REI Garage Sales: Lessons From REI's 60 Years of Selling Used Gear

As major brands venture into the resale business, others have been making space for people to buy and sell used products for decades. Outdoor gear retailer REI Co-op sold used gear at its stores through its members-only "garage sales" for more than 60 years. In the last few years though, REI has transitioned away from those periodic garage sale events, where members were invited to shop returned gear at a discounted price. In their place, the company has outfitted its 174 stores nationwide and website with a Re/Supply section that allows shoppers access to used gear any time. Thanks to its famously generous return policy and a new trade-in program, REI's recommerce arm sold more than 1 million products in 2021, the company said. Sustainability and New Revenue Streams Are Driving Brands to Online Resale Marketplaces By turning resale into a more formalized arm of the company, REI was able to grow its recommerce business by 86% last year, according to Ken Voeller, the brand's recommerce director. That gain was faster than the company's overall growth, he noted, which is one step to achieving REI's goal to "decouple our revenue growth from our climate impact." That decoupling is something all businesses will need to figure out—and that many are still reticent to discuss. "One of the fundamental ideas that underlies recommerce more broadly is this idea of, 'How do we maximize the lifespan of everything that we make and sell to—by extension—minimize its relative impact on the environment?'" Voeller said. When used is best Imagine you've never gone backpacking before. You want to give it a go, but you don't want to break the bank on an activity that you're not even sure if you like. Getting used gear for a discounted price can lower the barrier to entry for many outdoor sports. For REI, that appeal is also a great way for the retailer to meet a very specific consumer need. "We're able to have this really deep interaction with the customer in our retail stores, oriented primarily around what they're trying to do outside," Voeller explained. As the brand further integrates new and used products, that focus on helping consumers find the gear they need for exactly what they're doing—and how experienced they are—will continue to inform REI merchandizing, he said. Voeller and his team are currently working on answering the question: "How does new product and used product interact with each other, and how do we present that to the customer in a really compelling way?" Nail the logistics Platforms like thredUP, The Real Real and Trove have made the logistics of resale their business—REI works with the latter to power Re/Supply. It's all about taking the messy complexity of finding, sorting and cataloging used items from consumers out of the equation for the brands they partner with. How brands handle that process can have a significant impact on how environmentally beneficial their resale arm turns out to be. "Brands and retailers have to make sure they have very responsible resale channels for anything that comes back into their system," Voeller said. "How do we make sure that everything that comes back into our system, we're able to resell to the next customer so that it doesn't end up where we don't want it to?" Gen Z Is a Contradiction When It Comes to Fast Fashion

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REI's Been Selling Used Gear for Over 60 Years. Here's What Brands New to Resale Can Learn

Recommerce director Ken Voeller on the transition from garage sales to Re/Supply

Kathryn Lundstrom

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Kathryn Lundstrom