When Willy Chavarria made his Paris Fashion Week debut in January, he was riding high — his brand was celebrating 10 years in business and he had won the CFDA Award for American Menswear Designer of the Year just a few months prior. The industry was watching, and Ebay was there to leverage the moment.
Alongside his Autumn/Winter 2025 collection, Chavarria showed a number of pre-loved and archival pieces, sourced on Ebay, some from as far afield as Japan. Today, Ebay is announcing its plans to repeat this blueprint with a slew of designer partnerships, spanning all four fashion capitals: Altuzarra, Eckhaus Latta, Kallmeyer and Luar in New York; Erdem, Ahluwalia and Conner Ives in London; Moschino, Francesco Murano and Institution by Galib Gassanoff in Milan; and Ottolinger, Niccolò Pasqualetti and Burc Akyol in Paris. Once fashion month wraps, the pieces will all be auctioned via a live-shopping broadcast on Ebay, with the proceeds going to charity.
This is just one facet of Ebay’s 30th-anniversary celebrations, which serendipitously fall in ‘Secondhand September’. As well as the designer partnerships, Ebay is bringing back its Endless Runway pre-loved fashion shows in New York and London, curated by resident stylists Brie Welch (in the US) and Amy Bannerman (in the UK). And last week, Ebay opened the doors to its so-called ’95 Shop, an in-person and online treasure trove of nostalgic 1990s paraphernalia curated by one of the decade’s leading actresses, Sarah Michelle Gellar. Running from 3 to 9 September, the pop-up included everything from a 1995 Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel Rue Cambon Paris belt to a 1999 Pokémon Charizard Holo 1st Edition Shadowless and a 1997 Land Rover Defender 90.
Intercepting cultural touchstones has become a core pillar of Ebay’s fashion strategy since the runaway success of its Love Island sponsorship in 2022, bolstering the platform’s fashion cachet at a time when competition for secondhand shoppers has never been higher.
It seems to be paying off, says CEO Jamie Iannone, noting that fashion delivers more than $10 billion in annual gross merchandise value (GMV) at Ebay each year, and is one of its most important categories. “Fashion is a gateway,” he explains. “Buyers who purchase a $500-plus handbag go on to spend more than $1,500 on handbags and nearly $7,000 across other categories. Fashion is also a perfect fit for Ebay’s broader vision, sitting at the intersection of culture, commerce and community.”
Doubling down on pre-loved fashion is just one of the ways Iannone plans to stay ahead of the re-commerce curve, “leaning in where the momentum is strongest”. He’s also investing in authentication as a way to build consumer trust, quickly scaling new technologies that make discovery easier, and tapping into existing communities through strategic celebrity tie-ups.
On the eve of Ebay’s biggest decade yet, Iannone and VP of fashion Alexis Hoopes sat down with Vogue Business to reflect on the platform’s progression from “a small auction site” to “one of the world’s largest resale destinations”, and what the future might hold.
Strength in numbers?
Today, Ebay has 134 million active buyers across 190 countries, with several million sellers supplying over 2.4 billion products. This seemingly “infinite selection” is what keeps people coming back, says Iannone.
On Ebay, ubiquity is power. “One of the benefits is the breadth and scale of our offering. We can serve the customer who is looking for a hard-to-find fashion piece they saw in a movie, and the person who just wants something to wear tomorrow night. Because we operate globally, we’re able to pull inventory from all over the world,” says Hoopes. “One of our biggest challenges is that a lot of people still don’t know that we have such an incredible assortment of brands.”
Many of Ebay’s forays into the fashion zeitgeist have been designed to emphasise just how wide ranging its product listings are, with an emphasis on pre-loved luxury. At the Met Gala in May, Ebay dressed a number of celebrities in pre-loved looks. Vogue red carpet host Emma Chamberlain paired her Courrèges dress with vintage accessories that she and her stylist Jared Ellner found on Ebay. Actor and singer Jeremy Pope walked the carpet in a Maison Margiela suit, Saint Laurent shoes, a Patek Philippe watch, a Van Cleef Arpels ring, and a Tiffany Co brooch, all of which were found on Ebay by image architect Law Roach, who also wore Ebay accessories, including pieces from Cartier, Tiffany and Audemars Piguet. When asked about the partnership at the time, Roach told press: “Ebay is the ultimate fashion treasure chest. Every piece I pulled had history and a story to tell [...] That’s not just luxury, that’s legacy.”
But without technological interventions, the process of actually unearthing those treasures on a site as densely populated as Ebay could turn consumers off. That’s why Ebay has been investing so heavily in AI-powered tools to aid discovery and help customers filter their searches. The Magical Listing tool uses AI to extrapolate details about an item from the images uploaded, making it quicker and easier for sellers to list their wares, while the Explore and Shop the Look features offer personalised recommendations based on each shoppers’ previous purchases and searches. “Technology has completely reshaped how people discover resale online,” says Iannone. “We’re evolving beyond search, using predictive tools to connect buyers with what they want before they even search for it.”
Choice versus curation
In many ways, Ebay is using the tools of the primary market to meet consumers where they are. Where conventional retailers would have buyers to dictate tastes and curate drops, Ebay has Welch and Bannerman, who have helped to elevate the platform and act as a bridge between Ebay and the fashion industry it wants on board.
It has also enlisted the help of numerous celebrities and influencers to capture the potential customers in their loyal fan bases. Elton John and Margherita Maccapani Missoni have both auctioned items from their personal collections on Ebay to raise money for charity. And a slew of other celebrities and influencers have curated a wishlist of Ebay finds for other users to shop from. Among them are World Champion snowboarder Chloe Kim, sneakerhead content creator Jade Fox and singer Chappell Roan, who also wore a custom patchwork pink suit made from upcycled garments sourced on Ebay to the Met Gala (the look was created by American costume designer Paul Tazewell).
The key is to choose celebrity ambassadors who are “true Ebay enthusiasts” and offer consumers a wide range of ambassadors to connect with, says Hoopes.
While many of Ebay’s recent collaborations have focused on luxury, its Love Island sponsorship has proven just as fruitful bringing pre-loved to the mass market. Ebay searches for “pre-loved fashion” surged by 330 per cent after the first season it sponsored aired, and the show has borne multiple Ebay ambassadors, including UK series 8 finalist Tasha Ghouri and Love Island: All Stars winner Tom Clare.
It might seem like Ebay’s fashion team is throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. That’s kind of the point, says Hoopes. Asked which of its various cultural activations or ambassadorships generated the best return on investment (ROI), she says the data surrounding individual activations is less important than the overall perception of Ebay. “We see our brand perception scores continually increasing, and we measure this by asking our customers things like: does Ebay have the brands I want? Is it a great place to shop? Fashion is so emotional and experiential that you need a combination of these things together. It’s about being part of the cultural conversation around fashion, in all its different forms.”
There’s no circularity without trust
The other benefit of ambassadors with loyal followings is that they have already earned trust with their audiences, which rubs off on their recommendations. It’s a tempting halo effect for a platform like Ebay. “Trust is the foundation of everything we do,” says Hoopes.
It’s hard to imagine now that pre-loved was ever a hard sell, but it’s only in the past five years or so that it has proliferated the mainstream. For much of Ebay’s lifespan, the platform faced an uphill battle convincing customers that pre-loved and refurbished goods could be just as reliable as primary goods. “In fashion resale, the biggest opportunity — and the biggest challenge — is building the next level of trust and transparency,” says Iannone.
Ebay’s investments in trust span from digital product passports (DPPs) to its growing fleet of global authentication centres. On the former, Ebay acquired Milan-based digital ID startup Certilogo in July 2023, because Iannone believes that DPPs represent “the future”, but will “take time” to be adopted at scale. On the latter, he says one of the biggest turning points in Ebay’s journey was the introduction of its Authenticity Guarantee in 2020, which started with luxury watches, but is now available head-to-toe, after Ebay extended the programme to include apparel over £200 (from 70 different brands) earlier this month.
This doesn’t come without challenges — or costs. “We inspect every item by hand, so it’s really about getting the right people and training them to be knowledgeable about each brand, their unique identity and the components to look out for,” says Hoopes. Between April and June, Ebay authenticated over one million items, a record for a single quarter, bringing its total to 15 million items since the programme launched.
While technical advancements like digital IDs and teams of anonymous authenticators can deliver a certain amount of trust, innovations in social commerce are helping Ebay put a human face to products, which Hoopes says can also engender a sense of trust and loyalty in customers. “It’s such a great medium to bring the connection between the seller and the community to life,” she says. “Sellers can tell the history of the item, really going into detail about what it is, and then the community can ask questions and engage in a way that typical e-commerce doesn’t allow for. We’re seeing that really scale and engage new people in the pre-loved space.”
While pre-loved and refurbished products currently account for just 40 per cent of Ebay’s GMV, the goal is to make secondhand first choice, says Iannone. “Resale is both our foundation and our future.” And when it comes to resale, “trust, selection and community are tablestakes”.
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