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ThredUp, the resale site where almost any castoffs can find a new closet, raised $168 million in its IPO last week.
CEO James Reinhart gave Retail Brew firsthand insights into the secondhand marketplace’s next steps as a public company. Here are the highlights.
Yes to retail partners. ThredUp has partnered with 21 brands for online and IRL resale partnerships, and more are en route.
- Reinhart said secondhand is growing so fast—25x regular apparel sales year over year—that ThredUp isn’t fazed by brands’ in-house resale shops.
- But with ten years of reverse logistics tech development on its side, ThredUp expects to make significant $$$ handling resale ops for brands anyway.
Yes to automation. Reinhart told us that 100% of ThredUp’s inventory will be held in semi-automated facilities by the end of 2021. Automation will speed up processing capacity, alleviating the listing delays that hit some sellers (🙋) during the pandemic’s resale spike.
No to new categories—yet. While peers like Poshmark expand into home and pet goods, “we think the women's market is by far the biggest opportunity,” Reinhart said. “I think anything we do that takes our eyes off the women's market is a distraction.”
- Still, Reinhart added that ThredUp will “start experimenting” with new categories in 2022.