The rise of resale shopping is turning thrift stores into destinations where consumers are chasing more than a bargain, says retail expert Doug Stephens, who sees the growing popularity of Value Village as a sign that shoppers are looking for entertainment and the thrill of the unexpected.
Stephens, who has tracked the resale market for years, said he was struck by the crowd and wide range of shoppers at a recent Value Village opening, from young families and teenagers to older consumers, singles and couples. The turnout, he said, suggests resale is no longer a niche pursuit and should have mainstream retailers looking over their shoulders.
“What they’re really selling, when you get right down to it, is they’re selling dopamine,” said Stephens, Founder and President of Retail Prophet.
The appeal, he said, comes from the anticipation of finding an unexpected bargain — sometimes an item worth hundreds of dollars for a fraction of the price — and has transformed thrift shopping from a utilitarian errand into a form of sport, entertainment and social activity.
In a recent LinkedIn post, Stephens wrote about attending the Value Village grand opening in Waterdown, Ontario.
“We’ve all seen the headlines about the resale market’s explosive growth. But it’s hard to appreciate the energy around this sector until you experience it viscerally,” he said.
The store was scheduled to open at 9 a.m. and by 8 a.m. a line had already formed.
“But the numbers weren’t the most important part. It was the energy in the crowd — the genuine excitement, the anticipation. I hadn’t felt anything like it in mainstream retail in at least a decade, maybe longer. It’s the kind of energy that used to belong to store openings in New York, Los Angeles, or London. Yet here it was, brimming over in the comparatively tiny town of Waterdown,” he said.
“Just as striking was the diversity of the crowd. Families and singles. Teens and twenty-somethings. Kids and grandparents. Men and women. Everyone. The same demographic and economic breadth that once made department stores of the 1960s, 70s so powerful has migrated to the secondhand market of 2026.
“Their reasons for being there were just as varied. Eavesdropping on conversations in line, I heard it all: some had come for the savings, others purely for the thrill of the hunt. For others it was a social outing with friends and sprinkled throughout were the resellers — people sourcing inventory for their Etsy, eBay, and Poshmark stores, many of them making a tidy living doing exactly this.”
His takeaway from the experience?
“Every retailer — from the luxury houses of Regent Street and Fifth Avenue to discount chains like Walmart and Dollar General — should be rightfully terrified. Because every day resale juggernauts like Value Village, Goodwill and others are selling something conventional retailers gave up on selling a long time ago — excitement. And the market for genuine, offline, real-world excitement today is boundless.”
In an interview with Retail Insider, Stephens said the trend is not a niche or a subculture for a very particular kind of consumer.
“This is, to my mind, something that suggests that consumers en masse are looking for bargains, sure, but I think more than that, they’re looking for fun and entertainment at retail, which I don’t think we’ve really had, you know, for many, many years,” he said.
The thrill of the hunt becomes addictive.
“It goes from being something that’s sort of utilitarian from a shopping standpoint. It becomes a bit of a sport, a bit of a form of entertainment for people. So I think that’s really what they’re bottling up here. And the fact that you’ll go sometimes and you won’t find anything, that’s all part of it, too.”
More from Retail Insider:
