What we believe
The future of secondhand starts in the store.
And it grows by connecting those stores to the digital economy. Secondhand isn’t a trend and it isn’t a niche — it’s a large, durable economy, and most of it still happens in person.
Secondhand is commerce.
It has volume, margin, velocity and repeat demand. It deserves technology built for the scale and complexity of the business it has become.
In a store, nobody’s guessing.
Every secondhand item is one of one, and condition is a judgement call. Online that means returns. In a store the customer picks it up, looks at it, and decides — which is why a sale made in a store costs nothing to complete, and part of why physical resale grew 8% last year.
You don’t have to choose.
Brick-and-mortar grew 8% last year. E-commerce grew 31%. The strongest operators are learning to sell in both, and we think that’s where the category is going.
The merchant is the business.
Everything our companies build is judged one way: did it help someone sell more, sell faster, sell more easily, and get a better price.
The numbers behind it
Both channels are growing. The store is still where most of it happens.
Growth in the physical channel, growth online, and the volume that already runs through the stores we serve.
Growth figures are category-level, year over year. $2.35B is gross merchandise value processed through our companies’ systems in [calendar year 2025].
Why Emporia exists
An economy hiding in plain sight.
Secondhand has been underestimated for as long as it’s existed. We think it’s one of the most durable markets in commerce, and that the stores running it deserve to be seen.
Underestimated for as long as it’s existed.
No benchmark, no shared view of what good looks like, and very little attention paid to the operators who are quietly excellent at it. Meanwhile $2.35 billion moved through our customers’ stores in [2025], and that’s a fraction of the whole.
A shelf is only visible to whoever walks past it.
Every rack, booth and shelf in the country holds inventory that only its neighbourhood can see. We don’t think it has to stay that way.
Let a local economy be found from anywhere.
Taking an economy that has always been local and letting it be found from anywhere, without moving a single thing off a shelf.
Resale is one of the most durable markets in commerce. Most people underestimate it. We don’t.
Jeff Dickerson·Chief Executive Officer, Emporia Holdings
