ThredUp Inc. is getting social.
The fashion resale site named Danielle Vermeer to the newly created position of head of social commerce, starting in January.
It’s a posting that makes use of Vermeer’s more than 13 years in e-commerce, fashion tech and resale. It also signals how ThredUp — a leader in the still-growing resale market — sees itself evolving into the future.
James Reinhart, cofounder and chief executive officer of ThredUp, is keen on using the advance of artificial intelligence as well as social connections to remake resale.
“These [AI-based] tools will disproportionately benefit the resale industry because of the ways I think they can improve the consumer product experience,” Reinhart told WWD. “Those tools are foundational for the way a lot of people, young people in particular, are going to shop over the next few years.
“ThredUp has historically been more focused on women in their 30s,” Reinhart said. “We’re going to make a pretty broad push into being more innovative, targeting younger folks.”
While ThredUp has been switching its business over to a consignment model and doesn’t own most of its inventory, it still takes physical control over the goods on its platform and handles logistics.
In all, that includes 4.5 million items.
“Think about that as our content,” Reinhart said. “Historically, the way we delivered that content was only right through the core shopping experience. But imagine, if you unleash influencers, ambassadors, creatives, curators of those goods, the types of experiences that could be created.”
Using AI to sort through all the looks that are available on the platform, a seller could curate a shop of holiday dresses for Christmas or build a collection of looks devoted to one college sports team and keep the supply updating automatically as pieces sell.
“We’re going to start to build tooling that allows us to create these long-tail experiences that can be really powerful,” he said.
Vermeer’s mission will be to lead ThredUp’s efforts to make resale more engaging and accessible.
She is currently cofounder and chief executive officer of Teleport, a peer-to-peer resale app that is now going to close down. Teleport garnered attention for its approach to secondhand social commerce, including its AI-based search and TikTok-like video feed.
Earlier, Vermeer was a product leader at Amazon, leading the launch of the e-commerce giant’s fashion luxury resale business.
That background gives her a wide angle on what’s possible at resale, a segment of the market that has clearly captured the hearts of many consumers — and sellers — but is still feeling its way forward.
“Every time we get to where we think we need to be, the world shifts,” Reinhart said.
“My take is that resale has proven that it is not a fad,” the CEO said. “This isn’t Groupon, right? This is an industry and it is continuing to go through the growing pains of: How do the business models continue to evolve? How do the customer experiences continue to evolve to become really big businesses?”
He said that both ThredUp and The RealReal Inc. are growing and making steady progress.
“I don’t think there’s any chance that consumers are going to wake up one day and be like, ‘Ah, I’m only buying new.’ That is not going to happen. The question is just how does the industry evolve to take more and more share of wallet?
“People love to talk about how great TJ Maxx is as a business, and we all love what they’ve been able to do,” Reinhart said. “That business started in [1976], it’s almost 50 years old. These sort of structural changes in industries take time, but they’re profound. I think if we look back 20 years from now, it’ll be very clear how the resale industry became a real force.”
