ThredUp at TD Cowen Conference: AI and Growth Drive Success

On Tuesday, June 3, 2025, ThredUp (NASDAQ:TDUP) showcased its strategic vision at the TD Cowen 9th Annual Future of the Consumer Conference. James Reinhart, cofounder and CEO, outlined ThredUp’s unique market position, emphasizing AI-driven advancements and the company’s robust growth trajectory. Despite challenges like tariffs, ThredUp’s outlook remains positive, bolstered by a strong financial performance and innovative technology integration.

Key Takeaways

• ThredUp leverages AI to enhance customer experience and drive new customer acquisition.
• The company achieved its best customer acquisition quarter in Q1, with a 95% year-over-year increase.
• ThredUp remains EBITDA positive for the seventh consecutive quarter, with free cash flow generation.
• The second-hand market is expected to grow due to generational shifts in consumer behavior.
• CEO James Reinhart is optimistic about ThredUp’s ability to capitalize on market changes and consumer trends.

Financial Results

• Q1 revenue reached $71 million, with gross margins at 79%.
• EBITDA margin stood at 5%, marking the seventh consecutive quarter of EBITDA positivity.
• Stock has surged over 400% year-to-date, reflecting investor confidence.
• The company is guided towards sustained free cash flow positivity, leveraging its model at the $250-$300 million mark.

Operational Updates

• ThredUp reported its best quarter for new customer acquisition in Q1, with a 95% year-over-year increase.
• April marked the highest month for new buyer acquisition, aided by improved conversion rates and basket sizes.
• AI-driven search enhancements significantly boosted product discoverability and conversion rates.
• A test of new assortment pages based on user data improved conversion by 19%.
• The company has reoriented its focus on the U.S. market following the sale of its European business.

Future Outlook

• ThredUp anticipates double-digit growth in the second-hand market, driven by generational shifts.
• Tariffs on new apparel may enhance ThredUp’s value proposition as a cost-effective alternative.
• AI is expected to disproportionately benefit long-tail marketplaces like ThredUp.
• The company foresees continued consumer behavior shifts towards convenience, necessitating seamless selling and buying experiences.

Q&A Highlights

• Competition: ThredUp differentiates itself from zero-fee peer-to-peer platforms through its managed marketplace model.
• Digital Meets Physical: ThredUp’s Resale-as-a-Service (RaaS) collaborations include brands like Reformation and J Crew.
• AI and Search: AI-powered search, built on an OpenAI backend, has dramatically improved product discoverability.
• Consumer Behavior: The trend towards consumer "laziness" necessitates easier selling processes and relevant buying experiences.
• Tariffs and De Minimis: ThredUp advocates for closing the de minimis loophole, expecting to benefit from rising apparel prices.

ThredUp’s strategic focus on AI and technology positions it well for future growth. For a deeper dive into the company’s plans and insights, refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - TD Cowen 9th Annual Future of the Consumer Conference:

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst. We’re really thrilled to have James Reinhart here, the cofounder and CEO of ThreadUp. Who here has shopped at ThreadUp? Raise your hand. What was your experience like?

What’s your favorite part of ThredUp?

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: Prices. Katie,

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: what did you like about ThredUp? Selection. Selection? And what did you like about ThredUp?

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: Value. Way in the back.

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: And then what was your thoughts? Well, it’s a circular situation with amongst circular friends here. Yes. And so it’s it’s great to be here. Throw it up, it’s transforming the resale sector with the mission to leverage technology, delivering the world’s largest resale platform for apparel, shoes and accessories.

James, you founded it in 02/2009, I’ve known you for a very long time as well and the company has processed over 200 unique second hand items. Most recently at first quarter, you were ahead of expectations, congrats, revenue of 71,000,000 and gross margins of 79% and EBITDA at a 5% margin. The stock’s up over 400% year to date as well, so nice job. Thanks. Also, for us in Excel, II please if you value our research and are enjoying this.

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: You need to get me a patent.

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: We can do a collab, I’ll try to resell this. James, so it’s very interesting always to talk to you about your inspiration. Tell us a little bit about the founding story and the whole notion of competition has really transformed in the Yeah. Since the past few years. So what’s been the differences now between you and the other businesses?

