Would you spend $1,765 on a secondhand pink Zucca-embroidered Fendi Baguette on Amazon?
Like Saks before it, Rebag is betting that enough shoppers will splurge for luxury on the platform. On 10 June, the secondhand luxury reseller launched its biggest partnership to date with Amazon Luxury Stores, making a vast majority of its secondhand designer bags available on the high-end corner of the mass-market retailer. Rebag has increasingly leant into third-party resale, launching on Bloomingdale’s in August 2024, followed by Macy’s (which owns Bloomingdale’s) at the beginning of 2025. But unlike Rebag’s department store tie-ups, which offer a limited selection of bags, almost all of Rebag’s inventory will be available on Amazon.com (about 30,000 bags).
“With Amazon, we have very wide goals and want to be as broad as possible in the category,” says Rebag founder and CEO Charles Gorra. In essence, Rebag is following the Amazon ethos (or what Gorra calls “Amazon-esque scale”): the more options and inventory, the better.
“Our next journey in the next quarters and years is really about, how do you get to that next user who’s maybe not so intimate with [luxury] resale at this moment?” Gorra says. “Typically, you have to go and find and connect to that user in channels that they’re more a bit acquainted with. That’s the story with Bloomingdale’s, where we’re having great traction. And certainly it’s the story with Amazon.”
Rebag is the latest in a line of fashion brands and companies, from Saks to Nike, who have looked to Amazon to drive sales in a difficult climate. In April, Saks launched on Amazon under Amazon Luxury Stores. In May, Nike announced plans to relaunch on the e-commerce giant after pulling out in 2019. The moves follow a similar logic to Gorra’s own: capture users where they are already.
The Saks-Amazon storefront is here, with brands like Ganni, Dolce Gabbana and Balmain on board. It’s the latest attempt by Amazon to win over the luxury sector.
It’s a consumer acquisition bid at a time when consumer spending is more constrained than ever. In 2025, 37 per cent agree that they shop less for luxury fashion than they did a year prior, according to a Vogue Business luxury consumer survey. Consumers in the US could see a $4,700 increase in living expenditures back in April due to President Trump’s tariffs, per Yale Budget Lab. Unlike the pandemic, consumer confidence is almost at an all-time low, among both wealthy consumers and aspirational luxury consumers, says Robin Mellery-Pratt, partner at intelligence and strategy company Matter.
With a reported 83 per cent of US households now shopping on Amazon, luxury fashion has a large pool to reach. How many of them will buy luxury?
Different time, right time?
Amazon first launched Luxury Stores in September 2020. It was peak pandemic, luxury was struggling (alongside the rest of the fashion industry) and consumers were sitting at home with money to spend. Alongside their face masks and disinfectants, Amazon offered up Oscar de la Renta, soon followed by brands including Anna Sui, 3.1 Phillip Lim and Adam Lippes. Off the back of its initial launch, though, Luxury Stores’s growth stagnated, and conversations about the e-commerce giant’s luxury push fell to the wayside. That is, until Amazon invested in Saks Global, driving speculation that it was once again setting its sights on luxury retail.
Now, Amazon is amping up its luxury aspirations once more, in a very different environment to the initial trial. Consumer sentiment is shakier than it has been in a long time, as shoppers question luxury’s increasingly outrageous prices and tariffs generate heightened anxiety. But, post-Saks investment, Amazon is banking on consumers’ familiarity with the site to keep them spending, if more than usual.
This recent push is what drew Rebag’s Gorra to commit. “They have been pushing Amazon luxury meaningfully as a platform even more so in the last few weeks,” he says, referring to the Saks launch, which he knew would be at a similar time to Rebag’s own.
“We know that Amazon customers are eager to shop luxury brands, which is why we’ve continued to expand selection in Luxury Stores at Amazon to cater to our customers’ varying interests in luxury products from beauty, skincare and fragrance to designer bags and accessories,” Jenny Freshwater, VP of Amazon fashion and fitness, said in a statement. “We will continue to build our luxury selection so customers can find whatever products they are seeking, where they are already shopping, with fast, free delivery.” (Amazon declined to comment further on how it measures luxury interest.)
