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 strongest conditions for vertical marketplaces tend to arise where buyers and sellers are geographically dispersed, transport costs are relatively low compared with the resale value of the item, condition needs to be described precisely, or authentication and counterfeiting are important parts of the transaction. These characteristics make specialist data, trust and transaction infrastructure more valuable than 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.
Being vertical does not determine how operationally intensive the model needs to be. Vinted and Depop leave most of the physical transaction with the seller, while The RealReal receives inventory, authenticates and inspects it, creates the listing, stores the product and fulfills the order. Between those two ends sit marketplaces that selectively solve parts of the transaction, such as payments, buyer protection, authentication or logistics.
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.
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. They can also choose to build more specialised experiences within particularly attractive categories, using their existing liquidity while adding the product data, trust or transaction infrastructure required for that vertical. Finn’s dedicated phone recommerce proposition is one example, where a broad classifieds platform has created a more structured experience around used smartphones, with category-specific listings and transaction support designed for a product where condition and trust matter more than in a generic listing flow.
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.
