Recommerce is often discussed as a single marketplace category, but the market has developed very differently across product types. Alongside broad horizontal platforms such as eBay, Facebook Marketplace, Leboncoin and Wallapop, there are now scaled specialist marketplaces across fashion, luxury, watches, electronics, furniture and home, collectibles, baby and kids, and more.
A used T-shirt, smartphone, Rolex, sofa and car part may all be secondhand products, but the way they are described, searched for, assessed and ultimately transacted differs substantially across categories. Those differences help explain why recommerce has become increasingly vertical, and why businesses that all sit within the same sector can have very different operating models and economics.
Horizontal marketplaces work best where the transaction is relatively simple
At the simplest end of recommerce, the marketplace mainly needs to create liquidity. The seller can identify the product, photograph it, describe its condition and set a price, while the buyer can assess the listing without much specialist information. The marketplace brings together supply and demand and may support the transaction through payments, messaging, buyer protection and shipping.
Horizontal marketplaces are particularly well suited to these transactions because breadth itself creates value. A consumer can clear out a wardrobe, sell an old table and list a bicycle without moving between several specialist platforms, and the marketplace can aggregate demand across many categories without needing deep expertise in each one.
Horizontal recommerce marketplaces have already created substantial value, from eBay, which is worth around $48bn today, OfferUp at ~$1bn and Wallapop, which was fully acquired by Naver for $627m in 2026.
However, the value of category-specific infrastructure increases as products become harder to understand, compare or transact.
Vertical marketplaces emerge as the transaction becomes more specialised
Watches provide a good example. A basic listing may be enough for a relatively low-value watch, while a higher-value transaction can depend on reference number, condition, provenance, authenticity and service history. Specialist platforms such as Chrono24 and Watchfinder can build the product, data and trust layer around those requirements in a way that a broad marketplace may struggle to replicate consistently across thousands of categories.
The same pattern appears elsewhere. In used car parts, Ovoko combines marketplace search with inventory management, cross-border logistics and compatibility information for professional dismantlers. In music gear, Reverb has built specialist pricing tools and product data around instruments and equipment, while MPB uses more than a decade of transaction data to price thousands of models of used cameras and lenses. These are very different categories, but in each case the vertical marketplace adds value by describing the inventory in far greater detail than a generic listing flow.
In luxury, authentication and condition are central to the transaction, while collectibles depend heavily on taxonomy, grading and pricing data. Used car parts add another layer of complexity because the buyer also needs to know whether a particular component is compatible with a specific vehicle.
The common thread is that specialist marketplaces become more valuable when the platform needs to understand more about the product in order to make it reliably tradable. Category expertise can improve search and matching, reduce uncertainty for buyers and sellers, and create a transaction process that is difficult to reproduce with a generic listing flow.
The economics depend on how much of that complexity the platform chooses to solve
Verticalisation does not automatically imply a high-touch operating model. A specialist marketplace can remain relatively asset light by leaving most of the physical work with the seller, or it can take responsibility for progressively more of the transaction.
Across recommerce, businesses sit on a spectrum. Vinted and Depop primarily connect buyers and sellers, with the seller retaining the item until it is sold. Chrono24 and Vestiaire Collective add more transaction infrastructure around payments, buyer protection and, in Vestiaire's case, authentication for part of the inventory. Managed marketplaces such as The RealReal and ThredUp go further by receiving products, inspecting them, creating listings, storing inventory and fulfilling orders. At the furthest end, first-party resellers such as momox and Swappie purchase products before processing and reselling them.
The same category can therefore support very different operating models. In electronics, a smartphone can be sold peer-to-peer on a horizontal marketplace, Back Market can connect consumers with professional refurbishers, while a first-party operator such as Swappie can acquire devices, refurbish them and resell them directly. Fashion shows a similar spread, with Vinted largely leaving the item with the seller until a transaction takes place, while ThredUp processes inventory itself and The RealReal operates a higher-service consignment model around luxury goods.
Each additional layer can improve the customer proposition and support higher monetisation, but it also adds operating cost and, in some cases, working-capital requirements. As a result, two companies serving the same category can have very different economics depending on how much of the transaction they choose to handle themselves.
Transaction value is only one part of the equation
Higher-value categories can support more specialist infrastructure because there is more economic value available within each transaction. This helps explain the depth of specialist activity in luxury, watches and electronics. However, high transaction value is not a prerequisite for a vertical marketplace to become large.
Fashion has produced several of the largest specialist recommerce platforms despite relatively low average selling prices. The category benefits from high transaction frequency, fragmented supply and a discovery experience built around brands, sizes, styles and personal taste. Music gear provides another example. Reverb is a specialist marketplace for new, used and vintage instruments and equipment, with category-specific listings and pricing data that help buyers compare products and sellers price them more accurately. Furniture has almost the opposite profile, with less frequent purchases and much greater logistics complexity, yet it has still attracted specialist marketplaces such as 1stDibs, Chairish, Vinterior and Selency.
The attractiveness of a vertical therefore depends on a combination of transaction value, frequency, product complexity, trust requirements and the physical work needed to complete a sale. Different combinations of these factors create room for very different models.
Horizontal and vertical marketplaces will continue to coexist
The growth of specialist platforms does not imply that horizontal marketplaces lose their role. Horizontals retain significant advantages in traffic, liquidity and breadth, and many secondhand transactions do not require category-specific infrastructure. Horizontals also can choose to verticalize their most valuable categories such as luxury and phones, within their horizontal branded platform (e.g. Finn for phone recommerce).
The same consumer may use different models depending on the product and the value at risk. A low-value item can be easy to sell on a broad marketplace, while a higher-value or technically complex product may benefit from a specialist platform that provides better data, verification or transaction support. This means the boundary between horizontal and vertical is often determined by the complexity of the individual transaction as much as by the category itself.
That boundary can also shift as platforms scale. Some recommerce businesses have expanded beyond the vertical in which they started. Whatnot began around collectibles and trading cards before moving into categories including fashion, beauty, electronics and jewellery, while Vinted has expanded from fashion into electronics, home, sports, toys, games and books.
These examples show that category boundaries are not always fixed. Expansion appears most plausible where a platform can carry existing buyers, sellers and transaction infrastructure into adjacent categories, but the extent to which this is replicable across recommerce remains unclear. Categories that require very different forms of authentication, product data, logistics or processing may continue to favour specialist platforms.
We therefore expect recommerce to remain a mix of broad horizontal marketplaces and specialist vertical platforms, with the right model depending on how much category-specific friction needs to be solved and how efficiently that can be done at scale. For vertical marketplaces that have already built liquidity, repeat usage and customer trust, adjacent categories can provide an additional growth opportunity where the same audience and transaction infrastructure remain relevant. The opportunity is therefore strongest where a platform can deepen its specialist advantage in the core category while selectively extending that advantage into areas where customer behaviour, trust requirements and operating capabilities are sufficiently similar.
EIV is very active in the funding and sale of recommerce marketplaces and platforms. If you own one or are building one, we would love to hear from you.
