--- title: Why Right Now Is the Best Time of Year to Shop for Cheap Designer Clothes description: Online consignment stores like ThredUp and The RealReal see a surge of buying and selling around the new year. authors: - name: Martha C. White role: Writer url: https://money.com/author/martha-c-white/ education: BA, English, Princeton University at_money_since: 2015 articles: 350 covers: - Lifestyle - Banking - Business - Career Advice - Credit - Credit Cards - Debt - Economy and Politics - Education - Federal Reserve Rate Cuts - Health and Wellness - Housing - Identity Theft - Insurance - Investing - Loans - Mortgages - Personal Finance - Professional Services - Retirement - Shopping - Taxes - Technology published: '2016-01-06T17:23:36.000Z' modified: '2016-01-06T17:23:36.000Z' section: Lifestyle tags: - Clothing - consignment shop - New Year's Resolutions - online shopping - pubdesk - secondhand - spring cleaning - thrift shop word_count: 257 canonical: https://money.com/secondhand-designer-apparel-thredup/ type: Article source: structured-blocks --- > **Disclosure:** We research all brands listed and may earn a fee from our partners. Research and financial considerations may influence how brands are displayed. Not all brands are included. [Learn more](https://money.com/page/disclaimer/). ![In this photo taken Wednesday, April 9, 2014, workers locate and pull items for shipping from racks of designer clothing at the headquarters of The RealReal in San Francisco.](https://img.money.com/2016/01/160106_em_thrifters.jpg) *The headquarters of The RealReal in San Francisco.* Other people’s New Year’s resolutions could be a boon for bargain hunters: Secondhand and consignment websites say more people clean out closets and unload unwanted goods at this time of year, including clothes they’ve never even worn and still have the tags on. As a result, there's arguably no better time of year to browsing for deals on desirable duds. Online secondhand stores like [The RealReal](https://www.therealreal.com/) and [thredUP](https://www.thredup.com/), which resell designer clothes and accessories see a big uptick in new inventory come January, [according to CNBC](http://www.cnbc.com/2016/01/05/new-years-resolutions-a-boon-for-these-retailers.html). The RealReal, which focuses on luxury brands, said that nearly 40% of its inventory had tags still on it at the end of the last holiday season, compared to just 4% new-with-tags (or NWT in thrifter parlance) at other times of the year. In many cases, these aren't out-of-style or worn-out items people are looking to unload. Part of the New Year's surge at sites like these is due to people trying to make money off unwanted holiday gifts, or finally getting over their guilt about getting rid of a brand-new item. If you want to score a deal, though, you have to move fast: CNBC said 80% of the items on The RealReal are sold within three days of being listed. Even if one of your resolutions was to cut back on buying anything new (even new-used) for a few months, that's fine too. These online, high-end thrift stores said they also get a surge of new inventory around springtime, when people tackle spring cleaning projects and clean out closets. ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "@id": "https://money.com/secondhand-designer-apparel-thredup/#breadcrumb", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://money.com" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Lifestyle", "item": "https://money.com/lifestyle/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "Fashion", "item": "https://money.com/fashion/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "name": "Why Right Now Is the Best Time of Year to Shop for Cheap Designer Clothes" } ] }, { "@type": "WebSite", "@id": "https://money.com/#website", "url": "https://money.com", "name": "Money", "publisher": { "@id": "https://money.com/#organization" } }, { "@type": "WebPage", "@id": "https://money.com/secondhand-designer-apparel-thredup/#webpage", "url": "https://money.com/secondhand-designer-apparel-thredup/", "name": "Why Right Now Is the Best Time of Year to Shop for Cheap Designer Clothes", "isPartOf": { "@id": "https://money.com/#website" }, "datePublished": "2016-01-06T17:23:36.000Z", "mainEntity": { "@id": "https://money.com/secondhand-designer-apparel-thredup/" }, "inLanguage": "en-US", "breadcrumb": { "@id": "https://money.com/secondhand-designer-apparel-thredup/#breadcrumb" }, "dateModified": "2016-01-06T17:23:36.000Z" }, { "@type": "Article", "headline": "Why Right Now Is the Best Time of Year to Shop for Cheap Designer Clothes", "articleSection": "Lifestyle", "image": [ { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://img.money.com/2016/01/160106_em_thrifters.jpg", "width": 2100, "height": 1400, "caption": "160106_EM_Thrifters" } ], "author": [ { "@type": "Person", "name": "Martha C. 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