The Standard (St. Catharines)

Website touts secondhand fashion

‘Treasure hunt’ fashion site thredUp launches in Canada

- ALEESHA HARRIS VANCOUVER SUN

What do you do with your clothes when they no longer fit — literally or figurative­ly — into your wardrobe?

James Reinhart hopes the answer is this: You sell them.

The “serial entreprene­ur” is the brain (he’s officially the founder and chief executive officer) behind the online thrift shop called thredUP, which recently launched in Canada.

Reinhart recently spoke with Postmedia News about shopping secondhand, treasure hunting and getting shoppers to rethink how — and where — they shop. their closets. The company resells clothing from more than 35,000 brands for up to 90 per cent off the original retail value. Headquarte­red in downtown San Francisco and backed by worldclass investors, thredUP is reinventin­g the secondhand clothing industry and inspiring a new generation of consumers to think secondhand first.

thredUP sells like-new women’s and kids’ clothing, shoes, handbags and accessorie­s. Some of our most popular brands are J.Crew, Theory, Banana Republic, Lululemon and Coach. Our customers love shopping on thredUP because it’s a treasure hunt — thousands of new items are added all the time so you never know what gems you’ll find when you hit refresh. and people are learning that shopping secondhand is a better choice for the environmen­t and for your wallet. The shift to online shopping has also changed consumer mindsets.

Shoppers are also usually surprised at the quality they find on thredUP. The majority of our items are like-new, and many still have tags. Half of our customers never shopped thrift before trying thredUP, but now they’re hooked.

We’ve received a lot of interest from internatio­nal markets over the past few years, particular­ly Canada, but there was a lot of scaling and fine-tuning to be done in the U.S. market before expanding overseas. We’re confident in the brand we’ve built, and excited to finally offer the unrivalled value and convenienc­e of thredUP to Canadian customers. Based on the organic volume we’ve seen over the past few weeks, we’re already gaining a following of shoppers in Canada.

The secondhand market is growing rapidly in both the U.S. and Canada. Given that shopping is increasing­ly happening online, thredUP is a good fit for women looking for convenienc­e and great value when expanding their wardrobes.

We’re excited that Canadian consumers are now able to shop thredUP by going to our website or downloadin­g the app. We are not yet accepting supply from markets outside of the U.S. We want to ensure we get the buy side right before we open up the more-logistical­ly challengin­g supply side, but we are excited for what’s to come.

To learn more, visit thredup.com. William South, avid birdwatche­r and brilliant detective, has a deeply buried secret: he may have killed a man as a child in Northern Ireland. When a fellow birdwatche­r is found murdered, the culprit seems to be someone from South’s childhood. As he works to solve the mystery, can he manage to keep his past under wraps?

Freelance operative Jonathan Grave and his partners are ambushed and surrounded in the middle of a Mexican jungle. Their only hope of survival is a remote orphanage where Grave can’t help but think something bigger is at play. What follows is a thrilling race to uncover a conspiracy of powerful people that want to take no prisoners and leave no survivors.

Tessa, a Montreal real estate agent, is deeply unhappy and questionin­g her life when she inadverten­tly runs into an exboyfrien­d and makes plans to meet with him later in the week. In the days that follow, Tessa has to decide if she is willing to disrupt her stable, loving family for an uncertain future in this complex story of a woman and a marriage from the inside out.

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