ThredUp wants consumers to see it differently.
The resale platform announced Monday that it has undergone a rebrand, which includes an update to the user interface (UI) of ThredUp’s site and color palette, and is based heavily around technology improvements.
James Reinhart, the company’s CEO and co-founder, has long been bullish on the power of artificial intelligence, and the rebrand has launched several more AI features to improve the user experience. This time around, ThredUp seems to have a strong focus on personalization and improving the buyer and seller experiences.
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The company launched a tool it calls the Daily Edit, which shows users up to 100 items an algorithm selected for them based on their previous ThredUp activity. Reinhart said that tool leverages internal data about a customer.
“It’s really designed to track and capture everything about your ThredUp experience—what you purchased previously, what you might have added to cart, what you might have returned, if we have seller history on you, what you’ve sent us. We’re trying to take a holistic approach, and then we’re going to build feedback loops into it to help the Daily Edit get better,” he said.
Reinhart said the ThredUp team has been all-in on the rebrand for about six months. Within that time, the company tested the Daily Edit internally and made a number of tweaks to the algorithm in an effort to play up exactly what feels important to its consumers.
“When we first launched this internally in small segments of customers, of 100 items, you might get 10 or 20 of them correct. Every week, it feels like we got 10 percent better,” he said. “We don’t get 100 out of 100 right, but…80 percent of the things we’re putting in front of people seem to be landing.”
In addition to tailoring consumers’ home pages to their own tastes, ThredUp is adding a more generic, trend-oriented feature it calls The Trend Report. That section of the site helps users quickly access items that fit emerging trends, in an effort to engage them in purchasing trending items secondhand rather than new via fast-fashion companies.
Reinhart said surfacing trending pieces can continue helping wash away the stigma associated with secondhand. And, as the macroeconomic environment in the United States continues to remain murky, consumers are increasingly turning to secondhand as an option for value.
“Historically, we didn’t really focus on being the most trendy spot for you, or the spot you should go to really understand what’s going on. We want to elevate that positioning in the market,” Reinhart said. “One of the things I think that secondhand needs to nail—and we expect to nail—over the coming years is, how do we take what’s going on across the industry, [the] trends [that] are happening for Gen X or Millennials or Gen Xers and what’s going on in the zeitgeist and really help you shop that effortlessly secondhand,” he said.
Monday’s Trend Report categories included “Modern Prep,” “Game Day,” “Romantic Lace” and “Twee Revival.”
Though many of ThredUp’s previously announced AI integrations have been forward facing and directed at customers, the company simultaneously leverages the technology behind the scenes to ease the challenges associated with handling mass amounts of inventory.
Part of the resale platform’s rebrand reflects that practice; the company announced that it has started using AI to enhance listing photos. Reinhart has previously stressed the need for secondhand supply to match and meet growing demand, and the tool is meant to help facilitate more robust product information, including digital measurements and stronger imagery. While this will help buyers garner more information about products they’re interested in, the company believes it could also help sellers’ items move faster.
Reinhart said the improvements are digital only.
“This isn’t actually deploying more humans in the loop. It is improving the high fidelity of the photos, allowing customers to zoom in, being able to provide digital measurements,” he explained.
The new tools ThredUp launched in tandem with its rebrand are meant to help streamline the shopping experience, particularly for new customers or those customers who have only made a few purchases from the platform.
“What you’re probably going to see is new customer conversion rates and adoption and purchasing behaviors accelerate,” Reinhart said. “I don’t think that rebrands are necessarily designed for the customers you’ve had for a decade; it’s really thinking about, what’s the customer of the next 10 years?”
The technology-enabled portions of the rebrand were primarily built in house, with some support on the backend from technology vendors ThredUp has standing partnerships with. For Reinhart, that approach provides the flexibility to pivot.
“We really pride ourselves on being a technology company, and so I feel very strongly you have to build a lot of these things yourself in order to be able to rapidly evolve them to meet [the] customer,” Reinhart said.
ThredUp is recovering from an, at times, challenging 2024, which saw it complete the divestment of its European business and work to close the losses gap it saw in the first half of the year. Reinhart said the rebrand will help it “accelerate the trends we’ve been driving and give us a new chance to talk about the positioning” as he works to grow the business further.
“I don’t see resale as a fad. I see this as a structural change in the way people shop, and we want to be well positioned to be the number one place for them to do that,” he said.
