Recommerce as a customer acquisition channel: What the Roccamore numbers show

Monica Trabjerg Balle, Chief Commercial Officer at Create2Stay and formerly Head of ecommerce at Roccamore, makes a direct case for brand-owned recommerce: a take-back program is a customer acquisition channel in its own right. At Roccamore, 42% of all secondhand items were bought by customers who had never purchased from the brand before, and they came in at roughly half the return rate of new products. For more on how personalization drives acquisition, see our pillar on ecommerce personalization, and for the wider conversation read the companion piece recommerce inside the brand and the episode on the importance of company DNA.

TL;DR

Brand-owned recommerce acquires new, loyal customers. At Roccamore, 42% of secondhand buyers were new to the brand, returns ran at about half the rate of new products, and the channel keeps first-party sales data in-house. The Boston Consulting Group reports secondhand fashion is growing three to four times faster than new fashion.

Why is recommerce a customer acquisition channel?

Most brands file second-hand resale under corporate social responsibility. Monica Trabjerg Balle reframes it as a growth channel. A buyer who picks up a vetted, half-price item from a brand they admire gets the same experience as buying new, which makes the second-hand listing a low-friction entry point into the brand.

The acquisition signal is in the data. At Roccamore, Trabjerg Balle saw that 42% of all secondhand items were bought by new customers, people who had never purchased from the brand before. That is a meaningful share of buyers arriving through a channel many companies treat as an afterthought.

The customers who arrive this way also tend to be the ones a brand most wants. As Trabjerg Balle puts it, these are loyal customers because they are people who really want this brand. Many of them are brand ambassadors from their very first order, precisely because they chose to buy second-hand rather than new.

The price point helps the entry without cheapening the relationship. Being able to get something from a brand for, say, half price while still getting the full brand experience lowers the barrier for a first-time buyer. The buyer trades a small step down in price for the same product quality, the same loyalty rewards, and the same sense of belonging to the brand. That is what turns a discounted first order into the start of a lasting relationship rather than a one-off bargain hunt.

What did the Roccamore data actually show?

The headline figure is 42%: at Roccamore, that share of all secondhand items was bought by customers new to the brand. Trabjerg Balle contrasts the quality of these customers with paid-acquisition traffic. A customer who comes in from an ad, she notes, often arrives through idle double-screen browsing, buys a pair of shoes, and has half-forgotten the purchase by the next morning. Those are not loyal customers.

A second-hand buyer behaves differently. They sought out the brand deliberately, so the relationship starts on firmer ground. Roccamore reinforces this by letting customers earn new loyalty points when they buy second-hand items, so the second-hand purchase plugs straight into the same rewards experience as a full-price order. The channel does not feel like a discount bin; it feels like the brand.

That combination, deliberate intent plus a real brand experience, is why Trabjerg Balle treats recommerce as an acquisition engine. The sustainability story is real, and it is also a customer-pipeline story with measurable numbers attached.

How does second-hand cut return rates?

Returns are one of the clearest financial signals that recommerce buyers are different. According to Trabjerg Balle, the return rate on second-hand items runs at around 50% of the return rate on a new product. Some Create2Stay brands see almost no returns at all on their second-hand items.

The reason is intent. When you buy something second-hand, you really buy something you want, so the casual, try-it-and-send-it-back behavior that drives returns on new fashion largely disappears. There is also a scarcity dynamic at work: at Roccamore, most items are limited edition, so when a buyer gets their hands on a second-hand piece, there is just this one. That fear of missing out pushes the buyer to commit rather than hedge.

Operationally, the second-hand product is also trustworthy. Across the roughly 30 brands on Create2Stay, every garment is checked for marks, professionally cleaned, repaired where needed, and graded so the product is fit to be sold again. EU and Danish legislation still gives the buyer a 14-day no-hassle return, so the lower return rate comes from genuine satisfaction, not from a lack of options.

What does the vetting and grading process involve?

The confidence buyers feel rests on a controlled refurbishment process. Trabjerg Balle describes a clear sequence across the roughly 30 brands on Create2Stay: each item is inspected for marks and damage, sent to a professional cleaning company, repaired if anything is wrong with it, and then graded so the brand knows the product is fit to be sold again.

This vetting is what lets the second-hand item deliver the same experience as buying new. The buyer is not gambling on an unknown peer-to-peer listing; they are buying a piece the brand has stood behind. That quality assurance is the bridge between a sustainability story and a real acquisition channel.

The 14-day no-hassle return, required under the relevant legislation, sits on top of the grading rather than replacing it. Buyers have the legal right to send an item back, yet the return rate stays low because the product arrives in the condition the grade promised.

How does recommerce fit email marketing?

The scarcity of second-hand inventory makes it a natural fit for triggered email. Because Roccamore items are limited edition and each second-hand listing is effectively a single SKU, there is exactly one of any given piece. That uniqueness changes the calculus on browse-abandonment and abandoned-basket flows.

Trabjerg Balle points to Klaviyo as the practical example. Integrating second-hand inventory into your Klaviyo email marketing is, in her words, a super cool tool: if a shopper has browsed or abandoned a basket containing a single-SKU item, a timely message makes obvious sense, because that exact piece may not be available much longer. The communication carries real urgency rather than manufactured pressure.

For brands already running Klaviyo, this means the recommerce channel can be activated with existing flows. The single-SKU nature of each listing turns standard browse-abandonment automation into a high-intent prompt, which suits the deliberate, brand-loyal buyer that second-hand attracts.

Why keep recommerce on your own platform?

The peer-to-peer second-hand market has existed for a long time, with eBay as the classic example. Trabjerg Balle notes a shift in mentality, at least in Europe, where the category is growing. The Boston Consulting Group reports that second-hand is growing three to four times faster than new fashion, a pace that makes the channel hard to ignore.

Some newer platforms now integrate peer-to-peer resale inside brand-facing storefronts. The catch, Trabjerg Balle warns, is the data: when the resale happens on another platform, you do not really get the data from the sales, because it lives somewhere else. For a brand trying to treat recommerce as an acquisition channel, that data gap is the difference between knowing who your new customers are and flying blind.

Keeping recommerce on your own platform preserves the first-party signal: which customers are new, how they behave afterwards, and how they respond to loyalty rewards and email. That is the foundation the entire acquisition argument rests on.

What does this mean for brands weighing a recommerce program?

For a brand deciding whether to build its own take-back and resale operation, Trabjerg Balle’s experience points to three connected payoffs. First, acquisition: 42% of Roccamore’s second-hand buyers were new to the brand. Second, quality of customer: lower return rates (around half those of new products, and almost none for some Create2Stay brands) plus high loyalty, because these buyers chose the brand deliberately. Third, ownership of data, which only holds if the resale runs on the brand’s own platform rather than a third-party peer-to-peer marketplace.

The supporting infrastructure is what makes it work: professional cleaning, repair, and grading so every item is fit to be sold again; loyalty points that fold second-hand purchases into the core experience; and single-SKU email flows in tools like Klaviyo that turn scarcity into well-timed communication. With second-hand fashion growing three to four times faster than new fashion, the question for most brands is less whether to participate and more whether to own the channel or hand the customer relationship to someone else.

Watch the full Conversations episode with Monica Trabjerg Balle: How recommerce is reshaping ecommerce.