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: Yeah, so I mean the original founding story was, if you think back to like 02/2009, you know, you’ve been doing this a long time, there was these very transformative consumer experiences that were more Airbnb, Uber, Spot up, like everybody was sort of changing the way Bonobos, right, was selling direct consumer. Know, Warby Parker was about to be founded. You know, all these different ways that consumers were engaging. Mobile phone, right, the first iPhone was only a couple years old. And so, we just thought at that time that there would be this change in the way second hand happened.

And that before then you were shopping on eBay or you shopping on Craigslist or you were going to a thrift store and we thought there would be such disruptive changes in technology, there would be some change to the way second hand was done. And our core thesis was the changing nature of of the seller. And I think one of the things we learned is that there were lots of people So the true fanning story for me is I went to sell my clothes at a local consignment store and they wouldn’t take them. They said, oh, we just do luxury. And I said, well, yeah, I’ve got some of that but like the vast majority of the stuff I have, you know, is not luxury and I remember it was like J crew cashmere sweater.

I’m like, yeah, don’t take that. And I thought, it can’t be worth zero. Right? Like, it may not be worth like what they wanna put it on the floor at, but it can be worth zero. And that began this inspiration about the fact that we had this vast supply of stuff out there that was fundamentally mispriced.

In my closet, was worth zero, but to some other medium sized male looking for a navy blue cashmere sweater, it would be worth $25.

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: I think I’m looking for one. Cashmere is always right.

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: But but but you know, like that $25 gap, I was like, there’s value being destroyed in in the world. Yeah. Supply versus demand. And so that began this like very, you know, decade plus long journey trying to reinvent the second hand market. And we’ve seen multiple comp lots of competition along the way.

We can talk about the early years and and or what’s happening now, but but we’re still kind of trying to change the way people shop.

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: What is happening now? What’s happened to the nature of competition? And also the big question mark for the models became profitability.

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: Yep. Well I think you had a lot of issues where capital was cheap, know, eighteen, nineteen, 20, investors, you know, there’s just a panel of talking about growth and profits.

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: Mhmm.

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: And so I think businesses, you know, in the resell industry really began chasing growth at all all costs. I mean, when we went public in ’21, the business was growing close to 50%. Yeah. Right? And losing money.

And I think as the market shifted into ’22, you you lived that, I lived that, right? We, the models became more disciplined. And I think what’s nice to see now is, ThreadUp is now our seventh quarter, seventh straight quarter of being EBITDA positive. We were cash generative last quarter, free cash flow for a number of quarters. We’ve guided to free cash flow.

So you know, I think, and similar with Real, right? I think Real has done a good job projecting free cash flow. I think when Poshmark was taken private a couple years ago, they were projecting to be free cash flow positive. So I think there’s a lot of good stuff that’s happened in the industry, and I think when we talk to investors these days at conferences like this, it’s more just getting them back acquainted with the stories.

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: What was the recipe for achieving that tipping point and did it work how you had thought it might work, you know, when you went public?

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: Yeah, I think there, I mean, we talked a lot about returns to scale, And I do think there is something to be said to just the raw dollars in the model. And so we’ve certainly seen as we’ve hit this $2.50 to $300,000,000 mark, that you can start to generate real leverage in the model. I think what’s nice for us as we think about going forward is you’ve hit this inflection point and we are a marketplace, even though this is a retail conference. Right? We’re a marketplace and so the benefits of being a marketplace means there are real returns to scale and leverage in SG and A, in technology and so I think we see some really nice positive leverage going forward.

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: Well, what about marketing as a percentage sales? In first quarter it was 18%. Yeah. Is that a leverage point and how do you make sure you optimize for a non leaky bucket when you think about customer lifetime value?

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: Yeah, I mean we’ve been very focused on reaccelerating growth and what we’ve seen, so we just, you know, we just had earnings in March, sorry, in May and we printed our best, Q one was our best customer acquisition quarter ever. Mhmm. So new customers year over year grew 95%. Mhmm. And what I would tell you, Oliver, in some of the callbacks, we’re actually seeing the cohorts be as good or better than we’ve seen in previous cohorts.

Why is that? That’s great. It’s a combination of the prompt experience being better, so conversion rates are up, basket size, right, frequency of orders, all these things you know, have improved. We should talk, we’ll get to talking about AI, but a lot of that has been the driver of this and so you know, Q1 was the best new customer acquisition quarter, then April was the best month from a new buyer acquisition we’ve ever had. And so you’re starting to see this flywheel start to accelerate that I think

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: is really positive. Who is your competition? Should you merge with TJ Maxx?

