The past 14 months have been a crazy ride when it comes to shopping behavior: we started with people setting up their home offices, and now they’re buying new outfits to venture back to the office. As the world begins to reopen and social calendars are bulking back up, shoppers are swapping stay-at-home essentials for items that uniquely reveal — and celebrate — their personal style and interests.
This represents an exciting and uniquely eBay opportunity. Our audience is anxious to get back to the activities they know and love, and we’re seeing some expected trends as this happens. Apparel sales are climbing back up, and specifically the resale market for pre-owned apparel is growing. This is driven largely by Gen Z shoppers turning to recommerce for a variety of reasons like conscious consumerism and investments in rare and vintage items.
It’s not just fashion shopping, people are also coming to eBay to sell their high-demand goods, frequently items from hobbies that didn’t quite work out during quarantine (it turns out, SNL wasn’t that far off the mark!) — to make way for new wardrobe, home and passion purchases and in turn recycling their dollars on our marketplace. And speaking of hobbies that resonate with eBay buyers, video games remain one of the hottest cross-generational pastimes, and we know that scarcity of new consoles may last for months, or longer.
We expect this retail refresh will last throughout the summer, and eBay has created a “ReOpen Report’ — using real-time data and insights to highlight the categories and styles we see currently trending. And while quarantine necessities aren’t fully going away, this report reveals shopping trends that demonstrate a new level of excitement, optimism and individualism as consumers get ready to get out there and make up for lost social time.
This is the first of several reports, and hopefully the information is helpful as you prepare for what’s ahead. Enjoy the read and, as always, thank you for selling on eBay.
Jordan Sweetnam
SVP + General Manager, Americas Market
