Markets

eBay Is Buying Depop — and It’s a Bet on the Thrift Economy Getting Even Bigger

Date Published

eBay Is Buying Depop — and It’s a Bet on the Thrift Economy Getting Even Bigger

TL;DR

Quick Summary

  • eBay (EBAY) is buying Depop from Etsy (ETSY) for about $1.2B cash, aiming to deepen its reach with under-34 shoppers.
  • Depop brought about $1B in 2025 gross merchandise sales and had 7M active buyers as of Dec. 31, 2025.
  • eBay’s Q1 2026 outlook stayed upbeat: revenue $3.00–$3.05B and GMV $21.5–$21.9B.

#RealTalk

This is eBay admitting that “marketplace” isn’t enough anymore—you need culture, community, and a reason to open the app when you’re not actively shopping.

Bottom Line

For investors, the Depop deal is less about a single quarter and more about whether eBay can build a secondhand fashion flywheel without breaking what makes Depop sticky. The key question over 2026 is execution: keeping Depop’s community feel while using eBay’s scale to widen the funnel.

The news: eBay wants your closet

If you’ve ever opened a resale app “just to browse” and then somehow ended up buying a pair of boots at 1:00 a.m., you already understand the power of recommerce. On February 18, 2026, eBay Inc. announced it’s buying Depop from Etsy for about $1.2 billion in cash, with the deal expected to close in the second quarter of 2026.

On the same day, eBay also reported its fourth quarter and full-year 2025 results and gave first-quarter 2026 guidance that came in confident: revenue guidance of $3.00–$3.05 billion and gross merchandise volume (GMV) guidance of $21.5–$21.9 billion for Q1 2026.

That combo—“strong quarter” plus “we’re shopping for growth”—isn’t subtle. eBay is telling investors it doesn’t want to be treated like the internet’s garage sale. It wants to be the place where the secondhand economy goes mainstream.

Why Depop matters to eBay’s story

Depop is not just “eBay but younger.” It’s a mobile-first, community-powered fashion marketplace where identity is part of the product. Sellers build followings. Buyers shop vibes. And “secondhand” isn’t a budget option—it’s a preference.

In eBay’s announcement, Depop came with some very specific receipts from 2025: about $1 billion in annual gross merchandise sales, nearly 60% year-over-year growth in the U.S., 7 million active buyers as of December 31, 2025 (with nearly 90% under age 34), and more than 3 million active sellers.

eBay also framed fashion as a real pillar, not a side quest: it said fashion represents more than $10 billion in annual GMV for eBay and that U.S. fashion GMV grew 10% year-over-year in 2025.

Read between the lines: eBay doesn’t just want “more users.” It wants the kind of users who make shopping a habit and selling a hustle.

The bigger shift: eBay is leaning into categories, not everything

Old-school eBay was “we sell literally anything.” Modern eBay is closer to “we’re getting really good at a few things people actually care about.” Management has been pushing focus categories—think luxury, collectibles, auto parts, and now a more explicit stake in youth-driven fashion culture.

This matters because e-commerce isn’t the simple growth story it was in the 2010s. Consumers have endless options, ad costs move around, and marketplaces have to prove they’re not just a traffic funnel—they’re a destination.

One underappreciated angle here: eBay’s advertising business. In Q4 2025, eBay said advertising revenue was $544 million, or 2.6% of GMV. That’s meaningful because it’s a way to grow revenue even when the overall pie (GMV) grows more slowly.

Depop gives eBay another canvas for commerce that doesn’t feel like commerce—discovery, creators, community. If eBay can learn from that without sanding off what makes Depop “Depop,” it potentially strengthens the whole ecosystem.

What could go wrong (and what to watch)

Deals like this aren’t won on spreadsheets—they’re won in product decisions. Depop’s culture is the asset. Over-monetize it too fast, or force it into a corporate template, and you risk turning a living community into just another shopping tab.

Practically, investors should keep an eye on two near-term things: (1) how eBay talks about running Depop as a separate brand after the acquisition, and (2) whether the closing timeline (Q2 2026) holds as regulatory and deal conditions play out.

For eBay, this is a bet that resale isn’t a phase. It’s a default.