ThredUp Just Went Live: The Big Move For Resale and Live Shopping

Today was like an hour ago. Was literally the... The very first one? Very first show. That's thredUP's first ever livestream and now they're selling on whatnot. The hosts broadcast from inside thredUP's distribution centers with racks of clothing circling behind them. 5,000,001

of a kind items. They'll run out of airtime before they run out of inventory.

I caught up with ThredUp's Alon Rodham live at Shop Talk Fall in Nashville. Stay with us and watch it on the Retail Transformers show.

Welcome to Retail Transformers candid conversations with the visionaries shaping the future of commerce. I'm Ricardo Belmar. And I'm Casey Golden. Welcome back, Retail Razor fans. This is the podcast where we cut through the clutter to bring you the sharpest insights from the leaders redefining retail,

retail careers,

and the future of retailing.

Ricardo,

I see we've got another one of your shop talk ball trip. You know, the one I missed.

Yeah. Yeah. I know. I know. It it is. You were missed. You were missed. But this one's a very cool reunion of sorts though because Alain Rotom, chief strategy

officer and chief legal officer at ThredUP. He was on the Retail Raiser show about a year ago talking with us about resale and impact on holiday shopping. And, if I remember right, last year, they just released their annual holiday resale report, which in fact just came out for 2026.

Oh, cool. So we'll have to link this year's report to the show notes.

So what did we learn that is new over at ThredUP?

Well, it turns out that morning when Alon and I sat down, ThredUP had just announced that they are selling live on Whatnot.

And their very first show aired about an hour before we sat down to report.

Whatnot. We just had Whatnot on the Retail Razor Show. We did. We did. So for anyone in the audience who hasn't heard it yet, go back and listen to our season six episode 14

dropped earlier this week with Tom Varelli, Whatnot's chief product officer. Tom told us he thinks today is like 2005 was for ecommerce but for live shopping, and here we are with ThredUp proving his point. After

all the years of predictions, live shopping

is finally taking off, and I'll take it. Yeah. Absolutely.

So ThredUp hired their own hosts, and they broadcast from studios inside their Atlanta and Dallas distribution centers.

With 5,000,000 one of a kind items for sale, and ThredUP has the opposite problem of most live centers. They've got more inventory than airtime.

Good problem. What else? We also talk about how AI has become their operating system inside ThredUP.

They have a brand facing tool called ResaleIQ

built on seventeen years of resale data,

and what Alon calls lean back discovery,

where the app does the work instead of the shopper.

I can get with that. And with the holiday coming up Yeah. Q four is usually resale slow quarter,

but ThredUp's research with global data shows millennials,

Gen z, and Gen alpha are much more comfortable

giving and getting secondhand gifts. Now plus there's a story that I think everyone will enjoy about Ellen's 14 year old daughter who's made her closet her currency.

Maybe

his currency her closet? Yeah.

Maybe that too. But I love that. Before we get into the conversation, Ricardo, tell everyone where they can find the retail razor next month. I'd love to. So next month, you'll find RetailRazor at Retail Agent Con on Tuesday, November 17 from 11AM to 3PM eastern.

Join me and more than 700 of your retail peers at Retail Agent Con, a live virtual event from our good friends at IHL Group with ClearSight AI. It's an honest look at what AI agents are really doing today across merchandising,

order management, inventory,

and store operations, which ones are real, what has to change in your org chart to make them stick. You'll hear from retail leaders like Clint Allison of Tractor Supply, Scott Sager of David's Bridal, Justin Eaming of Artisan Lane Furniture, and Karen Beebe of Bill's.

Plus, doctor Janet Sherlock on getting agents and people working together.

And IHL's Greg Buzak, Jerry Sheldon, Lee Holman, and myself will all be completing some sessions. Registration

is free for retailers at retailagentcon.com,

and technology providers sponsorships

are still available.

It's four hours of real world insight you can use heading into NRF's big show in January. Register today.

Thank you to Retail Agent Con for bringing you this episode of Retail Transformers.

