to see parents priced out of items their children need, and she doesn't want to see them "roll the dice" with safety on free or too-good-to-be-true deals they find on social media.
"Parents need to buy a stroller, they need to buy a bassinet, they need to buy a high chair," she said.
Want to thrift but not sure where to start? Here are some tips from a seasoned secondhand shopper
Meyers prefers to shop in person and doesn't typically use online resale sites like ThredUp and GoodBuy. She doesn't go on Facebook Marketplace, either.
"I find the better deals in person," she said.
Meyers offers the following tips to first-time thrifters:
- The best deals for furniture and household items are at estate sales, Meyers said. She suggests going on the last day of the sale.
- Keep a running list on your phone of items you want or need, and shop consistently. Meyers said she reviews her list before she goes into a thrift store so she can stay focused on the things she's after, and accepts that she likely won't find everything on the list in one outing.
- Buy a size up for children's more expensive items, like winter gear. Those clothes might be a little big, but kids will grow into them.
- Make sure to donate nice, quality items to the stores you shop at. "If you want the thrift gods to give to you, you have to give to the thrift gods," Meyers said. Plus, sometimes you get a coupon if you donate.
Madeline Mitchell's role covering women and the caregiving economy at Paste BN is supported by a partnership with Pivotal Ventures and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input. Reach Madeline at memitchell@usatoday.com and @maddiemitch_ on X.