SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--thredUP, the nation’s leading online marketplace for like-new women’s and kids’ clothing, today announced that Goldman Sachs Investment Partners (GSIP) has led a $81 million Series E investment in the company. The financing will enable thredUP to continue its rapid growth and scale its operations and distribution network to meet customer demand. With the growing reach of its marketplace, thredUP is fundamentally reinventing what it means to buy and sell secondhand clothing on the Internet.
“We founded thredUP to make it incredibly convenient for consumers to clean out their closets and shop for quality secondhand clothes. We saw a huge opportunity to leverage Internet penetration and the growing acceptance of buying and selling online to bring a delightful, frictionless secondhand experience to the masses,” said James Reinhart, CEO and co-founder of thredUP. “There was a time we bought ‘used cars’ rather than ‘certified pre-owned cars,’ and ‘used electronics’ instead of ‘factory refurbished electronics’. A similar trend is emerging in the apparel space, and thredUP is setting the standard for what will be an enormous category in the future. Consumer adoption is hitting an inflection point right now,” added Reinhart.
thredUP has seen impressive growth in the last year with more than 1.8 million people visiting the site in August 2015, up from just 700,000 one year ago. By the end of 2016, the company expects to process more than two million pieces of clothing each month. thredUP recently opened a 136,000 square foot facility in Pennsylvania and by the end of next year will open two more high-throughput facilities and will hire an additional 1,000 employees. This expanded network will ensure that thredUP can provide high-quality service to millions more customers.
“We’re excited to partner with thredUP, a team revolutionizing the way we think about the secondhand clothing category. Our industry research revealed a huge opportunity to change consumer behavior around both shopping and selling secondhand apparel,” said Ian Friedman, co-head of GSIP Private Investments who will join thredUP’s Board of Directors. “While most brand-oriented consumers have historically held a negative bias toward purchasing secondhand clothing, thredUP is proving it can reverse that perception. We found that over half of their customers had not purchased pre-owned clothing in the year prior to becoming a thredUP customer, highlighting the potential for market expansion.”
thredUP has reimagined a secondhand shopping experience in which sifting through racks of clothing or paging through individual online listings is a thing of the past. Customers have access to hundreds of thousands of carefully inspected women’s and kids’ items every day, at prices up to 90 percent off retail. Each garment purchased comes certified by thredUP and backed by great customer service. thredUP members sell their clothes without ever leaving home by filling a pre-paid, pre-addressed Clean Out Bag with clothing, shoes and handbags, and giving it to their mail carrier. When the Bag reaches a thredUP processing center, merchandisers photograph, itemize, list and sell the like-new items, then ship them to the buyer. thredUP accepts over 25,000 brands and sellers earn cash for the vast majority of their items as soon as they are listed. Luxury brands are sold on consignment where thredUP pays an industry-leading 75% of the resale price to the consignor when their item sells.
Existing thredUP investors Trinity Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, Highland Capital Partners and Upfront Ventures also participated in the Series E financing. thredUP has raised more than $125 million to date.
About thredUP
thredUP is the leading online marketplace to buy and sell like-new women’s and kids’ clothing. The company publishes the Annual Resale Report, and pioneered the Clean Out Bag, the most convenient way for consumers to sell clothes they’re no longer wearing. It accepts clothing from more than 25,000 women’s and kids’ brands, and resells the items for up to 90 percent off the original retail price. Headquartered in downtown San Francisco and backed by world-class investors, thredUP is reinventing the secondhand clothing industry and inspiring a new generation of consumers to think secondhand first. Learn more at www.thredUP.com.
