US secondhand/thrift store market

Americans spent more on their pets every year between 2012 and 2023, and also bought more secondhand goods every year during the same period. The correlation is 0.97. One interpretation is that the money saved on vintage clothing is being redirected into artisanal dog food. Another is that both trends reflect the same person — millennial, urban, values-conscious — making purchasing decisions that feel ethical and personal simultaneously. The pets are probably not shopping at thrift stores. Probably.

Both the US pet industry and the secondhand market are driven by the same demographic and values shift: millennials treating pets as family members (the 'pet humanization' trend) while also embracing sustainable consumption and conscious spending. Pet industry spending grew from roughly $55 billion in 2012 to over $136 billion by 2023. The US resale market grew from about $14 billion to over $43 billion in the same period, driven by platforms like ThredUp, Poshmark, and The RealReal. Both trends accelerated during the pandemic as people acquired pets and reassessed their consumption habits simultaneously.

Consumer values shift in clusters, not individually. When a generation decides to spend differently, they do it across categories at once, leaving a distinctive fingerprint in completely unrelated market datasets.