ThredUp Online Store Opens First Brick And Mortar Location

The San Francisco-based company announced plans to open up its first physical store and four additional locations by the end of the year.

In the world of brick and mortar retail, it can sometimes be tough to compete with pricing from online competitors. Online retailers face different problems, such as making shoppers aware of their presence when they don’t already have a physical presence. Online clothing thrift store ThredUp is a retailer that has helped to create the above problem, and it’s about to solve the latter problem by itself.  

As Forbes shares, the San Francisco-based company announced plans to open up its first physical store in San Marcos, Texas, as well as four additional locations by the end of the year. 



“One of my hypotheses is that the ThredUp customer shops a lot at outlets,” co-founder and CEO James Reinhart said, later adding that “The vast majority of our business will be online. The store serves a set of customers we can’t serve online. It makes sense as a growth strategy.”

The company’s website outlines three key tenets that the brand follows: Style Up, Save Up, and Live Up. 

“We believe everyone should have convenient and affordable access to the brands and styles that best celebrates their individual style. Often you can find the exact same items you’d find in retail stores but at up to 90% off,” reads the concept of Style Up. 

“We are on a mission to make life easier for busy shoppers on a budget. Offering unsurpassed value, the largest collection of brands anywhere, and a convenient option for shopping and selling like-new clothes,” touts the concept of Save Up. 

“We know that shopping secondhand helps the world in some small way, and we’re proud to be a part of that. Being a conscious consumer matters. It matters to you, it matters to us, it matters in the whole big picture of the world,” notes the Live Up concept. 

ThredUp was founded back in 2009, and it has grown from an online marketplace with a huge focus on kids clothing to one that has become a go-to spot for savvy shoppers of name-brand women’s fashions. 

“We are transforming the way people think about secondhand, and we have the capacity and the energy and the vision to make that a part of people’s lives for 20, 30, 50 years,” a note on the site from Reinhart reads. 

ThredUp’s stores will range in size from 3,500 square feet to 5,500 square feet, and Reinhart that many more stores could be in the pipeline depending on how the first wave of physical locations do. That makes ThredUp a name to watch in the brick and mortar retail space, as affordable fashion is a red-hot area of the overall retail sector.  

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