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ThredUp Unveils New Platform And $175 Million In Funding As Resale Trend Accelerates

ThredUp announced today a new platform called Resale-As-A-Service that will allow retailers to partner with the company. Gani Pinero Photography

Even as the retail industry has slumped, dragged down by disappointing earnings and an unending trade war, resale is exploding. With the $24 billion secondhand market looking more and more enticing to hard-up traditional retailers, no small number of them began to court the fashion resale marketplace ThredUp over the last year, CEO and cofounder James Reinhart says.
“I think all of them acknowledged that resale was a trend that was accelerating,” he adds. “But they weren’t exactly sure how to participate in it.”
The result of those conversations, ThredUp announced today, is a new platform called Resale-As-A-Service that will allow retailers to partner with the company, offering three options: an in-store pop-up, online collaboration or a loyalty program. To power the initiative, ThredUp has raised $100 million in a new funding round, to go with a previously undisclosed $75 million from last year. That brings ThredUp’s total funding to more than $300 million and values the company at $670 million, according to Pitchbook. (ThredUp wouldn’t comment on its valuation.)
In pilots of Resale-As-A-Service, Reinhart says, the loyalty program has proved the most popular of the three options. In that model, when shoppers purchase an item from a ThredUp partner, they are sent a co-branded “clean out kit”—the bag that ThredUp sellers use to send items to be resold. But instead of receiving cash, as they would in a direct transaction with ThredUp, sellers in the loyalty program get credit to the partner retailer. ThredUp keeps the markup on the resold item, and the partner retailer improves its customer retention; the individual seller, meanwhile, may get a bonus for using the loyalty program instead of going straight to ThredUp. For example, Reformation, an eco-conscious contemporary label, adds 15% to what ThredUp offers a seller as an incentive.
The pop-ups are also gaining traction, with Macy’s and JCPenney announcing last week that they are partnering with ThredUp. The in-store spaces, which will be about 500 to 1,000 square feet, will feature new items on a weekly basis, offering brands that aren’t already in a typical Macy’s or JCPenney. There will be 100 pop-ups by Labor Day, Reinhart says, including the company’s partnership with Stage Stores, a department store chain.

“In just these 10 years, we’ve had a radical shift in how people shop and buy apparel. And I think that shift is going to continue,” says James Reinhart, CEO and cofounder of ThredUp. Courtesy of ThredUp

Retailers across the board are demonstrating a “new appreciation for where the young shopper is shopping,” says Reinhart, 40. But it’s not as if Macy’s and JCPenney had much of a choice.
Both have been struggling of late. Macy’s shares fell 13% after it announced its second-quarter earnings (and its ThredUp partnership) on August 14; shares are down another 9% since. JCPenney’s results were grim, too, and it’s at risk of being delisted from the New York Stock Exchange with shares hovering around $0.60.
The two companies have long been trying to differentiate their drab department stores any way they can to draw people in. JCPenney offers Sephora store-in-stores while Macy’s last year acquired Story, a concept shop.
With their latest attempt at a tie-up, there’s no doubt they have landed on a popular trend. According to a ThredUp report, resale is growing 21 times as fast as the broader retail market and itself will become a $51 billion market by 2023.
But what’s to say those treasure-hunting shoppers will choose a Macy’s with a ThredUp pop-up over an off-price retailer like TJ Maxx? Reinhart himself notes that’s where 70% of ThredUp shoppers say they would go if the reseller weren’t an option.
Still, Reinhart is confident that ThredUp’s broad appeal—it carries more than 30,000 brands—and its ability to scale will bring more retailers on board. He hints that other partners are already in the pipeline. Plus, the resale industry is only going to keep growing. Investors already poured $300 million into The RealReal, an online consignment shop that focuses on luxury, when it went public in June. And Poshmark, another resale startup, is considering an IPO this fall, the Wall Street Journal reported in April. (ThredUp says it has no plans to go public.)
“The opportunity has gotten bigger and bigger every year,” Reinhart says. “The closet of the future…is going to look very different than the closet of today. If you think back 10 years ago when we started, you had none of these direct-to-consumer brands. There was no such thing as rental. There were no subscription companies.
In just these 10 years, we’ve had a radical shift in how people shop and buy apparel. And I think that shift is going to continue.”

