thredUP Nabs $175M

According to Business Insider, the e-commerce resale company announced on Wednesday it had raised an additional $175 million in venture capital. It is also launching a new platform to help facilitate secondhand clothing partnerships with major retailers. The funding puts ThredUp's total capital raised at more than $300 million, building upon an undisclosed $75 million last year, according to the company.

ThredUp CEO James Reinhart told Business Insider the funding has largely been used to develop its new Resale-As-A-Service platform, which provides companies with the ability to connect to ThredUp's infrastructure and inventory to sell secondhand items in their stores. It will also be used to support infrastructure expansion and increase the number of automated distribution centers helping ThredUp sort through the 100,000 items it receives daily.

"As an entrepreneur, the idea of us opening a hundred of our own stores would probably take us forever, but instead we have the ability to work with partners who already understand how to do this very, very well," Reinhart said. "We can do what we do best, which is resale, and they can do what they do best, which is engaging the customer in a physical format."

The announcement comes on the heels of both Macy's and JCPenney debuting pilot programs with ThredUp. The department stores shared in respective earnings calls that they will begin selling a curated selection of resale items in select locations.

It also builds upon existing collaborations with companies like Reformation, where ThredUp has already helped implement "Clean Out Kits" for Reformation consumers to recycle their clothing in exchange for a shopping credit.

"We've been experimenting with bits and pieces of [the platform] and over the last year we have learned a lot about how to make this work for our various partners," Reinhart said. "Where we've come to today is we now really have a system and a true platform that folks can plug into and we'll just continue to invest in this over time."

ThredUp will be in 100 total stores by September 1, and Reinhart said to expect several other brands to come aboard in the coming months.

"The way you really make a big dent in the universe is you figure out how to work with companies and partners where there are big opportunities for distribution," he said. "I think you'll start to see resale in more places than certainly then you saw six months ago."