Resale Wins Are Retail Wins
This week's All Things Fashion Tech Newsroom: Vinted & ThredUp dominated the headlines, but Pinterest's AI search & Hugo Boss's next gen recycled material are note worthy.
Vinted tops Amazon, Zara & H&M for top clothing retailer in France
Hugo Boss unveils innovative recycled NovaPoly yarn
ThredUp's stock increases 48% in 24 hours
Pinterest boosts AI visual search in UK and North America
ThredUp partners with UK's Beyond retro to take British vintage to US
Vinted is officially the largest clothing retailer in France
By NSS Staff
It’s official: Vinted and its 23 million users is the “store” that dresses the French the most. According to information shared by the French Fashion Institute, the online resale site ranks just ahead of Amazon and Kiabi, which are not far behind. A ranking that reflects the strong representation of online sales platforms in purchasing behavior and the importance of second-hand via Vinted according to the institute. Because in 2025, second-hand and vintage fashion are (thankfully) no longer inherently linked to the idea of being worn out, or even dirty.
It was during the Covid pandemic that Vinted began gaining notoriety, while the whole world was shut down, stores included. Appreciated not only for offering the chance to make money by emptying your closets but also for all the hidden gems it contains, it’s no surprise the platform is now valued at its worth. In addition to offering dozens of item pages by keywords, secure purchases, and a vintage goldmine—from clothing and accessories to home decor, video games, and even books—the platform evolves with the times, now even offering an authentication service that allows buyers to purchase bigger-ticket items without the risk of being scammed. We don’t yet know what the future holds for vintage or fast fashion, but one thing is already clear: this first place on the podium is one small step for man, one giant leap for the environment.
Hugo Boss unveils innovative recycled NovaPoly yarn
By Business Wire
Hugo Boss has announced NovaPoly, which it says is “an innovative recycled polyester yarn” that it has co-developed with its suppliers Jiaren Chemical Recycling and NBC LLC.
The German luxury fashion giant holds the trademark and exclusive usage for the first year, and said it “aims to set new industry standards”. But it’s also planning to “license NovaPoly across the fashion sector in the future” in order “to make the innovative fibre accessible to a broader range of industry partners moving forward”.
As part of its Boss The Change initiative, the first Boss Green products featuring NovaPoly will be launched globally in October. And for SS26, the yarn will be integrated into selected performancewear pieces.
So what exactly is NovaPoly? It’s made from textile waste generated during clothing production as well as the post-consumer phase. It’s enhanced with a “natural additive that mimics the natural behaviour of fibres in the environment, making it degradable”.
It feeds into the firm’s strategic target to fight microplastics and complements its existing efforts in developing alternatives to polyester and polyamide fibres, as the company has done previously in partnership with HeiQ AeoniQ.
ThredUp (NASDAQ:TDUP) Surprises With Strong Q1, Stock Soars
By Max Juang
Online fashion resale marketplace ThredUp (NASDAQ:TDUP) reported revenue ahead of Wall Street’s expectations in Q1 CY2025, with sales up 10.5% year on year to $71.29 million. On top of that, next quarter’s revenue guidance ($73.5 million at the midpoint) was surprisingly good and 3.7% above what analysts were expecting.
Is now the time to buy ThredUp? Find out in our full research report.
ThredUp (TDUP) Q1 CY2025 Highlights:
Revenue: $71.29 million vs analyst estimates of $68.32 million (10.5% year-on-year growth, 4.4% beat)
EPS (GAAP): -$0.04 vs analyst estimates of -$0.07 (42.9% beat)
Adjusted EBITDA: $3.81 million vs analyst estimates of $2.17 million (5.3% margin, 75.1% beat)
The company lifted its revenue guidance for the full year to $286 million at the midpoint from $275 million, a 4% increase
Operating Margin: -7.6%, up from -19.2% in the same quarter last year
Free Cash Flow Margin: 5.5%, up from 3.4% in the same quarter last year
Orders: 1.37 million, up 189,000 year on year
Market Capitalization: $520.6 million
“We are proud to deliver Q1 out-performance, including a record quarter for new buyer acquisition,” said ThredUp CEO and co-founder James Reinhart.
This quarter, ThredUp reported year-on-year revenue growth of 10.5%, and its $71.29 million of revenue exceeded Wall Street’s estimates by 4.4%. Company management is currently guiding for a 10.2% year-on-year increase in sales next quarter.
Looking further ahead, sell-side analysts expect revenue to grow 5.2% over the next 12 months.
Pinterest boosts AI visual search in UK and North America to help womenswear discovery and shopping
By Sandra Halliday
Pinterest has introduced a new visual search feature targeting “a more personalised discovery experience”. It’s be available for women’s fashion content across the UK, US and Canada, and “will expand to more categories and countries over time”.
The company said that “most online searches start with words, but describing a vibe, style or aesthetic can be hard and limiting. As a visual search platform, Pinterest enables people to overcome this obstacle, by using images at the starting point for a search”.
Essentially it comes up with words to reflect the images they’re seeing, which sounds simple but actually requires a lot of complex tech to make it happen.
The new features allows users to further interact with image Pins so they can “more intuitively discover, refine and shop the ideas that perfectly match their personal tastes”.
VP of design Dana Cho said its “visual search technology represents a shift in how users interact with and discover inspiration. We're not simply delivering search results – we're curating a personalised journey of discovery that empowers individuals to find their unique style, and shop it too”.
It’s breaking down and decoding images “so users can quickly search and shop for the details of an outfit. Whether it’s an overall aesthetic, a colour palette, a specific fit, or product category, when users view a Pin, we’ll now generate the words they can use to figure out what they like about the image, and then further explore and shop. To help users more easily identify and select the objects that they want to see and shop more of, we’ve added a new animated glow”.
ThredUp partners with UK's Beyond retro to take British vintage to US
By Sandra Halliday
On Thursday, American secondhand fashion platform ThredUp and UK-based vintage giant Beyond Retro unveiled a groundbreaking new partnership to take British vintage to US shoppers.
The deal sees a first-of-its-kind curated collection of 17,000 vintage and vintage-inspired pieces being made available from Beyond Retro’s archives. They span decades, styles, and stories.
The companies said the collaboration “not only celebrates the enduring power of great design but also positions secondhand as the ultimate style heirloom.Together, ThredUp and Beyond Retro are reimagining what it means to shop vintage in a digital age”.
They added that while “the pieces are timeless, the experience is thoroughly modern. ThredUp’s sleek user interface makes discovering one-of-a-kind finds easier than ever, empowering personal style through conscious shopping”.
Within parent company Bank & Vogue, Beyond Retro is just about the biggest name in UK vintage fashion and is also known for its ‘new’ pieces that repurpose vintage materials across a wide rage of price points.
Earlier this year, for instance, Bank & Vogue partnered with Coach to introduce a collection of luxury bags made from textiles that were once destined for landfill. The limited-edition pieces sold for retail prices from £395 to £730.
Meanwhile ThredUp is an equally prominent name in secondhand fashion. With a focus on curated, quality vintage pieces, only this week it reported Q1 revenues jumping 10% to $71.3 million on the back of rises in its active buyer numbers during the three months.
The company, which last year announced plans to exit Europe, also said its losses from continuing operations narrowed significantly
Its latest Resale Report this year said that the global secondhand apparel market is projected to reach $367 billion by 2029.
