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Private company

Buffalo Exchange

Logo: https://buffaloexchange.com/, Non-free logo, via Wikipedia3

Fashion resale retailer

Buffalo Exchange is an American fashion resale retailer. Operating under a "buy, sell, trade" business model, it buys clothing and accessories from the public and resells them to the public. Buffalo Exchange hand-selects and purchases the majority of their inventory from the local community.2 Wikipedia text CC BY-SA 4.0

Last updated Oct 21, 2026.

Overview

1974Founded1

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Buffalo Exchange is an American fashion resale retailer. Operating under a "buy, sell, trade" business model, it buys clothing and accessories from the public and resells them to the public. Buffalo Exchange hand-selects and purchases the majority of their inventory from the local community.2

The story

In 1974, Kerstin Block had an idea for a different sort of secondhand shop that would be clean, bright and curated and make secondhand clothing and accessories more accessible. Kerstin and her husband, Spencer, rented out a small 400 square foot spot in Tucson, AZ and pioneered the concept of buy-sell-trade for clothing, which was different from existing thrift and consignment models.

Within the first couple of years, they started expanding in Arizona and eventually opened a location in San Francisco. In the 1990s, the popularity of secondhand shopping grew and the husband-wife duo opened up 19 new locations across California, the Southwest and the Northwest.

The company is known for giving back to the community through initiatives like its annual Earth Day $1 Sale and its Tokens for Bags program.

From Wikipedia’s article on Buffalo Exchange, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4

Timeline

  1. 1974Founded Founded1

Sources

The numbers on this page point here. Each one links to the record it came from.

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