Used-clothing platform Thredup, which sells

everything from Old Navy tees to Gucci heels, received roughly 100,000 items a day from would-be sellers in 2019 and processed its 100 millionth garment for the site. But the 10-year-old platform broke new ground last year as well, partnering with other retailers to find potential secondhand shoppers, wherever they may be. “People in their twenties and thirties were born into [the sharing economy],” says James Reinhart, Thredup’s founder and CEO. “For people in their forties and older, this consumption model requires training.” To reach them, the company set up special secondhand sections in nearly three dozen Jcpenneys and worked with Macy’s to create secondhand sections in 40 of its department stores. Cult denim brand Madewell now has Thredupsourced “archive collections” at several of its stores. Thredup also partnered with companies such as Reformation and Amour Vert to enable fans of those brands to send Thredup old clothes (from any label) in exchange for shopping credit at their stores. Thredup even created its own digital storefront on ebay to woo that site’s secondhand shoppers. Meanwhile, the company is using the $175 million it raised last year to expand its network of warehouses, which are equipped with proprietary technology that can price, photograph, and efficiently distribute one-of-a-kind items. (Sellers make money from every item sold, and Thredup takes a commission.) In 2019, the company added its fourth center, in Phoenix, staffed by 500 workers, and it recently broke ground on its fifth, which will be the largest, in Atlanta. “There are so many clothes out there that in order to make a [sustainable] dent in the universe, which is our vision, we need to build the infrastructure,” Reinhart says.