With the holiday shopping season underway, StockX and The RealReal are reporting record increases in new buyers shopping their resale platforms.
Over the four-day period, nearly 100,000 new buyers made their first StockX purchase, the sneaker and streetwear resale platform said. In Europe, new buyers more than doubled compared to 2019, fueling a 125 percent increase in buy-side trades. The number of new sellers in Asia rose more than 200 percent compared to last year, driving a 550 percent uptick in sell-side trades within the region. In Hong Kong specifically, sell-side trades leaped more than 1,500 percent year over year.
Overall, StockX reported what it called a record-breaking Cyber Weekend. Daily gross merchandise value averaged 100 percent growth compared to the same four-day period last year, it said. Black Friday, specifically, set a new single-day trade record for the platform, while Cyber Monday set a single-day gross merchandise value record, StockX said. Between Friday and Monday, it said it logged 10 million visitors.
The resaler said it sold more than 20,000 different types of products over the holiday weekend, with sneakers and gaming consoles topping the bestsellers list. Air Jordans took five of the top 10 spots, including the Air Jordan 4 Retro Fire Red 2020—released Saturday, it saw more than 1,800 trades in one hour—in the No. 1 slot.
StockX’s record Cyber Weekend arrived as it expands its worldwide presence. So far this quarter, the so-called sneaker stock market has opened three new authentication centers, including a new location in Hong Kong, where it said sell-side transactions were up 1,000 percent year over year in the third quarter. The new centers, which also included locations in Portland, Ore., and Toronto, grew StockX’s global network by 50 percent.
Meanwhile, luxury resale platform The RealReal highlighted a roughly 24 percent year-over-year increase in new buyers last month. Supply headwinds in its fine jewelry and watch category, however, negatively impacted gross merchandise volume mix and average selling prices, resulting in an approximately 3 percent decrease in gross merchandise volume compared to November 2019, it said.
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Over the five-day holiday period, The RealReal reported a roughly 10 percent year-over-year increase in order volume, compared to an approximately 3 percent rise for the month as a whole. During the extended weekend, gross merchandise volume declined by about 2 percent year over year.
Momentum in retail and consignment office supply units shipped continued, it said, accelerating to roughly 51 percent year-over-year growth, an increase over October’s approximately 48 percent increase. Vendor supply units shipped, meanwhile, jumped 121 percent compared to last November.
“While Covid-19 continues to present challenges to our supply acquisition, especially in the [fine jewelry and watch] category, we are optimistic that category mix will normalize as we emerge from the pandemic,” Julie Wainwright, founder and CEO of The RealReal, said in a statement.
After seeing a 33 percent decline in April, The RealReal has consistently seen single-digit year-over-year dips in gross merchandise volume every month since June. At the time of the company’s third-quarter earnings call in November, however, Wainwright said the company anticipated reaching positive year-on-year gross merchandise volume over the balance of Q4.