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: I I don’t we certainly when we survey customers and we ask them, this item you purchased on ThredUp, if ThredUp didn’t exist, where would you have purchased it? A lot of them say off price. A lot of them do say TJ Maxx by name. Yeah. But there are no mergers in the works.

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: Got it.

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: Okay. Would not be a merger of equals, let’s be clear. Yeah.

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: Well, about Digital Means Physical regarding what you want? You’ve had a lot of amazing partnerships, you’ve been really forward thinking and collaborative.

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: Yep. Yeah, mean we began, you know, we really invented what has become the RAS industry, resale as a service. Yeah. So we started back in 2018, we did a big collaboration with Reformation. We’ve done stuff with Madewell, J Crew, Athleta, Kate Spade, Tommy.

And so all those sorts of things I think have been building brand awareness and credibility for the business. But you know, if you go back to when we started the business, I mean, people weren’t talking about second hand being cool. Right? Like, 02/2009, ’2 thousand ’10, there were still a lot of stigma attached to it. So I think, while we have benefited, I think, from from the zeitgeist of second hand, I think we’ve also been a driver of turning second hand, making it cool.

We’ve done collabs with, you know, all sorts of celebrities just trying to, you know, Emma Watson, you know, was won a few years ago, and it it was great to really share the story. Yeah, the best practice is to not actually buy something new. Yes, yeah, and I think platforms like ThredUp or RealReal or Posh or a number of these, you know, the product experience had become so good. The value, you know, I think the audience talked about the prices, means that we, you know, our vision was always that you may not buy everything at ThredUp, but that you would at least give us a chance and take a look and we’re starting to see consumers do that

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: at higher volumes. The conversion rates are encouraging. Mean, what’s made for happier customers lately in terms of innovating less friction, etcetera?

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: Yeah, the discoverability, search is a very hard problem to solve in second hand because you’ve got just millions and millions of SKUs and so when a customer is typing their random query of things, getting accuracy is challenging. The the biggest change is about eighteen months ago, we started to really lean into like an AI AI search based product. So built on an OpenAI back end, OpenAI back end with an open source company called Fashion Clip. It was trained on far fetched data, actually, and it just made discoverability of products better, and we’ve seen, we saw an immediate jump in conversion. And then that has formed this base layer for everything from image search, so you can now take a photo of anything, whether it’s in a magazine or it’s on the high street or it’s your friend and we will use that image search to find similar products.

Can you give us an example of that, of what happens with Fashion Clip versus prior? Yeah. So I mean, used to be that you, in our distribution center, when we would get like this coat in, right, we could tag a few attributes about it. And now, when you run it through Fashion Clip or what has evolved beyond that is, it might tag a hundred attributes about that jacket. And so therefore, it’s able to feed in to a personalization engine that says, oh, Oliver would probably prefer this assortment.

And so what you’re starting to get is just better metadata about about these items. And then your ability to then outfit, generate style preferences, generate complimentary pieces like you know, this jacket with this shirt, with this tie, things that you could never have done before. Was it instantly Like no brainer? It was it was Well, the data I would tell you is that, so we spent about seven years building the old search product on ThredUP.

Team of engineers working on it all the time. About ninety days in this like new AI world and the product was better. Yeah. And so we ran it against, you know, we did we did It took about six months to fully deploy it, but because we were sort of testing which search product was better, but

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: Do you think there’ll be another leapfrog? I mean, or that one is the most remarkable for the

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: I think that’s the most Five years. From a from a foundational technology because it the search piece powers a lot of what we do. But I do think I mean, so we just ran another experiment, which I can’t talk about in in too much detail, but basically, the when you when you hit some assortment pages, some some merchandise pages, we changed the sortation based on some other parameters that we understood about the user and conversion rate was 19% better.

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: Yeah, so it’s

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: all so there’s a lot still to come.

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: So are you changing that sortation based on the browsing behavior of a customer?

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: Browsing behavior, where they came from Yeah. You know, their purchase history. And those are all things that like retailers have been doing for some time, but I think the precision with which you can do it now with new AI based technologies is just vastly superior to where it

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: was a couple years If you had to bet on one consumer behavior shift that will define the next five years, what what have you spotted?

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: I would say that consumers will continue to be lazier than ever.

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: Yeah.

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: And I and I think, you know, part of the clean out kit thesis for sellers is we gotta make it as easy as possible. Mhmm. And and then I think, so that’s on the seller side. And then on the buyer side, I just think people are lazy so you need to serve up to them highly relevant Are

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: they more lazy or is it just older people saying that about younger people?

