Six hundred and forty-two million dollars of secondhand luxury sold through one platform in three months. That's a record, and it arrived in a results season when fewer shoppers are walking into full-price boutiques. So the busiest luxury store this fall is somebody else's closet. This is Fashion Business Daily for Friday, October 30, with three stories. The RealReal posts its biggest quarter ever and raises its outlook. Crocs lifts its forecast for the third time this year, and HEYDUDE is growing again. And a former Dior and Carven designer says he's joined Zara to run John Galliano's design team. Tap follow so the next episode finds you.
Rati Levesque, chief executive of The RealReal, in the company's third-quarter release:
Underlying those results is a fundamental change in how people shop for luxury fashion, and our purpose-built platform is helping to drive it. Customers increasingly start their journey with us and engage well beyond the transaction, to discover what to buy, to track what they own, and to decide when to sell.
The RealReal reported on Thursday, October 29, for the quarter that ended September 30. These are company-reported figures. Gross merchandise value, the total value of goods sold on the platform, was 642 million dollars, up 23 percent. Revenue rose 19 percent to 206 million. Orders grew 15 percent, which the company calls its strongest order growth since 2022. Adjusted EBITDA was 17 million dollars, an 8.3 percent margin, up 290 basis points. And they finally turned a profit. On paper, and with an asterisk. Net income was 16 million dollars, against a 54 million dollar loss a year earlier. But that includes a 21.2 million dollar non-cash gain from revaluing a warrant liability. Without it, the quarter would have been a loss, and on a diluted basis it's still a loss of four cents a share. For context, Investing.com said before the report that analysts expected revenue of about 196.8 million. That's the consensus estimate. The company came in at 206. What's the average basket? Average order value rose 8 percent to 629 dollars, and active buyers over twelve months rose 13 percent to 1.152 million. The full-year outlook is now GMV of 2.585 to 2.6 billion dollars and revenue of 806 to 810 million. Casadi, citing WWD, says the previous revenue forecast was 788 to 797 million. WWD also reported the shares up 5.3 percent after hours, in a stock that had closed the day down 28 percent for the year. The hire I'd circle is Alexis Hoopes, who ran eBay's global fashion business, now The RealReal's chief merchandising officer. And eBay is having its own run. Fortune reports that on Wednesday's earnings call, eBay said it and Depop did 9 billion dollars in US fashion sales volume over the past twelve months, up in the mid-20 percent range. Depop's US volume more than doubled in the quarter. That 9 billion is eBay's own number, and it counts Depop's sales from before eBay bought it for 1.4 billion dollars in July. Now the counterweight. We've covered the Birkin losing some of its scarcity. Casadi cites a Bernstein estimate, reported by Reuters, that Birkin 25 bags resold for about 1.7 times retail in the third quarter, down from about 2.6 times at the 2022 peak. The RealReal doesn't break out sales by brand, so its quarter tells us nothing about any one house. More bags trading, a thinner premium on the trophy. I'm fine with that. Resale follows what's good right now. On Fashionphile, the Saint Laurent Mombasa, a Tom Ford design from 2001, rose 291 percent in average sale price after Vaccarello nodded to it on the runway. The archive is doing the marketing. The fourth quarter is the real test, with no warrant gain to lean on. The RealReal guides GMV of 720 to 735 million and adjusted EBITDA of 27.5 to 29 million.
Andrew Rees, chief executive of Crocs, in Thursday's results release:
HEYDUDE revenues grew 6%, marking an important milestone as we delivered on our commitment stated earlier in the year to return the brand to growth.
Crocs reported on Thursday, October 29. Company-reported revenue was 1.043 billion dollars, up 4.6 percent. The Crocs brand rose 4.4 percent to 873 million, which the company calls a record third quarter, and HEYDUDE rose 6.1 percent to 170 million. Crocs raised full-year guidance for the third time this year, to revenue growth of about 3 percent, from 1 to 2 percent, and adjusted earnings per share of 14.45 to 14.65 dollars. HEYDUDE growing. Wasn't on my card. Somebody out there is still buying the slip-ons. Look at the channel, though. HEYDUDE wholesale rose 14 percent. Its direct sales rose a tenth of a percent. So stores are ordering more, and shoppers buying from the brand itself are flat. That's Vans from yesterday in reverse. Vans got direct growing first, HEYDUDE got wholesale first. I trust the direct number more, because that's the customer picking you. The Crocs brand has its own split. North America fell 2.1 percent, and international rose 11.8 percent. Then the margin caveat. Reported gross margin was 66.2 percent, but that includes 64 million dollars of IEEPA tariff refunds from the Supreme Court's February 20 ruling, which Crocs calls non-recurring. Adjusted gross margin was 60.3 percent, up 180 basis points. Reported operating income rose 40.6 percent. Adjusted, it rose 11.7. Everybody's having a tariff-refund quarter. Adidas had one, Columbia Sportswear booked one this week too. And yesterday Adidas said lifestyle sneakers are stuck in an industry-wide discounting market. Crocs sells a foam clog and it's still growing. Love it or hate it, the product works. And it's handing cash back. Crocs bought about 2 million shares in the quarter for 250 million dollars, at an average price of 123.32. Fourth-quarter guidance is revenue up 7 to 9 percent, with HEYDUDE up 10 to 12. If HEYDUDE's direct business doesn't start moving, that wholesale growth gets harder to repeat.
FashionUnited, reporting from Madrid:
In this role, Ruffieux will oversee the realisation of Galliano's concepts and sketches for at least three additional seasonal collections for Inditex's main fashion brand.
A word on sourcing. Serge Ruffieux announced this himself on social media. FashionUnited reports he has been design director under Galliano since early October, hired on a freelance basis. Neither he nor Inditex has given more detail, so the description of the job is FashionUnited's reading of the title. The résumé is why it matters. He worked under Galliano at Dior. After Raf Simons left Dior, he led the design team until Maria Grazia Chiuri arrived. Then nearly two years as creative director at Carven, from December 2016 to November 2018. Since then, Pucci, Jimmy Choo, Marni, and his own footwear and accessories label, 13 09 SR. The commercial setup is this. Zara announced in mid-March that Galliano's collections would launch at the start of each season, from autumn-winter 2026 through 2027. FashionUnited says the hire coincides with the launch of the first Galliano collection for Zara, and that the two-year collaboration is heading toward its end, with no word on what comes after. This is the part I like. Galliano sketches, and someone who knows exactly how he works turns that into product at Zara's speed. Either that gives you clothes that are actually good on a fast-fashion floor, or it's a famous name on a hang tag. The collections will tell us which. FashionUnited calls the strategy fast couture. The business measure is sell-through, and Inditex hasn't given any numbers on the Galliano line. Until it does, this is a hiring story, not a sales one. Still, you don't add a design director to a project you're about to shelve. Or you add one to a project with a fixed end date that has to ship on time. We'll know more when Inditex says what follows the two years.
A question for anyone working in resale, whether you consign, buy for a platform, or run a brand's take-back program. What are you seeing in prices and volumes this fall? Send it to fashionbusinessdaily at lantern podcasts dot com, and we may read it on air.
That closes the week for Fashion Business Daily, a Lantern Podcast. We're back on Monday, November 2. Go check what's hanging in your closet this weekend. It may be worth more than you paid. Unless it's a Birkin, in which case it's worth a little less than it was in 2022.