How Well Known Labels Are Changing the Counterfeit Stigma

 

A Guccy shirt from Gucci Resort 2018Photo: Yannis Vlamos / Indigital.tv

Once upon a time, counterfeit designer goods were a fashion no-go. Buying a fake piece of clothing or accessory was associated with a try-hard attitude and an empty pocket. Take, for example, Sex and the City’s “Sex and Another City” episode, in which Samantha Jones bought a knockoff Fendi bag from the trunk of a car. After showing it off to her friends, she noted, “You’d never know it wasn’t real Fendi unless you look inside at the lining.” Later on, Samantha’s dirty little $150 made-in-China secret was found out publicly at a party—a small price to pay for long-lasting embarrassment.

But times have changed. Recently, some of the most influential runway designers have created cringe-worthy, definitely-not-real clothes and accessories—a far cry from Samantha’s trunk-plucked Fendi, inspired by the more modern appeal of bootleg fashion. Alessandro Michele showed Fake Gucci T-shirts loudly emblazoned with the label’s logo for Resort 2017, a design based on counterfeits that were popular on the streets during the ’80s. The brand’s Resort 2018 collection continued with the theme of through-the-looking-glass bootleg culture: A coat with Gucci-monogrammed sleeves became the meme heard round the Internet after it drew comparisons to a similar topper by Harlem-based designer Dapper Dan, the original kingpin of DIY luxury bootlegs, who created a Louis Vuitton monogrammed coat for Olympic medalist Diane Dixon in the ’80s. There were also shirts that read Guccy—reflecting a trend at bargain bazaars, where misspelled names (deliberate or otherwise) are on every corner.

Before Gucci’s foray into faux fakes, there was, of course, Vetements, which turned the concept of fake fashion on its head and shilled “real fakes” to the mass market. In October 2016, the brand held an “official fake” garage sale outside Seoul, where off-kilter remakes of iconic pieces nodded cleverly to the proliferation of Vetements bootlegs in that city. Since Vetements, like Gucci, has become one of the most copied labels in the world, the strategy makes sense: If you can’t beat the copycats to the punch, then join them for a higher price tag. The approach seems to be working. Those Fake Gucci T-shirts have sold out both at Selfridges and Farfetch.

A Fake Gucci T-shirt from Gucci Resort 2017Photo: Yannis Vlamos / Indigital.tv

I recently returned from Tbilisi, Georgia, with hoards of thick plastic “Chinatown” bags printed with the double-C Chanel logo (with the house’s name written as “Ceanhl”) and other totes combining Louis Vuitton’s classic Damier monogram with Gucci monogrammed tabs. The cheap carryalls may be considered the bane of luxury—they are scathingly, shamelessly fake—but there’s also a cheeky charm that comes with proudly sporting something so obviously not real. My colleagues seemed to agree with this line of thinking: The totes were a hit at the office. “It’s a so-bad-it’s-good thing,” said Vogue’s Fashion News Director, Chioma Nnadi, the recipient of one of the bags. “There’s nothing subtle about the fakeness of it. It’s like no-shame fake.”

Fake Chanel tote bags, a fake Versace shirt, and fake Chanel bedsheets from Eastern EuropeCourtesy of Liana Satenstein / @liana_ava

On a smaller scale, there is the rise of millennial bootleg artists. Designer Ava Nirui of @avanope has built a career out of embroidering Gucci onto Champion hoodies and merging Carhartt with the Chanel name. Imran Moosvi, aka @imran_potato, uses the Louis Vuitton and Gucci monograms in almost everything—splicing them into Nike zip-up hoodies or creating natty ties from them. “For me personally, fake stuff is more fun,” he says. “There’s more freedom to do whatever you want with it. I think the stigma associated with something being bootleg or fake is starting to disappear a little bit, because at the end of the day, people just want to see a cool product.”

But does the trend have legs? “I don’t think this design culture has longevity, because people will always find a way to overdo and ruin,” Moosvi says. After all, is there really fun in spending top dollar for an item that mimics a fake $15 one? Luxury consumers so far seem not to mind; it remains to be seen whether Guccy will have the same effect. Until then, maybe it’s more real to stick with the fake deal.

REAL AUTHENTICATION: HOW WE AUTHENTICATE DESIGNER HANDBAGS

REAL AUTHENTICATION : HOW TO AUTHENTICATE DESIGNER HANDBAGS 

Real Authentication offers top-tier online handbag authentication services to both individuals and resellers alike... but HOW? There are very specific sets of handbag authentication checkpoints we use to verify the authenticity of each designer brand we service. We have outlined a few of the handbag authentication checkpoints here for the Authentic Christian Dior Wallet With Chain below: