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[00:00:29] Suzy Davidkhanian: Hi, everyone. Today is Wednesday, June 17th. Welcome to eMarketer's weekly retail show, Reimagining Retail, an eMarketer podcast made possible by Rocked. This is the show where we talk about how retail collides with every part of our lives, and I'm your host, Suzy Davidkhanian. Resale has officially gone mainstream.

[00:00:48] Suzy Davidkhanian: More than half of consumers have shopped secondhand, and for many shoppers, it's becoming the first place they look, not the last. But with millions of unique items and tens of thousands more added every day, the real challenge is helping shoppers find what they're looking for. So today, we're talking with one of the leaders in this space, thredUP, about what it takes to market an endless aisle of onesies, and how personalization, customer acquisition, and AI are helping reshape the resale experience.

[00:01:17] Suzy Davidkhanian: Joining me today, we have podcast regular, Principal Analyst Sky Canaves joining us from Texas. Hey, Sky.

[00:01:22] Sky Canaves: Hey, Suzy. Glad to be here.

[00:01:24] Suzy Davidkhanian: And special guest Kristin Brophy, Senior Vice President, Head of Marketing at thredUP. Hey, Kristin.

[00:01:30] Kristen Brophy: Hi, Suzy. Hi, Sky. Thanks for having me.

[00:01:32] Suzy Davidkhanian: Thanks for joining us. Mm. Before we get into it, I wanted to ask you both, what's the last thing you scored secondhand or decided to let go of?

[00:01:42] Suzy Davidkhanian: Kristin, I'm starting with you.

[00:01:45] Kristen Brophy: Oh, man. Well, I only shop secondhand, so

[00:01:49] Suzy Davidkhanian: I

[00:01:49] Kristen Brophy: love that ... where do I start is really the question- I think that's the answer ... but I yeah. I will say-

[00:01:53] Suzy Davidkhanian: What is something you're really excited about that you just got?

[00:01:56] Kristen Brophy: I, um, so I just got back from our wedding guest dress pop-up, uh, experience in SoHo, New York, and I found this amazing Mara Hoffman black kind of linen dress there, and she just s- uh, ended her line recently and retired, um, from, from her Mara Hoffman line.

[00:02:18] Kristen Brophy: And so I found this dress, and it's incredible, and it fits, and I'm newly pregnant, and so my body's really changing, and it's stretchy, and it makes me feel so comfortable. But also, I think there's a lot of resale value. Since Mara Hoffman's such an amazing, coveted brand that they're no longer making, I was kind of in my head thinking, "Well, this will be such a great thing if I ever do wanna sell it."

[00:02:38] Kristen Brophy: It has a lot of, it has a lot of value too, so it's one of those amazing pieces that is both form and, uh, and value. So it was a great find.

[00:02:46] Suzy Davidkhanian: I love that. Really a good score. Thank you. Sky,

[00:02:48] Sky Canaves: what about you? I, I love thinking about how consumers approach buying new or resale with an eye to what they can then resell it for.

[00:02:58] Sky Canaves: But, um, my last secondhand purchase was, I'm a little embarrassed to admit how much I overpaid for a Boston Marathon edition Stanley- ... that had sold out as soon as it went on sale. Um,

[00:03:11] Kristen Brophy: podcast regular audiences will know I, I regularly

[00:03:15] Sky Canaves: run the Boston Marathon each year. It's my favorite race. And I'm on this constant push to try to drink more water, um, as opposed to just re- hydrating with Diet Coke and coffee.

[00:03:27] Sky Canaves: Um, so I convinced myself I needed this Stanley tumbler to drink more water, and so yeah, here it

[00:03:33] Suzy Davidkhanian: is. Now, was it, uh, gently loved, or was it just resold on the... 'Cause I feel like that's two different things, and maybe we can get into that a little bit more after.

[00:03:42] Sky Canaves: No, it was new and being sold as new. Got it.

[00:03:46] Sky Canaves: It was resal- so it was resale in that sense but not secondhand. And I do tend to turn to resale platforms when I'm looking for something that I can't find anywhere else, either because it has sold out or because it's something older that isn't being produced anymore.

[00:04:01] Suzy Davidkhanian: Well, I think that's a really good segue into just learning a little bit more about what does thredUP do, Kristin?

[00:04:07] Kristen Brophy: Yeah, thredUP is an online marketplace to buy and sell secondhand fashion, and we have about, uh, four million i- items on our site at any given time. We drop about 65,000 new items on our site every day, so there is such a vast selection for anybody who, for any woman in the US who really wants to come and shop secondhand.

[00:04:28] Suzy Davidkhanian: And because of my previous life, I know you guys also do a lot of activations with other retailers, right?

[00:04:34] Kristen Brophy: Yeah, we partner with Reformation, we partner with Cotopaxi to fuel their resale programs, and so customers can send back their Ref dresses or their Cotopaxi jackets and get a credit to shop back at Reformation.

[00:04:48] Kristen Brophy: So they're part of the whole circularity and sustainability fashion movement as well, and we work with a lot of great brands to do that.

[00:04:55] Suzy Davidkhanian: Well, and that brings us to, I think everybody's doing it, right? Whether they're doing it on their own or they're getting your help, and you guys obviously have a really big piece of the resale market.

[00:05:06] Suzy Davidkhanian: Sky, what does good actually look like when you're thinking about resale?

[00:05:12] Sky Canaves: I think it's too often brands have worried about resale and secondhand as cannibalizing new sales, and have been a little hesitant to really fully engage with it, and have kept it kind of in a silo where it's not touching a lot of parts of the business.

[00:05:29] Sky Canaves: So I think re- it's really important to put resale in the context of longer term customer relationships, and as another touchpoint that can be enhanced by brand participation across channels in resale, whether that's just e-commerce or social media, and having an IRL presence or activations that connect to resale.

[00:05:48] Sky Canaves: We see some brands have done like shop in shops or intake counters or hosting experiences where they take vintage pieces and kind of upcycle them or renovate them. And I think more broadly, brands have to think about how their particular resale offering then fits into their brand and brand values. Um, it's often been pitched as sustainability, but there's more to resale than just sustainability, which can be a nice to have, but often isn't the most compelling, uh, factor from a consumer perspective.

[00:06:20] Sky Canaves: So some of the other values are around pricing and value, how you can get a bigger buck and kind of serve as a gateway for future customers who will buy new and become lifetime, lifelong customers. Then there's a product focus, scoring those unique pieces that might not be available elsewhere, going back into the brand history.

[00:06:41] Sky Canaves: And then I think there, some others are like, some brands have really big communities of fans who wanna collect their products. There, there's one that I got sucked into. It's, um- ... this brand called, when I was going to Disney, I was looking for cute, like, Disney things for my, me and my daughter, and there's this brand called Loungefly, and they make a lot of Disney licensed backpacks, and people collect them.

[00:07:04] Sky Canaves: Disney fans collect them, so there are big communities like on Facebook groups where people buy, sell, and trade these bags, and there's a much bigger, much bigger social communities around brands. And then even just thinking like in fashion, like now we have this GLP-1 economy where, you know, brands could start developing resale programs that acknowledge that many people's sizes are changing, and they might have favorite pieces in their wardrobes that they're going to have to, uh, let go of because they're gonna be too large.

[00:07:34] Sky Canaves: They might wanna then look for those pieces in smaller sizes. Um, so- So it's

[00:07:39] Suzy Davidkhanian: clear, it's clear everybody's doing it, right? It d- and it's not even about apparel necessarily, although there is research that shows about 60% of consumers have been doing resale, sort of secondhand shopping when it comes to apparel Skye, your list was amazing because it's definitely destigmatized.

[00:07:57] Suzy Davidkhanian: It is clear it is now table stakes no matter the type of brand you are. Kristen, you guys are also seeing that you're getting millions of items coming in every day. So how are you keeping that from feeling overwhelming for the shopper, and how are you ensuring that they trust the quality of the items that they're getting?

[00:08:15] Kristen Brophy: Yeah, I, so I think there are some people who love being able to shop just a vast amount of inventory, myself included. I feel like Sky might be in that camp too. Yes, I

[00:08:24] Suzy Davidkhanian: think

[00:08:26] Kristen Brophy: you. Um, I... So, we do have a massive catalog, and we think that that's an asset, not a burden. But, a- and, and the reason why we think that is because if you can imagine an outfit, you can pr- or a brand or an item of clothing, you can probably find it on thredUP.

[00:08:45] Kristen Brophy: The thing that makes us different as a resale marketplace is we wanna help you... And as a technology company, we are uniquely positioned to help you find it faster and find it more easily. And so what we've really been doing when we th- when we think about that is helping curb that overwhelm of what it's like to shop secondhand online with better tooling.

[00:09:08] Kristen Brophy: And so AI has really been a helpful partner for us in doing that. We've had, we view, we've, um, recently launched a bunch of AI tools that anticipate customer needs. And so an example of that is we've recently launched the Daily Edit. The Daily Edit looks at all of your behavior, your favorites, your shopping behavior, and recommends 100 finds for you every single day that are completely curated and personalized to your historical behavior, and predict what you'll actually like and find.

[00:09:40] Kristen Brophy: So that's one of the ways that we start to curate the, the platform. We also have really powerful AI-driven search. And so the difference when you come to thredUP is when you search, you can search in your natural language. You can say, "I'm looking for a coastal cowgirl outfit for the next Beyoncé concert."

[00:09:57] Kristen Brophy: I'm, I'm outing myself. And so, and- ... and we'll return searches for you against that really specific search. And so that, that's another example of, of how we're trying to help you find what you're looking for faster, more easily, and also being your partner and, and finding and discovering your personal style.

[00:10:17] Suzy Davidkhanian: It's really interesting 'cause what you're talking about is what a lot of marketplaces face, right? Just endless aisle, the idea of trying to make big feel small and trying to figure out how do you help inspire and remove friction for discovery, but also make the person feel like you understand them, but not in a creepy way, right?

[00:10:38] Suzy Davidkhanian: Yeah. That you understand exactly who they are. It's interesting for me. I, I'm overwhelmed by 100 SKUs being personalized to me. Tell me more about that. Is that... What are you guys looking for? What are the signals that you're thinking about?

[00:10:50] Kristen Brophy: We really think about that as that what's our merchandising strategy.

[00:10:54] Kristen Brophy: Personalization is really what becomes our v- our version of merchandising. We, because we only have, uh, y- you're calling them onesies, which I absolutely love. We call them, like, one SKU. You know, we only have one of everything, um, as you put it. The, the traditional mar- merchandising doesn't work, right? You, if you go to a, uh, a site like Gap- You have an aesthetic that you expect to see.

[00:11:18] Kristen Brophy: If you go to any, you know, if you, same with Banana Republic, et cetera. But any woman can come shop on thredUP who has any type of personal style, and it's, we can't really be one single aesthetic for one single type of, uh, personal style. That's why the personalization part of our merchandising is so, so critical, and why we're investing so much in this technology and personalization technology.

[00:11:42] Kristen Brophy: You know, for example, when you come to thredUP, any search that you do is personalized. We rank items based on what we think you'll like. We've recently launched real-time personalization, so what you click, the site will adjust and show you something even more personal based on, based on what we think we've been able to infer that you're looking for.

[00:12:01] Kristen Brophy: By leveraging AI, we've been able to make this really big shift from, to proactive and predicted recommendations to help you, to help merchandise the site that's more personal to, in a way that's more personal to you.

[00:12:14] Sky Canaves: And to me, 100 SKUs sounds just about perfectly manageable. Um, you know, when, when the other option is, like, 1,000 or a million- Yeah

[00:12:24] Sky Canaves: um, and trying to sift through, like, the traditional, like, filters and drop-down menus, being able to have recommendations that are personalized and then seem highly relevant, I think the relevance of the experience is what's going to be the, the driving force that keeps people coming back.

[00:12:41] Kristen Brophy: Yeah, it's kind of amazing because when you're doing a Google search, you probably go to the first page.

[00:12:46] Kristen Brophy: And so you, you may need about 10 search results on that first page. But our customers will go 10 to 20 pages deep looking for clothing. And so tho- those 100 items actually really only represent about a page, maybe a page and a half of, of items to interact with. We actually hope that's just kind of a visual snack for you to go a lot deeper.

[00:13:09] Kristen Brophy: Um, we find that our customers really love to shop, and they wanna spend time looking for something that they'll love. It's a treasure hunt. So it's a treasure hunt. Yeah. For a lot of customers, it's a treasure hunt. And

[00:13:18] Sky Canaves: where, where it's visual, I think, where it's visual, I think that is a lot easier to digest quickly, especially as- Yeah

[00:13:25] Sky Canaves: especially younger consumers who are in the mindset of the endless scroll, and seeing 100 short videos or scrolling through is, like, a minute or two in, in Gen Z time.

[00:13:38] Suzy Davidkhanian: That's true. I think for me- Mm ... what sounds so promising, it's, like, this mix of AI- Mm ... plus the human touch that, as you had said before, makes that merchandising equals personalizing is the snack and/or your personal storefront that, where you, like, get me, and so now you're showing me the things that I didn't even know I needed- Yeah

[00:13:59] Suzy Davidkhanian: because you get me so well.

[00:14:00] Kristen Brophy: Yes, exactly.

[00:14:03] Suzy Davidkhanian: So one of the other, uh, parts of having a lot of products is you need people to give you the product. So how are you thinking about that? 'Cause, like, you kinda have two customers, right? Yeah. You have the people who are coming to purchase, but you also have the people who are ready to let go of something that's gently loved, um, to be up on your, in your marketplace.

[00:14:21] Suzy Davidkhanian: How do you communicate to those different kinds of consumers?

[00:14:24] Kristen Brophy: I think every marketer on this who's listening to this cast probably Feels this, but the, where we really start is understanding the two sides, the customers who are participating in both sides of our marketplace. And we've spent a lot of time talking to customers, doing research with customers, to hear what drives them to shop and sell secondhand.

[00:14:45] Kristen Brophy: And so where we, how I think about marketing and where we start is what are the core values and what is so important to both sides of our marketplace? And on the, on the buyer side, on the demand side of our marketplace, what's really important in a, in a resale marketplace is trust. Can I tr- and, and trust is really delivered through consistency of action.

[00:15:06] Kristen Brophy: And so can I trust that this is gonna be an affordable place for me to shop? On ThredUp, yes, you can. Can I trust that there is enough selection? Will I find something that I love? And are, is this company living up to its values? And so is it a sustain- You know, for a lot of our customers, it's, it's a sustainable way to shop, it's a circular way to shop, and we wanna make sure we're delivering on those pillars.

[00:15:30] Kristen Brophy: On the seller side, trust is also really critical. And by the way, if, if you were to ask me the question you asked at the top, which is there's so many people doing resale now, how do you differentiate, the answer is trust. It's very simple. What you hear from every customer is none of these resale platforms are making people feel like they're trustworthy.

[00:15:50] Kristen Brophy: And so that's a place we've really invested in. On the seller side, the way we deliver on trust is, will this be worth my time and is it a convenient way to sell? 'Cause we're a managed marketplace, and what that means is you put your clothing in a bag, a ThredUp bag, you send it back to us, and we process it, we inspect it, we list it on our site, and we sell it on your behalf, and you get paid when it sells.

[00:16:12] Kristen Brophy: And so that means you really don't have to do a lot. So is it convenient? Yes, on ThredUp it is. Will I earn enough to make this worth my time to do a closet clean-out and send it to ThredUp? And yes, the answer is yes, especially when you look at compared to other resale platforms or selling on consignment, we have really, really...

[00:16:29] Kristen Brophy: We've invested in making our, our earnings really competitive. And so that's where, how we think about marketing to each side of our platform. How do we make sure we're delivering for what... we're delivering things that they will find most valuable? Because the product really is the marketing, and so that's how we think- Yeah

[00:16:46] Kristen Brophy: about marketing to both.

[00:16:47] Suzy Davidkhanian: And it's interesting you guys talked about it upfront sort of around value means so much more than a price point, right? It's a brand you love, an item you can't find, sustainability, and it sounds like you're also at ThredUp working towards helping educate the sellers that even when you're first buying your item new, that you're buying something, like you were saying about your, your Nuus score, right?

[00:17:08] Suzy Davidkhanian: A brand that you know will potentially have value to resale, and it- Yeah ... it's, that's another really interesting way of thinking about, um, inventory, your inventory ed- engine. Yeah.

[00:17:17] Sky Canaves: There's that whole se- buyer-seller flywheel, where as you, people Platforms tend to bring in buyers first because they're looking for something.

[00:17:25] Sky Canaves: But as that, um, experience becomes trustworthy, and the friction is low in buying, and then you can reach out to them and, you know, say like, "Do you have things you also wanna sell? Here's how easy we make it to sell." Like for ThredUp, w- for example, it's famous for its clean out kits, and then taking over the rest of the process through the managed selling.

[00:17:47] Kristen Brophy: Sky, you're so right about that, and what I would, how I would build on that comment is the thing that we, um, what we've just recently launched is what we're calling direct listings, which is our peer-to-peer competitive product to Poshmark, and, and other resell- Depop, and other resale platforms that are, um, like I said, peer-to-peer.

[00:18:06] Kristen Brophy: And what's interesting about that is, you know, I think the second kind of question that you asked me nested in the first is, how do the buyer and seller sides of the marketplace feed each other, and Sky started to touch on that too. That is a great way to help people continue to behave in circular fashion.

[00:18:24] Kristen Brophy: So we recently, uh, like I mentioned at the top of this call, launched a wedding dress guest campaign. Our insight was that most people, most people who are shopping for an event dress around the wedding events like bachelorette party, rehearsal dinner, the actual wedding, wear that dress one time. And so what, uh, what we're thinking about is how do we close the loop on buying and selling on ThredUp.

[00:18:47] Kristen Brophy: You may not have a closet clean-out you need to do, but maybe you just wore this wedding dress, wedding guest dress that you'll never wear again. Can you just sell it immediately back on ThredUp with our, with our peer-to-peer product called Direct Listings? So that's sort of the other way that we're trying to keep that flywheel going on, on ThredUp.

[00:19:06] Suzy Davidkhanian: That's awesome. One of the things we talk a lot about, and, and you just touched on it very briefly, is around brand marketing and even performance marketing and how you think about storytelling. And it sounds like for this new, uh, initiative around weddings, that's like the epitome of brand and sto- storytelling and performance marketing, 'cause you're gonna see the dresses starting to be listed or comes in to you.

[00:19:30] Suzy Davidkhanian: Yeah. How do you guys think about the two coming together?

[00:19:34] Kristen Brophy: I think that they are... When they're working perfectly, they're in total, they feed each other. And so, uh, if, if I'm speaking specifically about the wedding campaign, what's interesting about that is in our lower funnel, we're continuously pushing the boundaries of our brand.

[00:19:51] Kristen Brophy: We're being very experimental with our creative because we wanna see what sticks with different customers. And what we learned last year, and from a lower funnel marketing, um, paid social marketing on Meta, what stood out to us was how well guest and event dresses performed as a lower funnel ad. And we started to really think about that, and we said, "How could that inform our brand storytelling?"

[00:20:17] Kristen Brophy: And that's actually how we got the idea to do a big wedding guest dress campaign. Um, and so that's an example of how when you're pushing the boundaries in the lower funnel, you can actually inform some of your upper funnel storytelling, but they do have to be working in tandem.

[00:20:33] Suzy Davidkhanian: And I think, I mean, you guys had some insights in your latest report around people even find resale platforms through social media platforms like TikTok.

[00:20:42] Kristen Brophy: Yeah.

[00:20:43] Suzy Davidkhanian: How does that sort of circular conversation happen, Sky? Are you seeing that? I mean, it's beyond resale, too, like how the media, social media platforms are sending folks back to the real platforms where they actually happen. Oh,

[00:20:54] Sky Canaves: yeah. But, but social platforms lend themselves really well to resale, and the onesies, as you call them, or the single SKU products, because there's- I

[00:21:03] Suzy Davidkhanian: thought every merchant called them that.

[00:21:06] Sky Canaves: I still think of onesies as like what- For baby ... my bab- for babies. Yeah. Yeah. But I

[00:21:11] Kristen Brophy: do- It could be where my mind is at right now, too.

[00:21:12] Suzy Davidkhanian: That's true.

[00:21:15] Sky Canaves: Um, but they, they are, they do really lend themselves really well to resale because there's curation. Uh, video has the ability to capture products in detail and really show them, and you can tell stories about the individual product and why it's desirable.

[00:21:30] Sky Canaves: Um, so I think it's then connecting from the social end, the huge amount of, like, younger consumer interest in social and resale that kind of tie into each other. Um, and then tying that into other channels where a lot of resale discovery also takes place, such as in person, you know, other platforms.

[00:21:49] Kristen Brophy: M- my only addition to that is we wanna be everywhere that our customers are.

[00:21:55] Kristen Brophy: We wanna be on every place they discover fashion and get inspired by fashion, and so we've really invested in how do we integrate with these platforms in a really native way that naturally and seamlessly moves you from the discover experience into the shopping experience. And I'll give you an example.

[00:22:13] Kristen Brophy: We recently launched the wedding dress guest decoder, which allows you to take a Pinterest board that you've created with looks and put that URL in our, on our app or on our site, and we'll curate all of the dresses that fit the mood or vibe of that board. And that's a way that we've help- we're helping you take your social inspiration where you're likely discovering great idea and for dresses or fashion and then shop our site really seamlessly.

[00:22:43] Kristen Brophy: So for us, it's about integrating with these platforms and working with them and giving people easier ways to shop and find what they're looking for from their discovery.

[00:22:54] Suzy Davidkhanian: I love that. We could keep talking about this, but unfortunately, that's all the time we have for today. It's so great to see how you're using technology and all these different tools, whether it's, you know, integrating with other platforms, visual search, conversational search, AI tools, basically as the foundation to really help reduce friction.

[00:23:13] Suzy Davidkhanian: It's, it's amazing.

[00:23:14] Kristen Brophy: Thank you so much, Suzy, and thank you Skyy, for your great insights, but also for being an avid secondhand shopper.

[00:23:21] Sky Canaves: Oh, thank you. I've been shopping secondhand for, oh, since I was a child, because my mom was a secondhand shopper too. Um-

[00:23:29] Suzy Davidkhanian: I love that. Well, New York has a lot of really good thrift shops too.

[00:23:32] Sky Canaves: Yes. It's true. And this is going back to the '80s. I grew up with her going to some of the old vintage shops.

[00:23:38] Suzy Davidkhanian: Yeah. So cool. Thank you both. It was such a great conversation. Thank you to our listeners and to our team that edits the podcast. Please leave a rating or review, and remember to subscribe. I'll see you for more Reimagining Retail in two Wednesdays.

[00:23:51] Suzy Davidkhanian: Arielle will host the AMRA Awards next week. And on Friday, join Marcus for another episode of Behind the Numbers, an eMarketer podcast made possible by Rocked.