Holiday shoppers are looking to secondhand goods to stretch their gift budgets—and to their own closets to help fund the season.
According to ThredUp’s 2026 Holiday Resale Report, 62 percent of U.S. adults plan to shop secondhand this holiday season. Those shoppers expect to devote an average of 37 percent of their gift budgets to previously owned items, a share that rises to 45 percent among Millennials and 43 percent among Gen Z.
Meanwhile, 53 percent of respondents have sold or expect to sell belongings to help pay for holiday purchases, suggesting resale could play a role on both sides of consumers’ holiday budgets.
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For ThredUp, those overlapping behaviors present an opportunity to attract customers as households weigh competing demands on discretionary spending.
“We see an opportunity to attract more shoppers this holiday season,” Alon Rotem, ThredUp’s chief strategy officer, told Sourcing Journal.
The outlook comes as 42 percent of respondents expect to spend more on the holidays than last year, while another 42 percent expect to spend the same amount. Consumers also expect 2.2 times as many social occasions during November and December as in a typical two-month period, adding to the demand for gifts and occasionwear.
Rotem pointed to inflation and higher energy costs as pressures on holiday spending. Some shoppers are cutting back on purchases for themselves or rewearing clothes to make room in their budgets for gifts and other seasonal expenses, he said.
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