Trove Acquires Recurate to Expand Branded Resale Market Presence

Branded resale company Trove has acquired Recurate, a “significant” player in its industry.

“This acquisition underscores Trove’s commitment to making branded resale more accessible and easier to launch and scale for brands,” the company said in a Tuesday (Aug. 13) news release.

The deal, Trove said, integrates its capabilities like store trade-ins, digital trade-ins, returns processing and non-new inventory management, with Recurate’s peer-to-peer expertise, operational network and Shopify integrations.

The acquisition, the company added, gives Trove command of 75% of U.S. branded resale traffic, as well as 29 new brands, including Steve Madden, Frank & Eileen, Frye, Coyuchi, Clare V. and Michael Kors.

“Branded resale is increasingly proving its value, not only as an environmentally sustainable initiative but also as a profitable business strategy,” the release said. “Trove’s branded resale programs, known for driving revenue growth, attracting new customers, and improving margins, can now launch in as little as four weeks and scale effortlessly to any level.”

The company said it is also set up to continue to expand globally, looking to new enterprise partnerships in Europe and the United Kingdom, along with additional growth in its established North American operations.

PYMNTS spoke earlier this year with former Trove CEO Gayle Tait, who said consumers are seeking branded secondhand shops to remove the chaos from digital thrifting.

“There is a real desire for customers to shop resale on brand sites. I think it’s a mistake to think that resale is really a marketplace shopping experience,” Tait said. “If you think about how customers navigate their shopping experiences, brands are real beacons — they’re the entry point of that experience. Resale is the same, and we expect that this is going to continue to be a big piece of brands’ business moving forward.”

She added that the same theory applies for multi-brand, specialized retailers, pointing to the example of a consumer preparing for a hiking trip who begins by shopping at REI or of a runner searching for new sneakers who shops from a running-specific website.

As that report noted, economic pressures have led many shoppers to turn to resale platforms to get the products they want at more affordable prices, with research from PYMNTS Intelligence’s “Consumer Inflation Sentiment Report: Consumers Shop Secondhand Stores as Often as Other Retail” showing that 43% of consumers bought a secondhand product last year.

“There’s definitely pressures on customers’ wallets, which are impacting the overall industry,” Tait said, adding that consumers’ inflationary pressures can be “a positive” for resale, as consumers look for ways to get “high-quality items at more accessible price points.”