While Covid’s online shopping spike was necessitated by lockdowns, people are now habitually shopping for luxury online. In 2024, online as a sales channel entered a normalisation trajectory, following its post-pandemic swings, according to Bain. And in Vogue Business’s luxury consumer survey, online multi-brand led the way for luxury fashion and accessories shopping. Fifty-one per cent favoured shopping online from a multi-brand retailer, equal to in-person from a brand’s own store (also 51 per cent). Direct-to-consumer (DTC) via a brand’s own site followed closely at 49 per cent. Those earning over 100,000 (in their local currency) were slightly more likely to shop from an online multi-brand retailer or department store (57 per cent vs 49 per cent of those earning under 100,000).
That said, it’s not without issues. Aside from consumers’ serious cost of living concerns and luxury fatigue, online luxury will always have its shortcomings. The problem persists that many shoppers like to touch and feel products with hefty price tags and long for an in-person experience, which Amazon can’t provide, says Neil Saunders, managing director and retail analyst at Globaldata, adding that Amazon is also missing the inspiration factor given its more basic interface. Plus, when respondents say they prefer shopping for luxury at an online multi-brand, chances are they’re envisioning Mytheresa more than they are Amazon.
Size matters
But Amazon is far less niche than Mytheresa — and this is the appeal for luxury companies. For luxury, Amazon offers scale of reach and operational efficiency, Mellery-Pratt says. “By partnering with the platform brands can better benefit from retail marketing networks, CRM [customer relationship management] tools and an increased convenience benefit for consumers,” he says. Saunders agrees: “It makes sense as Amazon has a huge audience and can deliver sales.” He adds that it can also be an easier channel for many consumers to navigate compared to a brand’s own, which they may be less familiar with.
The sheer size of Amazon’s usership is hugely appealing, Gorra says, adding that Amazon’s scale is hard to beat. “When there’s such a massive audience, even a small share of a massive audience is likely very meaningful user gains for us.”
For Gorra, Amazon is a means of capturing new clients outside of its typical consumer profile. To date, the company has largely targeted luxury users, he says. Amazon is about expanding beyond this user. “We have to go beyond our comfort zone and into unexpected channels,” he says. “The belief is that everybody is somehow a candidate. We have a range of product — obviously we’re in a luxury position, but we have anywhere from a $500 entry-level bag to $20,000.”
Rebag’s user base is segmented, he says, and it’s now looking for channel partners that resonate with specific sects. Bloomingdale’s stocks higher end products like Hermès bags and ultra-luxe watches. Amazon, Gorra expects, will be more “middle segment”, for those who shop the Louis Vuitton Neverfull or the Balenciaga City, for instance.
Saks’s launch follows a similar logic. “We know there are luxury consumers already shopping on Amazon who are interested in luxury fashion and beauty, and this experience enables us to enhance engagement with this cohort,” says Emily Essner, president and chief commercial officer of Saks Global. “It’s still early days, but we have already seen an indication that we are reaching true luxury shoppers, based on higher than expected average order value (AOV) and particular interest in categories like handbags, women’s apparel and beauty.”
It’s also a means of reaching consumers outside of cities Rebag has so far established itself in.
“Right now, we’re very penetrated in the top three luxury US markets: tri-state around New York, Florida and California. That’s our core demo,” Gorra says. Amazon users go well beyond these three geographies. “There are a lot of affluent places that we’re just not really known locally,” he adds, pointing to Texas among other southern states. “For us, there’s a big awareness play there in terms of getting in front of an audience where we don’t have stores.”
Plus, for areas where luxury is not so readily available — but there are plenty of affluent shoppers keen to spend — Amazon’s Luxury Stores play could be a win. This is less of an opportunity for brands that already have name recognition, though, Mellery-Pratt flags. “Most of the significant wealth centres in the US have been effectively tapped by own-store networks already, and some limited but prestigious multi-brands,” he says. “The distinction here, perhaps, is ease and speed of delivery, but one would assume the variation in delivery times at a certain price point becomes minimal.”
Mellery-Pratt isn’t confident that Amazon’s scale and familiarity will be enough to outweigh the burdens burdening the luxury industry at this moment. “While [a number of] factors represent positive opportunities, they are insufficient to overcome the impact of wealth polarisation, low consumer confidence, aggressive pricing strategies and the loss of brand control to short-form video algorithms,” he says.
Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.
More from this author:
PVH lowers full-year outlook, despite Q1 growth