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: Both. I mean think about like the explosion of delivery at home, right? Everything is in an on demand world which I think speaks of, it’s not just about convenience, it’s that it’s like, shit, I don’t wanna cook, let’s just order DoorDash again.

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: Yeah, some versions of do it yourself and trading up and trading it down. Or so what about the tariff topic which is everyone’s favorite? Yep.

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: I’ve heard of it.

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: How are you planning your business and the minimus and also you’ve been you’ve been really at the at the forefront of a lot of discussion and original research around this.

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: Yeah, I mean I think it’s two parts. One on the tariffs, if you know what’s going to happen with all the tariffs, you should let us know. But right now, I think we expect that if the tariffs currently stay in place, you know, costs will go up, right, for a lot of retailers. Some retailers will be able to pass those on, some won’t. I think in that world, thredUP will be even better value than it is today.

And so my my sense is that we could we could benefit from increasing prices for new apparel. On the de minimis side, it’s something that from a policy perspective, we’ve advocated for for multiple years. That this exemption of being able to kind of come have goods sort of slip through without paying taxes, we thought was unfair. Yeah. And so, we’d advocated for closing that loophole, and that has happened in this administration, and so we think that that is good.

I think it should be good for our business. Yeah. I will say though, just to be clear, our Q one results and our Q two guide, none of this stuff impacted Q one, right? Because they were announced on April 2, going in place in May 2. April is not part of our Q1, and so all the momentum we were seeing in the business I think was separate from what we think is playing out, what could play out over the rest of

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: the What’s your thought on the growth rate of the second hand market and the compounded, the CAGR, the forecasted CAGR and also your own

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: Yeah, mean, I think the market will continue to grow. I And the reason I have a lot of faith in it being strong double digit growth is if you interview and profile successive generations of young people, increasingly second hand is just part of their natural consumption curve. I think for guys that are like us, we came to second hand and had to be taught and marketed to and explained. I think if you’re 14 or 15, it’s just in your zeitgeist, right? Second hand is what you do.

And my guess is that the next generation will have an even higher penetration rate. And so I don’t think this is a fad, I think this is something that’s like a structural change in how people are gonna wanna shop. Mhmm. And I think retailers increasingly will have to pay attention to that. Yeah.

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: We’ve I mean, this is my ninth year of the conference and I’ve featured all of our friends in the

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: business Yeah. Yeah.

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: Yeah. From you to RealReal to read back to Fashionphile to Poshmark. What do you what do you think might happen regarding consolidation or not and how the evolution may happen?

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: Yeah, I mean, think our experience of the revenue run rate that we’re at, the scale that we’re at, I think you need to be in the hundreds and hundreds of millions to make the business generate real profits over time so that you can reinvest. And so I think businesses that are, know, have been operating subscale, I think are gonna be challenged because, and I can only say that because I have lived it. Right? Like when we were subscale, it’s just very hard to make all the math work. And so, you know, you’ve just mentioned a few of them, but there are others, right, that are apps or different plays on the resell market that I think will be challenging to kind of break out.

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: Well should there be, do you see a future in decentralization with peer to peer?

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: Did you say decentralization?

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: Yeah. Decentralization is probably a structural societal trend but related to that is peer to peer versus a managed marketplace.

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: Yeah. I mean I mean, what do you think will happen? I think what you’re seeing happen is, you know, Vinted in Europe has really threw the gauntlet down around zero fees to sellers. Mhmm. And then that forced the hand of Depop in England to take fees to zero, and then Depop has done that.

Depop’s owned by Etsy, has taken it, they’ve taken fees down in The US. I will tell you that my thesis from the very beginning is that peer to peer markets converge on zero take rates because it’s effectively a race to the bottom to drive sellers into the platform. And so that has played out and what remains to be seen is that if you’re a peer to peer market, like, does the monetization work in a world where it’s a fight for sellers? And so I wouldn’t be surprised to see further, like, consolidation Why is your

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: peer to peer would go to zero?

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: I just think, like, if you’re a rational actor and you’re like, okay, I can get a hundred units of great supply by charging sellers twenty percent take rate, and then somebody comes in and says, well because remember, everybody in the peer to peer market is profit motivated first. So then, they are like, oh, well, I have to give 20% to Oliver’s platform and I, James’ platform, I say, look, we could do the same thing but we could we could only charge you 18%. And the seller’s like, great, I’m gonna go sell with James. And then you’re like, screw you, right? But this plays out over a decade and where do we get to?