Now let's go to your conversation with Elon Rodham of ThredUP, recorded live and in person at shop talk fall in Nashville.

Welcome back, everybody. We're back with the Retail Razor Podcast Network here live and in person at shop talk Fall in Nashville in the Rethink Retail Creator Studio. And this time, I'm here with someone who's no stranger to the show, who is rejoining us since, I guess, it's been, what, about a year? Yeah. About a here. Yep. Alon Roden from ThredUP. Yep. And thanks so much for for joining us. So you guys have some exciting news that got announced today, I think. Is that... Yeah. We do. It's good timing to show up at Shop Talk and have a press release like the morning of. That's right. But yeah, today was like the first day that we went live in... Live into live selling. So Oh. You know, today. ThredUp, we're e commerce site. Yep. We've been doing... We're a marketplace for secondhand clothing for children's

clothes.

And... But we haven't had our head in the sand. We've been paying attention to the juggernaut that is live selling. Yep. So Yep. To get into it and to start strong, we actually partnered with Whatnot. Okay.

Yep. Yeah. Whatnot's been tearing it up. Yeah. Absolutely. You know, they were educating us actually on how big the market is. Uh-huh. I think their last stats were like it's a $22,000,000,000

market. Mhmm. It's in The US and and in Europe and they've got 60% of that market. So they seemed like a natural partner. Oh, that makes a lot of sense. We we just had Tom Barelli from Whatnot on the show recently.

Yeah. So it's great great time. It makes a lot of sense to me. So are you... You're doing... So you're doing the livestreams yourselves

through Whatnot? Exactly. On the Whatnot platform. So, you know, we've got these distribution centers, four of them across the country Yeah. And basically decided in Atlanta and Dallas, which are our two largest distribution centers, we'd actually put the studios right inside.

So the background is like that monster's... Distribution center in the back....

All the clothing... Going around. Okay. And then we've got our hosts Uh-huh. And they are broadcasting directly from there and people are tuning tuning in to the channel through whatnot. Okay. That's the platform. Fantastic. And are you... Are are your are your hosts... Are these all in house

employees and people with ThredUp or are you leveraging any other third party...

Great question. We we were debating on how to start. Whether they would sort of bring outside talent through and saying, hey, we've got studios. Mhmm. Set up shop. And we looked into that and and that was interesting, but ultimately we decided to go home grow. We hired our own talent. Yep. They are like... Their job is to be a live host. Okay. And they walked it... They walked into our warehouse, they saw like the three stories of of clothing and and you know, they're talent. They know how to sell I

think that the interesting part is like it actually took like a technical integration.

Mhmm. Because essentially what's happening is the live host is checking out clothing

Mhmm. From our distribution center Okay. Bringing it to the studio and then selling it live. Mhmm. Okay. And then, you know, if if not all of it were to sell, we'd probably put it right back on to the platform Okay.

And so forth. But the goal is to have like a lot of shows. Mhmm. Not just even one a day, like multiple Okay. Shows a Okay. Themed shows. You know, it does... It can be anything from like everything in a particular size. Mhmm. It could be a category like Okay. Dresses or like beach party or So

we're really excited about the format. Yeah. I I would think, I mean, the the variety of products that you have would really lend itself to creating like a lot of really fun themes

and making these live shows really interesting.

Yeah. I think it's a it's a it's a feature and it's a bug. Like it's a really... And we've got 5,000,000 items for sale at Yeah. Given time. Uh-huh. And so the neat thing is it's basically endless inventory. We got about a 100,000 items every single day being processed and listed.

So really the constraint is like the number of hours of of live shows we can do. Yeah. It's not the inventory, which Right. I think for these live selling platforms, it's actually It's usually the opposite problem. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Okay. That makes a lot of sense. Well, I will say we've been for a few years now proponents on our podcast for for livestreaming really

going bigger and succeeding well. So I I thank you for making our predictions somewhat true.

