ThredUp customers have a routine. They stuff a bag with the sweaters and denims they by no means put on, mail it off and let the corporate do the heavy lifting. ThredUp receives the package deal and proceeds to {photograph}, value, and checklist all the pieces, so the sellers can overlook about it till they get cash deposited of their checking account a number of months later.
However for a lot of sellers, there’s one factor they maintain again—a pair of Manolo Blahniks, a Louis Vuitton purse—as a result of it’s particular and so they don’t wish to let it go for lower than it’s value. So they may decide to promote it on TheRealReal or Poshmark, the place they’ve extra management.
Beginning right now, they now not must. ThredUp is launching Direct Listings, an open-beta peer-to-peer market that lets sellers put up particular person objects at their very own value, proper subsequent to the Clear Out baggage that drove ThredUp’s enterprise. For the primary time, sellers can hand over objects they don’t care about and personally checklist those they do inside the similar app.
Resale is on observe to be a virtually $80 billion U.S. market by 2030, and after years of explosive growth, ThredUp’s founder and CEO, James Reinhart, sees a brand new section looming. “What you’ll see over the subsequent couple of years is consolidation,” he says. To win that section, although, ThredUp has to serve a variety of buyer wants.
The resale market is sorted into two camps. There may be the do-it-yourself, peer-to-peer platforms—eBay, mobile-first Poshmark, Gen-Z oriented Depop, plus luxurious gamers like Vestiaire Collective. On the opposite facet are managed marketplaces, the place the corporate does the heavy lifting. This contains The RealReal, which caters to luxurious sellers, and ThredUp itself, which sells extra mass market manufacturers.
ThredUp was at all times constructed for the vendor who didn’t wish to do an excessive amount of work. However in focus teams with sellers, many had been asking for extra management over a handful of things—and the peer-to-peer mannequin isn’t actually constructed for them. “The informal vendor who doesn’t wish to spend each day managing their listings and responding to feedback and price-optimizing will get crowded out of these marketplaces,” Reinhart says.
ThredUp evolves
From the beginning, ThredUp pitched itself as the best method to promote secondhand clothes. The corporate manages the whole promoting course of, utilizing information to establish how a lot prospects are most certainly to pay for it. Many sellers wish to be arms off, however ThredUp has been experimenting with new options that give sellers some management over the pricing of their objects.
In 2025, it launched Premium Clear Out kits, the place ThredUp set the value of the objects however the vendor may go in and manually change them in the event that they wished. The expansion of those kits was exponential, Reinhart says. This gave the corporate the boldness to launch Direct Listings, a device for promoting a number of prized items one by one.
Crucially, it’s nonetheless aimed on the informal vendor, not the skilled reseller. The objective was “a lean-back sort of product expertise,” Reinhart says—checklist a number of particular objects, whereas persevering with to let ThredUp handle the vast majority of different objects you wish to promote.
In early exams, Direct Listings posted a median promoting value of $60—greater than double ThredUp’s managed-marketplace common. Sellers don’t pay a payment, versus the ten%–20% commonplace elsewhere. Almost 18% of listings are priced above $100, with a 12% sell-through fee on these premium objects. And the highest-spending cohort was Gen Z, at a $72 common, who’ve a number of designer items to promote. “These are usually youthful individuals who’ve obtained extra time than cash,” Reinhart says.
Reinhart believes that prospects will not be curious about managing a number of completely different resale apps. So to outlive within the crowded resale market, ThredUp should supply a variety of choices, from donation kits of low-priced objects to single-item listings. “Persons are going to be in search of a one-stop store, as a result of individuals are usually lazy,” he says. “We wish to be that one tremendous app for promoting.”
Finally, he believes this can drive ThredUp’s momentum. The corporate posted $81.7 million in first-quarter income, up almost 15% 12 months over 12 months, with energetic patrons up 25%. It’s nonetheless working at a loss—$6.5 million for the quarter—because it invests in automated distribution facilities, however administration has guided to full-year income of roughly $351 million–$356 million. Reinhart believes that resale will solely proceed to develop.
“Each successive era of younger folks is adopting resale at larger charges,” he says. “As soon as folks begin buying secondhand, they don’t cease.”