We get to zero. And what Vint had figured out and I give them an enormous amount of credit is they could take seller fees to zero and then they could monetize shipping, logistics, insurance, like psychographic stuff around buyer returns. Rethinking the model. Rethinking the model, so they sort of change where competition Serves. Yeah, exactly.

And so What did that mean for you? What was your hypothesis for ThredUp? Our hypothesis was that, back to like my five year bet on the future, that people are lazy, that they currently don’t monetize the stuff in their closet, and that it’s a big pain in the butt. And so, if we could offer them a seller experience where we send you the bag, you fill it, we pick it up at your house, right, that people are like, that sounds great. And that, you know, when we went public, we estimated there were a there was a billion, like with a b, a billion clean out kits available in The US every year.

Like, that’s how much stuff, you know, was accumulating. And so our thesis was that if we could build the best mousetrap to get all that supply, eventually we could figure out the unit economics, like automation in our distribution centers to sell it to buyers. And the thing that I got wrong Mhmm. Was, or that I thought would happen sooner is I thought a lot of the technology we could build to build a better buyer experience, better search product, like better merchandising, all that stuff, just proved to be very challenging, like, until AI. And then all of a sudden, AI was like a 10 x improvement in the ability to build a great buying experience.

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: Yeah, the reducing friction, improving discovery, transforming the path to purchase.

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: Well, like In three days. Yeah, in ninety days. Instead of seven years. Instead of seven years, and I think more that, you know, because if you all sort of look at your clothing, I can give you time, can go find the barcode on your clothing. We can wait.

Like, isn’t any barcode on your clothing. So the reality is when we get

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: in that a trick question?

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: But like, the idea is like, that you don’t have any structured data, and so you actually have to build all of this data figure out how to merchandise all And so, the thing I’ve I think is really important is that I think the AI technology, while it benefits traditional retailers in some ways, I think it disproportionately benefits long tail marketplaces like ThreadUp. Like, I think it’ll disproportionately benefit Etsy. I think it’ll disproportionately benefit eBay, I think it’ll disproportionately benefit ThreadUp. Well, it will have those implications for all marketplaces then with I think all marketplaces are gonna be better off.

Yeah. What are you You

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: have a deep knowledge of philosophy too. What are your thoughts of AI and ethics and privacy?

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: I think it’s going to destroy way more jobs than the average person thinks. I think we should be fully aware of how it’s like, I have three young youngest children, infecting their brains in both positive and negative ways. But I’m sort of an AI, like I’m bullish on AI’s ability to solve some of humanity’s hardest problems, and I think it will be massive destruction in the labor market. Force for both change. Yeah.

And it will be, you know, when I think about how do you educate kids in a world like that, like, think you have to Like, the fact that my kid’s school doesn’t let them use, like, JIT GPT for stuff, I think is okay, but I think misses actually the boat and and the power of like, how technology can be harnessed for good.

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: How have you changed as a leader over the years?

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: I think that I have The public markets have beaten the pure unbridled optimism out of me. Really? Yeah. I’ve become more of a realist in my old age. No, I I think I’ve like, have a healthier a healthier balance around, you know, vision and storytelling Yeah.

And like, delivering the Well, you

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: were always good at storytelling. You got better? You got better at it?

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: No, think I got beaten down by the numbers. Yeah. No. No, I think I’ve matured, and I think I have just a much healthier balance of like, I’ve always believed, I’ve always been a what could go right guy, but I think now I’m also have a healthier skepticism of like, you have to manage risk and you have to be thoughtful about the downside and resource allocation, things that I probably didn’t spend enough time on.

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: What about, well, are stock analysts awful? Like, what should they do? What should they do? What’s your feedback for the generalized version of Oliver Chen?

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: You mean other stock analysts? Yeah. Yeah, other people. Other people. I think I think generally, the analysts that are the best ones, they ask really good questions, and I think they have a healthy balance of understanding for investors, right, what can go right and what can go wrong.

And so to me, when I read the best reports that come out of you guys and others, it’s, hey, this is sort of the basic, this is the basic case, but here’s what you should think about if you’re in the bull case, and here’s the bear case, and then let people make up their own minds. So, I think the more you can put people in a bull bear scenario, I think it just helps people ask themselves good Yep.