Yeah. I hope it's extremely true. We'll see. Yeah. Today, like an hour ago, was literally the... The very first one? Very first show. Okay. And what's funny about it too is like when you... I've watched a bunch of other shows Mhmm. On on live selling platforms, different categories.

And I think what's fun about it is it's not like super polished. Yeah. It's not like very rehearsed. Uh-huh. Mistakes are happening kind of in real time. Mhmm. And I think that's part of the fun is like... It's part of the entertainment part of it. It's entertaining. Right. It's authentic. Yep. It's it's like you're really... You're sort of connecting with the with the host. Mhmm. It's very interactive. I I was surprised of how many comments

kinda end up in the chat. Oh, interesting. Yeah. And if you're doing it right and you've got a producer and you're able to answer questions in real time, I think the audience really feels like engaged. Yeah. And really feel like they're part of part of the session. Oh, that's great. Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah. I'm I'm looking forward to... We'll have enough to have you come back again and kinda... Maybe we'll have a DC in a distribution center. You and I will go live. We have a DC distribution center. We'll do our shows. Exactly. There you go.

So you have that going on. When you were on the show last year, we also talked a little bit about what, at the time, what were some of the recent AI based things that you were doing. I I think if I recall correctly, a number of those are more customer facing things that kinda help people discover and find products. Yes. I think that was one area. So today now, what what other areas are you now exploring with AI? What other parts of the business are getting Yeah. AI impacted? It... It's interesting. Like, the last time we talked, I don't think... Like, my day to day job was fully sort of infiltrated by like AI technology. Yeah. And it's funny. Like, we... I've had a a colleague who just came back from maternity leave. So she was gone for a few months. And as she just came back, she's just like astounded by how much internally the company has changed Right. And how AI is really like the operating system by which everybody

does things. But we've... We're we're working on this tool called Resale IQ Mhmm. And it essentially is like,

imagine if an LLM, like a chat GPT type platform had like all of the

seventeen years

of of structured data for from ThredUP. That's 300,000,000 items we processed.

We're selling now like 25,000,000 items a year. Mhmm. All of that data available to really mine and figure out Yeah. And learn a little bit more deeply about what like that brand... How that brand is performing in the resale market. Oh, interesting. Like that's one of the tools. It's not necessarily like consumer facing, but it's gonna be brand facing Oh, very soon. Okay. Interesting.

When we talked a little bit even on the consumer side, I remember we were talking about image search, which I think is like now pervasive in a lot of... Exactly. Right? Yeah. Like you can... I was actually walking through a Ralph Lauren store, my wife, and we saw this mannequin dressed like perfectly. I'm like Mhmm. Watch this. Take a picture of the mannequin with the five items it's wearing. Uh-huh. I I looked at the price tag at Ralph Lauren and it was like thousands of dollars for the for

the whole. It's on... Boom. You can kinda see what it looks like in in real time in it like from a thrifted inventory on top. Wow. So... Okay. That part has been Yeah. That's been around for a few months, but it's been going really well. The thing that is now changing is this thing we're calling lean back discovery.

Okay. Because if you think about like the last, I don't know, twenty years or so of e commerce Mhmm. And you... And you're... We're talking about like discovery and how you Yeah. How consumers find products Mhmm. It's like you go to a website and you search for things. Right. Right? And the search has gotten a lot better. That's become AI powered. Yeah. So rather than putting in like,

you know, a brand, a color, a category, a size to find what you want Yeah. Like these search bars are really natural language and you can put like a like a micro trend in there or like whatever you're kinda looking for Right. In however you wanna describe it and that works.

But that's still like lean forward. Like the customer is still doing all the work to get to the place that they wanna go. Yeah. You kinda have to put a lot of thought into what are those keywords that you're putting in. Right. And and for most people who are like me, you're you're kinda second guessing, well, I put in this combination of words, know I'm gonna get this result and that's not what I'm looking for. Right. Yeah. And so I think in parallel what's happened is if you look at kind of the the world of social media Mhmm. If you're on x, if you're on Instagram or or whatever

and like the content is changing in real time based on your activities

and you're just sort of like having fun and it's like the app is bringing you the things that are relevant to you. Like in the context of like e commerce, we think about that that is like lean back discovery. Lean. Okay. Like you're not doing the work. Mhmm. The app is doing the work. Yeah. And it's using like

everything that you're doing Mhmm.

