Recommerce is the buying and selling of goods that someone has already owned, through an app or website built for resale. The word is short for "reverse commerce". It is also called resale or the second-hand market. It covers used phones, clothes worn a few times, furniture, rare sneakers and refurbished laptops.
What a recommerce marketplace really sells is trust between strangers. A buyer worries that the item is fake, damaged or not as described, and that the money will be lost. A seller worries about being paid. So the marketplace offers three things. First, it can check the item, through product authentication. Second, it gives a price guide, based on what similar items sold for recently. Third, it holds the buyer's money until the item arrives as described. This is called escrow.
Imagine a woman in Chandigarh who wore a lehenga once, at her cousin's wedding. It cost ₹24,000 new. She photographs it in the resale app. AI listing generation writes the title and the description from the photos. The app's price guide shows that similar lehengas have sold for ₹7,000 to ₹8,500, and it suggests ₹7,500. A buyer in Ludhiana pays ₹7,500 through the app's payment gateway. The app holds the money. A courier collects the lehenga from the seller and delivers it. The buyer has two days to report a problem. She reports none, and the app pays the seller ₹7,500 minus its fee.
Recommerce runs in two main ways. In peer-to-peer resale, one person sells to another, and the marketplace only lists the item, holds the money and arranges the courier. The lehenga sale is an example. In managed resale, the company itself buys the used item, checks it, repairs it and sells it with a warranty. Refurbished phones are usually sold this way. The checking and repairing is done by reverse logistics, which grades each item's condition. A third way prices items like a stock market: the bid-ask resale marketplace, used mainly for sneakers.
How is recommerce different from online classifieds? On a classifieds site, the site only shows the ad. The buyer and the seller meet, inspect the item and pay each other themselves. On a recommerce marketplace, the marketplace stands between them: it takes the payment, arranges the delivery and settles any dispute. That costs a fee, which buyers and sellers pay for the safety.
In fashion, resale is growing faster than new retail. One reason is that a model can now write the listing, which used to be the hardest part of selling a used item.