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: What do you think is most underappreciated about ThredUP?

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: I think people still don’t appreciate two things. One, that we’re a marketplace. Mhmm. Like I just It’s not very hard to understand I know, but like we get but I think I think you get, we get, we get tracked in some ways as like, because we sell apparel, that we’re a look more like a retailer. And I think, you know, this whole tariff conversation was a good, I think, lightning rod to say, oh, know, one of the companies that’s not exposed to this is ThreadUp.

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: Marketplaces are hard too, though.

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: They’re hard, I’m just Yeah, they’re hard, but I think people don’t, I think, give us enough appreciation for the competitive advantages that we’ve built in the marketplace. At At scale.

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: The hard part of the job.

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: Yeah. And then the other is, you know, I’ve been talking about the full investment in AI for eighteen months and how the product experience on ThredUP search that we’ve only talked about, but the thing, the concentric circles out of that. Back to the marketplace comment, I think people sort of bucket us like, oh yeah, it’s like another consumer company talking about like AI. But if you really look at the practical application of who wins and who loses from better AI technology, ThredUP is a company that on average should should be better off because of the nature of the product. So, I think we get grouped unfairly sometimes as a retailer that uses computers Mhmm.

Okay. Versus a marketplace with cutting edge AI technology.

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: So we’re asking all CEOs this, how would you rate the health of your consumer on a scale of one to 10?

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: I think snapshot in time right now, it’s probably seven or an eight, probably an eight. I think I am cautiously optimistic that the consumer’s gonna hold up better than I might have thought thirty or forty five days ago. And I’m just not seeing right now a lot of like fear and uncertainty, doubt. If you had to bet on one consumer behavior shift that will define the next five years, what have you spotted? I mean, this stuff that’s coming out of like the Sam Allman, Johnny Ive acquisition of IO, setting aside the cringe nature of how it all came together and how it was done, it could be quite revolutionary if we’re wearing devices.

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: I have the Meta glasses, did you get them?

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: Yeah, have the Meta glasses and I actually just got them and I think they’re super cool, but I think if you, for example, had something tucked right here that was just tracking

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: everything

kinda do. What do you got? Limitless.

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: It’s How many people have heard of Limitless?

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: That’s a little weird.

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: So yeah, so I think, you know, that’s like a star

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: tack It’s it.

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: I think, but I So I’m just thinking about emerging device technology, it’s a powerful thing that I think we’re only beginning to understand. Yeah. Like, if we’re to go back to 2007 and think, and you asked us that question, and somebody was like, the iPhone? Right? Like imagine the iPhone five years after, you know, the iPhone in 2012 and like what it did.

I think this technology that that Johnny Ive and Sam Alban are cooking up could be transformative. It could also be a total disaster. We’re also asking What’s

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: your favorite what Are you reading a book that you love or watching a show or movie that you love?

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: The book that I’m re I’m reading I have a random assortment of stuff. I’m rereading The Brothers Karamazov, which is a book I read like in college by Dostoevsky. And then I’m reading this book called The Wager, which is about this shipwreck. The boat is called The Wager. It’s terrific.

And then I would really recommend Arthur Brooks. If you wanna get happier in life

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: Yeah. He does a great job.

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: Arthur Brooks is the best. He will make you infinitely happier.

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: Building the financial model for happiness.

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: Building a financial model for Building the Infrastructure, yes. Necessity

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: model in your head for happiness. Yeah. Last question, but what what are the hardest problems or hardest challenges or most fun, exciting challenges you’re facing?

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: I I think right now is, you know, we we bought a business in Europe Yeah. That was very challenging. We sold that business last year. I underestimated how taxing that was from a distraction on the team and myself. And so, the ability really since the end of last year to fully reorient on The US business has been incredible.

Like I, you know, was a business that I knew at the back of my hand, like up until we went public. And so, the ability now, I think the most fun I’m having is seeing all the ways the product can get better, you know, for customers and the way we can use technology to make it better and, that’s like super fun. Like that’s back to founder building and exciting stuff.

Oliver Chen, Retail, new platforms, luxury analyst, Excel II: Well James, it’s been amazing to know you throughout and also hear about the latest and greatest and also how many things are impacting the business. But a lot of the core tenants remain the same on the market. Yep. So thank you for your time, we

James Reinhart, Cofounder and CEO, ThredUp: appreciate it. You. Thanks Oliver, appreciate it.

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