Basically in real time. The next thing that's coming up is is changed for like based on what you just did. Okay. And so in the end that becomes like hyper personalized.

Yeah. And I think the power of AI

with what it can do for for really any type of ecommerce

is like hyper real time personalization. Mhmm. And for us, we're bullish about it at ThredUp because again,

5,000,000 items Yeah. All single SKU Right. Everything is a snowflake. Uh-huh. Like, if you can get... If you can supercharge discovery

by making it relevant and letting the consumer lean back Yeah. And just have it come to them, that's Yeah. I think that's the future.

Yeah. That that sounds pretty powerful to do it that way and if I I I can see this. It it's almost as if I hear from a lot of other brands that express more concern over how discovery is being impacted with the way you can use AI to make it easier. You know, to your point, that lean back search kind of moment, but it does feel to me as if like your

product is your inventory because it's so many... It's all unique SKUs Yep. It kinda lends itself to this format more so than maybe other brands. Yeah. I mean, for years we've been talking... Every time like a new a new feature comes out Mhmm. Really what we've been trying to do is like level the playing field between shopping new which has traditionally been easy and fun Mhmm. And shopping secondhand which has been like, if you're good at it Yeah. Good at it and we're part of our work. Yeah. It's a learning process. Mhmm. So we're trying to make that easy. Yeah. To me the thing though that like, you know, I'm curious about how you feel about this too is like, what

I just described to you is still like the human being experiencing the brand and Yeah. Kind of making it easier and more fun. Mhmm. But like with agentic shopping and we're here at Shop Talk like Yeah. All all I'm hearing about is That's all you're hearing. Yeah. Agentic shopping,

it's like, well, if the agent is doing the work and going out there into the world to find you the products that you're looking for,

what do brands need to do differently to like serve the agent rather than Right. The human. Right. That that part I still think is like an open question.

Yeah. I I I think so too. You know, I I... I'm I'm always a little bit of of two minds in this because

I feel that there's... There are different moments for a consumer when they're trying to shop where I think this makes sense as a path to discovery

and moments where it actually cuts out all the joy and fun of Right. Of the whole process where I don't think consumers will want to do that. But I think that you know every... I think we've all been in a situation where we're shopping for something and you have a moment of frustration where you feel like you've put a lot of energy into shopping for this item that you want and you just can't find it. Yeah. And that's where, you know, you think if if there only there were an agent I could just hand this off to and they could go and find it for me Yeah. Those are the moments where I think that makes sense. Yep. But if I'm just, you know, more generally shopping, I don't really have an idea of what I want. That's why I I think it makes more sense that consumers will use,

you know, pick your form of AI whether it's a chap or an LM to kinda narrow down, but more like what you're describing where I just gonna start describing things. Yeah. Not thinking in terms of which keyword combination is gonna get me the result, but just I'm gonna broadly describe when I have a sense I'm looking for and see what comes back.

That is a little bit more engaging, I think, for a consumer, and that doesn't require an agent to me. I think an agent kind of removes that whole process Right. And not in a good way. Yeah. But but to your point, you know, what what does a brand do? Because you kinda have to respond differently in each of those scenarios. Right? But what you need to provide as the brand is a little different in each case. Part of it is, I I think I've I've lost track how many times I've heard Sessions talking about, you know, how do you have to enable your product catalog so that you can be discovered by LLMs and it's, you know, it used you used to just need a handful of keywords to be in the mix so that Google would find you. But now you need to have a, know, very much more... Very elaborate descriptive product pages and and descriptions so that an LM that's asking or answering a consumer's five sentence question

can actually draw from that data versus just a three keyword search. Yeah. And it's very... It's a very different scenario. And I I'm not sure I'm... I don't feel that everyone really has the full answers yet

because I think there's a lot of... At least I see a lot of variability. And the one thing that I think is consistent is the inconsistency in how the LLMs respond

in that scenario. So I feel like as a brand, you just need to be prepared

for,

you know, whatever it is, a half dozen different formats, a different way of providing information to all of those because no one of them is gonna drive all your traffic.

