The simplest way to start recommerce: secondhand sales pilot
For most retailers, the fastest and most realistic way to enter recommerce is through secondhand sales in as-is condition. This model requires minimal operational change while giving you valuable experience with individualized inventory, catalog creation, and online resale workflows.
Step 1: Accept and inspect returns
Start by setting up a process to accept product returns — in-store, online, or both. Each returned item should be inspected, assigned a condition grade, and given a unique price based on that grade.
If possible, capture item-specific product photos. Unique images make online resale listings far more trustworthy and help customers make confident purchase decisions.
Step 2: Build a resale catalog
Once items are graded and photographed, add them to your resale catalog — both online and in-store. You can offer click & collect, local pickup, or direct e-commerce delivery.
This setup gives you a live resale operation and helps you learn about your system needs, workflows, and customer demand before expanding further.
Step 3: Start with one pilot store
If you have multiple locations, choose one location for your proof of concept. Analyze which store has the most resellable returns — for example, durable goods or equipment often perform better in resale than small appliances or consumables.
Step 4: Define and test your pilot
Decide your:
- Number of stores or locations (start with one)
- Sales channels (in-store, online, or both)
- Product categories
- Technology partner
A capable partner like Twice Commerce can help set up individualized inventory and catalog management quickly — often without heavy development work or upfront cost.
Step 5: Measure success and scale
Define your short-term success metrics:
- Can we get the resale flow up and running in weeks?
- Are customers engaging with resale listings?
- Is the data sufficient to evaluate performance?
Once you have traction, move to mid- and long-term evaluation: How well does your system handle data, automation, and AI integration as you scale?
Step 6: Don’t overprepare — just start
Tuomo’s final tip: Don’t spend weeks perfecting your data before reaching out to tech partners. A sample inventory CSV and basic store information is often enough to build a working demo in hours or days.
If a vendor needs months to set up before you see results, that’s a red flag. Instead, find partners who can get you live quickly — so you can learn by doing.
Tuomo: I think the simplest model for, I would feel confident, say 90% of retailers is to launch secondhand sales with like as-it-is condition. And again what I mean by that kind of lacking better words is that you have a way of accepting product returns either in store or online or both and once you get them you are capable of inspecting their condition giving them a unique price point based on that and hopefully being able to take item specific product images because it just makes your online sales a lot easier if every unique item has its own product images. And then you're in a place where you have a catalog full of resale items that you can host online and in store and then it's up to you whether you do click and collect or pure e-commerce or a mix of those. But that would be the easiest way to I think go into the resale side of things and then based on that you'll start to learn a lot about the system needs and all of that before having to do a lot of heavy lifting operationally.
Karri: And if you have multiple locations probably starting this at one or maybe two or what limits it a number of locations?
Tuomo: Yeah I would start in one location probably. Even if you are truly a multi-store operator I would imagine that in some of your store locations you have a little bit of variety between the items that you sell. If you are in the countryside you have different kind of items and if you're in the city urban center you have different kind of items. So I would do a little bit of an analysis on like in which of the locations we tend to have product returns that are more resellable. Reselling semi-durable goods is a bit harder sometimes than maybe if you get product returns like a trailer — maybe that’s easier to be resold, there’s an easier aftermarket for that than a coffee machine. I don’t know, this is the area where I wouldn’t say that I’m an expert but I would maybe select the location based on that.
Karri: Okay so now we have the steps and maybe the most common example for retailers and maybe at the end we want to still go through some kind of like action items so if somebody’s listening and they’re like I want to go for it and kind of like have a step-by-step actions and how to actually start this process.
Tuomo: Then it’s about deciding on your pilot or proof of concept approach — how many stores, what channels, what product categories and what model. Decide that and then immediately or at the same time source some tech partners. It’s highly likely that you need a tech partner to help you with that individualization and the catalog building of resales, so go out there. I would say at minimum send us a message and we’ll be able to help you forward from there.
Tuomo: The next steps are about defining what success looks like short-term and long-term. Short-term: can we get it up and running in a few weeks? What kind of data do we need to accumulate to evaluate success? Mid- to long-term: critically assess your own capabilities and whatever partners you selected — how good are they with data, automation, usability, and AI nativeness? Are these systems ready to evolve with your organization?
Tuomo: That would be the next phase. But first, to get off the ground: decide on the proof of concept, make one decision, and then reach out to tech partners — at minimum Twice Commerce.
Karri: Maybe as a final note, do you have some kind of tips or something that some of our existing customers have kind of faced and the questions they might have?
Tuomo: My main tip would be: don’t stress too much about having perfect data or similar already available when reaching out to partners. There can be a lot of time wasted by saying “I’ll do some internal job spending three weeks trying to gather perfect data.” Often, for good tech partners, it’s enough that you send a sample CSV of your inventory and maybe a few catalog examples — just something to start with.
Tuomo: For us, if we get your inventory Excel and maybe that one store location that you’re starting the pilot, even just the opening hours and the address, we can have something real and live with no cost for you to evaluate with your team in a matter of hours or days. Rather than front-loading a lot of data, just send something over and see what the partners can do with it. I’d consider it a red flag if the tech partner says they need months to fiddle with your systems before being up and running.
Karri: Okay that’s a really good tip and I guess the easiest way to start for anybody is just to maybe contact and have a conversation with you as you have worked with a lot of retailers in this space and have a lot of stuff to share and just talk through.
Tuomo: Yeah definitely. Just send an email or reach out on LinkedIn — those are the easiest ways to get our attention.