Thrift Flipping: Will It Save—or Ruin—Sustainable Fashion? (2024)

Savannah Harpster peruses the aisles of a Naples, Fla., Goodwill, surrounded by racks of clothes. Like the shoppers around her, Harpster fingers various garments, pulling out a few that catch her eye and putting back the ones she doesn’t like.

As she searches, Harpster (ENG’24) has specific criteria in mind: anything with a name brand—a Polo Ralph Lauren shirt, for example—makes the cut. As she inspects the laundry tag of one piece, Harpster’s chemistry background comes into the foreground. A high percentage of cotton, especially organic cotton, is particularly valuable in the search.

When she returns home, she begins taking pictures of herself wearing the items. From there, she uploads the pictures to Depop, an online platform for buying and reselling clothes. She writes descriptions like, “never worn” or “worn once,” and adds a price to each garment.

Harpster,like many other young people around the country, has found a novel way to make a quick buck—by “thrift flipping,” or in other words, buying secondhand clothing cheap and reselling for a higher price.

The Depop community has made $2.5 billion to date from this strategy. Buyers can skip the hassle of combing through an entire Goodwill store for one vintage or name-brand piece, and instead find their dream garment through a simple keyword in Depop’s search bar. Harpster likes the scheme too; she’s been thrift flipping for five years.

“This was the year I made the most money,” Harpster says. “I actually got the notification that I have to file taxes this year because I made so much from selling my clothes.”

While she doesn’t actively source clothes from thrift stores anymore, she still lists her stockpile of old inventory on her account. Beyond providing extra cash, she says, Depop also helps her reduce clothing waste. “It’s my way of selling perfectly fine clothes that are still really good quality at a little bit of a cheaper price [than clothing retailers],” she says. “Anything I can’t salvage I always end up sending back to Goodwill or a local thrift store.”

Harpster isn’t the only person to combine sustainability with the chance to start a side hustle. The Depop community comprises 30 million users (90 percent under 25 in 2021) who post 140,000 new listings each day. It’s all part of a booming secondhand clothing market, which ThredUp predicts will reach $350 billion by 2027.

But not everyone’s celebrating. According to Buzzfeed, some Twitter users have accused Depop resellers of price gouging, with some even likening them to landlords.

“Please understand thrift stores are for ACTUAL sustainable shopping,” one Twitter user says. “Low income individuals deserve nice sh*t too and shouldn’t have to compete w tiktokers w nothing but time and $…”

Depop seller Mia Smith (CAS’25) says they understand why some sellers charge more for the pieces they source. It’s a legitimate business, Smith says, and one that takes considerable effort. “It takes a really good eye to find pieces that are good enough to sell for that much,” they say. “It takes a lot of work, a lot of patience, and a lot of dedication.”

Resellers, many of whom make Depop their main source of income, go to the bins at eight am, Smith says. They take note of which days inventory comes in to get the best garments and spend hours boosting their engagement on the app.

When Smith found an authentic Juicy Couture hoodie at a thrift store in a small town in New Hampshire, they knew they’d struck gold. “I was like, I can’t just not buy that, because I knew it would sell for so much,” Smith says.

They bought the hoodie for under $5 and sold it for $60.

Seller fees play a large role in pushing Depop users to upsell. Rebecca Peng (CAS’25) says that when she first started reselling clothes on Depop, she was actually losing money. Depop takes 8 to 10 percent of the sale, and many sellers cover shipping and tax on their own.

But Peng takes issue with the exorbitant markups of some of Depop sellers, as well. “When I price my items, I try not to mark prices so high because I know Depop sellers are notorious for overcharging people, especially for thrifted items,” she says. “I just try to charge a little bit over the amount that I would usually charge, just to take into account Depop fees and sales tax.”

Some people are concerned about more than the price tag. Much of the chagrin about thrift flipping comes from rising thrift store prices as well. The Wall Street Journal reports that increased demand for secondhand clothing, coupled with the surging inflation rate, has caused items like T-shirts to occasionally sell for over $50 in secondhand shops like Goodwill and the Salvation Army.

These concerns resonate with Harpster, but she’s looking at it from a different angle: thrift flipping promotes the reuse of discarded items, which makes it an environmentally friendly practice. “I definitely disagree that it’s not sustainable,” she says. “If anything, it’s more sustainable because at the [Goodwill] bins, they take that [unsold] stuff and throw it out, and it goes straight to the landfill.”

Not everyone agrees. Eric Tran (CAS’25, CFA’25), editor in chief of Fabrio, a sustainable fashion magazine at BU, says reselling on Depop—especially thrift flipping—can actually hurt the sustainable clothing movement’s legitimacy.

“Depop is something that can easily get capitalized off of, easily made into a trend and easily manipulated,” he says. “I know a lot of people use Depop as a way to make money instead of thinking sustainably.”

Tran remembers going to Goodwill in Utah and seeing a line of young people camped out outside the store, waiting for new inventory to come in. As they dug through the bins to find designer items, he was sure they were resellers. He saw some people finding an item and reselling it to another shopper even before leaving the store.

“Ultimately, capitalizing off of places like the Goodwill bins and Depop can create stigma surrounding sustainable fashion and the ethics of sustainable fashion,” he says.

Still, in spite of his misgivings, Tran maintains the app is “good in essence.” If buyers steer clear of sellers who are obviously overcharging, Depop provides a convenient way to consume sustainably.

“I don’t think it’s fair to tell everyone you need to be completely, 100 percent sustainable, because, practically speaking, we live in a capitalistic world,” he says. “But it’s about at the bare minimum having an awareness of what you actually buy, what you hold, what you feel, and what you pay for.”