The billion-dollar resale market luxury brands are leaving on the table

Luxury’s claim to longevity is not tested in campaigns or on runways. It is tested in the secondary market, where time, desirability, and price converge in full public view — with or without a brand’s involvement. For fashion, the secondary market has long been treated as an afterthought, a reputational risk to be managed from a distance. Hard luxury has operated under a different logic. And the results are beginning to make the fashion industry’s hesitation look like a strategic error. Watch brands write the blueprint Rolex launched its Certified Pre-Owned (CPO) program in December 2022, initially through Bucherer boutiques across six European countries before expanding to the U.S. and beyond. By allowing authorized dealers to sell authenticated pre-owned watches under an official Rolex warranty, the brand inserted itself into the valuation loop of its own products, converting what had been a gray market problem into a controlled distribution channel. According to data from EveryWatch, Rolex CPO sales reached $594 million in 2025, up from $90 million in 2023, across more than 100 retail doors worldwide. Richard Mille moved earlier and more deliberately in Asia. Through Value of Time (VOT), its official certified pre-owned retail partner and the only authorized channel for pre-owned Richard Mille timepieces in the region, the brand has boutiques in Singapore and Hong Kong, which opened in 2020 and 2025, respectively. Each watch is serviced by manufacture-trained watchmakers and sold with a 24-month international warranty. In the luxury watch market, pre-owned carries the same standards as primary retail. That is the point. The archive as an asset The economic logic behind both programs rests on the same principle: a brand’s archive is not merely a historical record. It is a market-making instrument. Omega’s Speedmaster — the only watch NASA has qualified for extravehicular activity and the first worn on the moon — drives secondary market demand precisely because of its storied history. Each collector transaction is a public reaffirmation of the watch’s durability and cultural weight. Cartier activates a different dynamic. Archival references including the Crash, Baignoire, and Tank are kept in circulation through auction exposure, museum exhibitions, and cultural resurfacing. When John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy returned to the cultural spotlight with a February mini-series about their tumultuous relationship, search interest and secondary demand for Cartier spiked almost immediately. Resale does not dilute brand mythology. Managed correctly, it compounds it. China’s trust gap In China, the stakes of that lesson are particularly high. The country’s secondhand luxury market grew from around $8 billion in 2020 to an estimated $30 billion in 2025, according to iResearch, driven by rising new-goods prices, macroeconomic uncertainty, and shifting attitudes toward pre-owned goods among millennial and Gen Z consumers. Standing in the way is trust. Around 42% of consumer complaints about secondhand luxury in 2024 related to authenticity, according to the China Consumers Association, as cited by Daxue Consulting. More than 30% of surveyed consumers said fear of counterfeits stops them from using resale platforms altogether. China’s leading platforms have responded physically. Xianyu opened a 4,000-square-meter lifestyle hub in Shenzhen in December 2025, operating simultaneously as a retail floor, authentication center, and content hub. Zhuanzhuan launched Super Zhuanzhuan in Beijing’s historic Friendship Store in June 2025, putting all stock through its official inspection process before items reach the floor. Zzer, which opened a Shanghai flagship in August 2021, employs senior authenticators holding formal China inspection qualifications to examine items in person rather than relying on photos or AI. “Secondhand stores are exciting, affordable, massive, and full of choices,” says Yuan Qian, China luxury expert and founder of Zaiye Studio, Onze Onze, and HIH Paris. “Seeing the product in real life is crucial for secondhand luxury items.” International luxury brands are largely absent from this infrastructure. In a market this large, moving second means ceding narrative control — over pricing, authenticity, and the stories being told about the archive — to domestic platforms building that trust from the ground up. A gateway to young collectors Vacheron Constantin’s Les Collectionneurs range offers a template for what internalized resale can look like. Unearthed, restored, and certified vintage watches are sold directly from Vacheron Constantin boutiques with a two-year warranty. The program serves as a heritage initiative, a client retention tool, and an entry point for younger collectors. The archive becomes a living offering rather than a historical footnote. The implications are commercial as well as cultural. Younger collectors frequently begin their relationship with a brand through the secondary market. If that first point of contact is a third-party platform with no brand presence, the brand loses the data, the relationship, and the ability to shape what that encounter means. The case for moving According to Christie’s, millennials and Gen Z accounted for 44% of bidders and buyers in luxury in 2025. Female spending at the auction house rose 20% year-on-year. Private watch sales exceeded $10 million on multiple occasions, often in discreet collector-to-collector transactions. The generational transfer is already underway. BCG and Vestiaire Collective estimate that secondhand currently represents around 8% of total fashion and luxury sales, with penetration expected to reach 10% by 2030. Watch resale alone is projected to reach 35–40% of the global watch market by the same date. Brands that build authentication infrastructure, trade-in programs, and archival storytelling now will be positioned to shape that growth. Those that wait will find that the infrastructure — and the client relationships — already belong to someone else. Carlotta Rodben is a luxury innovation specialist and author of “Beyond Luxury: The Promise of Emotion.” She previously led innovation at Chanel and now advises luxury brands on strategy and transformation.

Sectors

Insights

Company

The billion-dollar resale market luxury brands are leaving on the table