EBay has been making headlines recently.
Despite being seen as the pioneer of online resale, the 30-year-old e-commerce platform has struggled to shake its reputation as the internet’s flea market. But when GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen made an unsolicited bid to buy the company, eBay doubled down on the idea that it’s better off alone, and investors scoffed.
The company is having a glow-up, and fashion is playing a big part in its growth. In February, it reached an agreement to buy Depop, the resale platform loved by Gen Z, for $1.2 billion. The deal has not yet been finalized.
“One of the things that you can’t argue with, we’ve been around for 30 years,” Kirsty Keoghan, general manager of EU Fashion & Luxury at eBay, told Business Insider. “We are the OG of buying and selling preloved fashion.”
When newer, buzzier competitors emerged and helped reshape consumer perceptions of secondhand shopping, eBay had lost its luster. However, through savvy partnerships, working with celebrities, and improving its user experience, the resale OG is regaining its cool again.
It started with trust
Ebay’s shares are up around 185% since Jamie Iannone took over as CEO in April 2020 and launched a turnaround effort, and up over 30% year-to-date.
In its first quarter results, released in April, revenue was up 19% year-on-year. Fashion saw double-digit year-on-year growth, led by its luxury, streetwear, and pre-loved clothing focus categories.
A key step in CEO Jamie Iannone’s turnaround strategy was to home in on its verticals by making focus categories within them. This was to attract enthusiast buyers, including sneakerheads and vintage luxury lovers. It kicked off this transformation by implementing authenticity guarantees within these focus categories.
It started with sneakers in the US in 2020 and has since expanded to other markets and products. Most recently, it integrated a luxury watch authentication service that flags stolen watches in the UK.
“It’s [trust] important for everybody when shopping online, particularly with pre-loved,” Keoghan said. “But I just think particularly for luxury, it’s such an important part of our strategy.”
From ‘Love Island’ to the Met Gala
Another key part of eBay’s fashion strategy has been getting involved in cultural moments in order to amp up its visibility and cool factor.
The company teamed up with Vogue and singer-songwriter SZA to source her outfit for the 2026 Met Gala. It has been partnered with popular TV series “Love Island” in the UK since 2022, and has worked with some of the biggest American influencers, such as Emma Chamberlain.
Ebay has built relationships with celebrity stylists in an attempt to have items sourced from its platform appear organically in cultural moments.
One of its ambassadors, celebrity stylist Harry Lambert, dressed Harry Styles in a pre-loved outfit sourced from eBay for a shoot for his latest album launch.
“The reason why we’ve done that is so that we can put pre-loved fashion at the forefront of some of these really big fashion moments and get people to think about fashion really differently,” Keoghan said.
Fierce competition
Despite the trendy collaborations and the popularity of pre-loved fashion among Gen Z consumers, Keoghan said eBay does not have a specific core customer in mind.
“We’ve got all of the other categories, which I think for us is like our superpower because you can come and buy fashion and you can also go and buy or sell a desk or a sofa,” Keoghan said.
Since eBay’s launch, younger companies such as European-headquartered Vinted and US-based Poshmark have emerged, making the secondhand e-commerce market fiercely competitive. When Vinted dropped its seller fee, eBay followed suit in the UK and Germany. It is yet to do the same in the US.
Keoghan said she welcomes the competition. “I think it makes us all up our game,” she said.
No longer wanting to play catch-up, eBay is pressing ahead with AI features, such as AI-generated descriptions and a background enhancement tool, to reduce seller friction as much as possible.
“Using innovation and technology to do that is really key for us at eBay,” she added. “We’re just trying to continue to make those better and better and better. So it makes it really easy for our customers.”
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