Latest / Customer Journey with Fexingo: Touchpoints, Mapping, and Multi-Channel Marketing / How Journey Maps Miss the Resale Buyer Journey
Transcript
- Lucas: So a friend of mine told me last week that she needed a new desk lamp, and before she opened Amazon or Target's website, she checked her local Buy Nothing group, then Facebook Marketplace, then a vintage lighting reseller she follows on Instagram. She found the lamp on the reseller site, bought it used, saved about forty percent, and never touched a traditional retail channel. Luna: And I bet her journey looked nothing like the map most brands have drawn for 'the path to purchase.' Lucas: Exactly. And that's what I want to talk about today — the resale buyer journey. Most customer journey maps still assume a linear path from awareness to purchase to loyalty. But a huge and growing number of consumers now enter the journey as resale buyers. They're not your new customer, they're not really a repeat customer in the traditional sense — they're someone who buys pre-owned, often from a completely different entry point. Luna: So the map that brand teams draw for, say, a new IKEA furniture buyer — that map probably doesn't include the step where someone searches 'used IKEA Malm dresser' on Craigslist. Lucas: Right. And IKEA actually launched a test in 2024 where they let customers sell back used furniture in exchange for store credit. Then in 2025 they expanded it to select markets. They have a whole dedicated landing page, a buyback estimator, and a refurbished section. But how many internal journey maps actually include that flow? Most maps show you walking into the store, picking out a new product, going through checkout. They don't show the pre-owned loop. Luna: Patagonia's Worn Wear program is probably the most famous example. They've been doing it since 2017 — they repair, resell, and often trade in used gear. And their map has to accommodate a customer who might first interact with the brand through a pre-owned jacket, then later buy new. Lucas: That's the key insight I think a lot of teams miss: resale isn't just a retention play or a sustainability badge. It's an acquisition channel. According to the 2025 Resale Consumer survey from ThreadUp and GlobalData, sixty-two percent of shoppers now consider resale before buying new in at least one category. And among Gen Z, that number is seventy-five percent. Luna: So if your customer journey map starts with 'customer sees an ad for our new product,' you're already missing the point of entry for almost two-thirds of your potential market. Lucas: Exactly. And I think the reason it gets overlooked is that journey mapping as a discipline was built in the era of 'we manufacture, you buy.' The touchpoints were store, website, maybe call center. Resale flips that. Now the touchpoints include peer to peer marketplaces, brand-run recommerce platforms, third-party resellers, social media resale accounts. And the customer's intent is different — they're not looking for the newest thing, they're looking for a specific item, often by brand name, and they have a different set of expectations around condition, pricing, and return policies. Luna: So what does a proper resale journey map look like? Walk me through the stages. Lucas: Sure. Let's use Patagonia as the example. Stage one — discovery: the customer might not start with a Patagonia ad. They might be on eBay searching 'men's down jacket size M' and find a Worn Wear listing. Or they hear from a friend about the repair program. Stage two — evaluation: they visit the Worn Wear site, compare condition grades, read reviews from previous buyers. Stage three — purchase: they buy a used jacket. But here's the twist — stage four could be post-purchase engagement. They might need to request a repair, which is a whole separate journey. Or they love the jacket and decide to buy a new one next time. Or they sell it back to Patagonia after a few years. Luna: So the lifecycle isn't a line. It's a loop or a figure-eight. And most mapping software doesn't handle that well. Lucas: No, it doesn't. Standard maps are built for linear conversion funnels. They have columns: awareness, consideration, purchase, retention, advocacy. Where do you put 'customer sells their product back to you'? That's not retention — that's a new acquisition touchpoint for the next buyer. And it's a retention touchpoint for this buyer because they got store credit and came back. Luna: This is actually a good moment to step back and say — you know, conversations like this are exactly why we keep Fexingo ad-free. We don't have sponsors pushing us to simplify or make things sound easy. We can spend ten minutes on a mapping blind spot because we think it matters. If you value that, you can support the show at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. And we'll keep drilling into the messy stuff. Lucas: Yeah, and it's listener support that lets us do that — no pressure, but it helps. Okay, back to the resale loop. I think the other problem is that CLV models break when resale enters the picture. Let's say you make outdoor gear. A new customer buys a tent for $300. Your model says they'll spend maybe $150 every two years on accessories. But if that customer later sells the tent on your recommerce platform and buys a used tent for $150, is that a loss or a gain? You made margin on the first sale, you made a small fee on the resale, and you kept them in your ecosystem. But the map didn't capture that transition. Luna: There's also the question of attribution. If someone finds a used product through a Google search for 'Patagonia Worn Wear' versus a brand campaign — how do you credit the channel? Most attribution models aren't built for that either. Lucas: Right. And the thing is, brands that ignore this are leaving money on the table. I read a case study about a furniture brand that started a buyback program. They found that customers who engaged with the buyback had a customer lifetime value thirty percent higher than those who didn't. But their journey map hadn't included the buyback step, so their marketing team never optimized the touchpoint. They didn't test the email flow after buyback, they didn't create a landing page for 'sell your old couch.' They just had a form buried on the website. Luna: So what's the first step for a brand that wants to map this correctly? Lucas: I'd say start by mapping the second-life journey separately. Don't try to cram it into your existing map. Draw a parallel map that shows the pre-owned customer flow from discovery through purchase to eventual return. Then look for intersections with the new-product map. Where do they share a touchpoint? Maybe both types of customers call the same support line. Maybe the resale customer gets sent an email encouraging them to buy new. Those handoffs are where friction lives. Luna: And then once you have the two maps, you overlay them to see the full system. I know some brands that have done this, like REI with their used gear program, but they're still the exception. Lucas: Yeah, REI is a good example. They have a 'Used Gear' section on their site, and they actually have different return policies for used items. That's an important touchpoint difference — if a customer buys used and expects the same return window as new, they'll be frustrated. The map should flag that. Luna: So the resale buyer journey is not just an add-on. It's a parallel track that in some categories is becoming the primary track. Lucas: I think that's exactly right. And I'd argue that if you're a brand in apparel, electronics, furniture, or even books — you need to map the resale journey before you're competing with your own products on secondary markets without any control. Luna: That's a good closing thought. Next time we should talk about how to measure success for a recommerce journey — what KPIs actually matter. Lucas: Let's do it. I'll pull some data from a few brands that have been running programs for a few years.