Yeah. I I tend to agree. I think it's it's becoming

more obvious that it's like situational commerce. Right.

And to your point, like, if you already know what you want and you just want help getting it,

I think that the company or the brand that has the right product at the right price Yeah. Like that's really what's gonna matter and the and the agent is gonna do the work to like find that thing at the right price and kinda bring it to you. Yeah. But I I also think, you know, you're you're right about the fact that like if you want inspiration,

if you want like the discovery to be fun,

that's still very human. Yeah. And that's still like a big opportunity for a brand to show up. Right.

The area that I think is just more sort of like in that interim world is like the discoverability

piece. Yeah. To your point, like,

I think we've even had this debate internally at ThredUP where, you know, some people think like, no, we really have to do

a bang up job of making sure the product is discoverable

Mhmm. And has the right sort of meta information around it Right. To make it to make it show up like in in the agentic search. Yeah.

The other side is like,

in two months, this is all gonna be figured out and these agents know exactly what to get much more accurately

and comprehensively than a human ever could. So just keep doing what we're doing Mhmm. And the agents will find us in term... In terms of like that piece. Mhmm. But then, know, building a brand that has like this emotional connection Yeah. To a consumer,

like, I don't know. That's like Yeah. Very... That's a very old thing that I I don't think is necessarily gonna change Yeah. In the future. But, you know, if you wanna optimize growth targets and profitability, you've gotta do it in the right way. That's right. Yeah. It's... That's why it's one of those things where like I said at at the beginning, it's... You kinda have to have two competing opinions about this because on the one hand, it can be very,

I don't know, very very mechanical.

And I think everyone has sort of developed over time the the sense, and I think it's the right one, that consumers want that emotional connection with the brand when they find the product they actually like. Right. And if it's a product they really love and they have that brand love and they keep coming back,

you... I don't think you can replicate that with an agent doing the work for you. No. You can't. But you can... The agent can help you build trust. Yes. Right? It can aggregate reviews. Right. Exactly. It can give like... It it can give suggestion so that you're actually getting like the more correct thing than maybe you otherwise would Right.

So, yeah, it's it's really like a... It's a yes and thing. Right? Exactly. It it absolutely is. And and that's why I come back to... I I figured the answer to brands is you're...

You instinctively always wanna say, I have choices and I have to pick ones to do this. And I think the answer in this case is, you're not gonna pick one, you're gonna pick five. Right.

And unfortunately, it means you have to be prepared to operate in all five areas

because it's just... I I I'm... I guess maybe my simplified way of looking at it is, this agentic discovery becomes a new channel Yep. That you have to address. Just like once upon a time e commerce was the new channel. Right. Right? And and so here we are again.

And it's not that one replaces the other, it's additive. It's additive. It's omnichannel. Right? Yeah. It's just like a more broader set of omnichannel. Mhmm. And you want those things to be connected. Right. Because I think even now like when people are searching, let's say on an LLM Mhmm. And they're looking for a product, some reviews to understand kind of what they want, and then they're they're getting taken off of the LLM now to the brand's website. Mhmm. Like,

yes, you're going to the brand's website and you're there, but like the... A lot of the context isn't following kinda over, so it's still very disjointed. Yeah. Now, I think we're gonna solve that problem over time,

but like we're living through it. Yeah. Literally right now. Yeah. Yeah. No. I completely completely agree. So I think maybe just to kinda close this out, one one last question for you. How is the overall resale market growing this year compared to last year? Like, are you seeing any anything

changing as we're coming into the holiday season? You know, it's really more of the same. Resale continues to outpace retail

Yeah. Which is great. I think we're actually coming out with a holiday report in a few weeks. Okay. And like the

news flash,

not so surprise... Actually, is kinda surprising.

