If you’re in the market for a used Patagonia

fleece, Patagonia wants to be the one to sell it to you. Powered by the logistics startup Trove, Patagonia’s Worn Wear website buys back items from customers, refurbishes and cleans them, and sells them at a fraction of their original price. It might seem counterproductive for a brand to want to sell lower-priced, secondhand merchandise to customers who might otherwise buy at full price, but Trove CEO Andy Ruben (who previously served as Walmart’s chief sustainability officer) says that launching a resale marketplace allows clothing labels “to create a new revenue stream, get new customers, [and] capture their fair share of the secondary market.” Within six months of Worn Wear’s 2017 launch, Patagonia had generated $1 million in sales from the site, which has been profitable ever since. Trove has gone on to build out its operations, so it can purchase, process, price, and photograph secondhand goods before putting them up for sale on each brand’s dedicated resale website (Trove even takes care of returns and customer service). It has also attracted new customers, including REI and Eileen Fisher, which has brought in more than $4 million in revenue from its profitable Renew resale site. Last year, Trove added Arc’teryx and Taylor Stitch to its portfolio, and it recently launched a secondhand marketplace for Nordstrom. By having their own resale sites, Ruben says, “these [companies] demonstrate their commitment to getting more out of the clothes they’ve already made.”