Like historically for for resale and particularly for ThredUp, we're a public company so you can kinda look up the financials.

Q four is our slow quarter which is like the inverse of Yeah. Typical

Yeah. Right? Because it's like everyone gets into the black in q four and that's why we call it Black Friday. Right? So... But the survey data that we've done and we've worked with global data on it Mhmm. Basically says that especially in the younger generations, we're talking about millennials, gen z Yep. And gen alpha,

they're much more comfortable giving and receiving second hand gifts. Oh, okay. And so like we're really excited about that because you know traditionally we just sort of like leaned out and said like it's not our our time to shine. Right. It's like let's get to spring cleaning and circular closets Yeah. You know after the holidays. Yeah. But now like people really like they like vintage, they like nostalgia.

Mhmm. They like second hand is like appreciated.

Yeah. And almost feels like,

you know, a little bit more special. Mhmm. And that's Okay. Actually connected to some of the research that we found from our resale report Mhmm. A year ago which basically told us like, you know, and we thought for many years, like, why do people go to resale? Well, they go for value Right. And they go for sustainability.

Mhmm. That's true. Those things are there. They get a lot of value and not throwing clothes out, extending the life of clothing, all of that is very sustainable.

But really Yeah. It's about the unique find.

Like, people don't wanna look just like everybody else. Right. Like, not everybody has that polo shirt that you're wearing. Right. That's bright fuchsia color Right. Which I love. And it's what makes you unique. Yeah. And I think people turn to resale for the uniqueness. Yeah. And I can now when you talk about gift giving Mhmm. That same sort of logic... Something

unique as well because that feels like a better value, more value that you're giving. Yep. Yeah. Yep. The other weird thing, if if we have a minute to talk about, I've got a 14 year old daughter and I watch her engage

in resale. Mhmm. Sort of like, she doesn't really care that I work at ThredUP. She's just kinda like thrifting and doing her thing with her friends. Uh-huh. So I ended up paying attention. And actually, like for her, she's 14, the sustainability aspect hasn't picked her yet. Okay. Doesn't have like awareness about landfills Right.

And fast fashion and all of that. Yeah. But she does understand circularity.

Goes to her mom's closet.

She goes to her closet. Mhmm. And she sees things that she can easily sell in the secondhand market. Oh, okay. Whether that's peer to peer on ThredUP Uh-huh. Or if it's on Depop

Uh-huh. Or whatever. Right. Like Right. Her closet is her currency. That is how she's making money and that is how she's paying for a year old lifestyle. She's basically, you know, like created a little

a little business. Yeah. And she doesn't even think about it as business. She just thinks about it as like It's just the way of doing things. I'm supplementing my allowance. The things she wants. Yeah. I wanna Starbucks with my friends. Mhmm. And I'm out of I'm out of money. So what should I What should I do? Yeah. Oh, wow. Very interesting. Yep. She's growing up. Yep. Yep. She's more entrepreneurial than I was at that age. Yeah.

Mean, same same here. Well, that that's definitely an interesting trend. I'll be curious to see if we see that growing year over year. Yeah. Agreed. Wow. Well, Alan, thanks so much for joining me today. It was great catching up. Yes. Was a disaster. Lots of cool things happening with ThredUP.

And especially on the live streaming font, I'm super excited about that because it helps prove our prediction that we were probably gonna see some more live streaming happening in in this market. So thank you for that.

Of course. Thanks for having We'll we'll have to have you back in the future and see how it's going. Yes, sir. Alright. Thanks very much. That's it for another episode in the Rethink Retail Creator Studio for us.

I know you love this episode, so drop us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or GoodPods. And if you're watching us on YouTube, like and subscribe before you go. I'm Casey Golden.

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I'm Ricardo Belmar. Mar. Thanks for joining us on retail transformers,

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