As thredUP has grown (and we’ve grown a lot!), we’ve learned more about the costs to continue delivering great value to our customers. Like most resale shops we absorb a cost in acquiring inventory, a cost to process that inventory, and then we make revenue on re-selling that inventory. The nature of this timing is that we have to spend a lot of money upfront (item costs + labor) in order to make the wide selection of products we have available. With more than 100,000 individual products available at any time, this is a big operation. In traditional retail terms this is called “inventory risk.” That is to say, we take on the risk by buying things we can’t sell for potentially a long time. We are exposed to this risk just like any other retailer, but many retailers have payments terms such that they don’t pay for inventory until after they’ve sold it.
In order to maintain a wide selection of items and keep prices consistently affordable, we need to make a few changes to how cash is paid out for items you’ve sent us. Going forward, you still earn cash for every item we can resell in our Shop and that money is immediately available to be used to purchase items on thredUP. The change is that we are putting a 14-day delay in place for when you can cash that money out via PayPal. This delay also applies for money you’d like to contribute to a thredUP Group.
For most of you, this will have no impact on your thredUP experience. You will keep sending in quality bags, earning money and using it to shop on thredUP. However, we realize this will affect some of you, who send in clothing and immediately cash out, and we’re sorry this change negatively impacts you. We’ve looked at a number of available options, but rather than moving to something like a pure consignment model, where payment isn’t made until items sell, we think the “delayed cashout” is the right alternative at this time.
This new policy will go into effect for bags ordered after 11:59PM on February 19th. If you’ve ordered a bag or placed an order that comes with a complimentary bag before that date, you will still be afforded the immediate cashout options per the original terms of service.
If you have questions, we’d be happy to answer them in the comments below or you can send us an email at support@thredup.com.
Thank you for your continued support as we keep working to build a quality buying and selling experience for each of you.
Best,
James
CEO
thredUP.com
What benefit does a 14 day delayed cash-out do for Thredup? Are you earning interest on our payments?
Hi Cheryl, thanks for the question. Actually, the 14 day delay isn’t about earning interest. Paying upfront means that we pay customers cash right away, without being able to recoupe the cost until the item sells. As we have more products coming through thredUP, this gets to be an increasingly expensive operation and one that becomes hard to sustain over time. This is why we’ve had to make this change. We do still offer the ability to use the credits to buy new items from our Shop right away, but cashing the money out is now delayed by 14 days. We apologize that this will be an inconvenience to some of our customers, but hope that this allows us to continue offering a great service for years to come.
Does this delay apply to Super Supplier?
Hi Erin, the new Cashout Policy does apply to Super Suppliers as well.
Received my polka dot box today!! Extremely Pleased and Happy with all items purchased!!Thanks so much!! I’ll be back!! SueZ.
Glad to hear, Sue! Thanks for the great feedback.
I am so excited about my purchases in my box. Placing another order as we speak
Sending my polka dot bag back this week
Excellent! We look forward to receiving your bag.
Makes sense and I appreciate the heads up on it
thanks!
Thanks for the note, Kiley!
I just placed an order for a jacket for my son and i will also receive my first “bag” to fill with items. I am looking forward to it because I would much rather wait 3-4 weeks for the money than spend so much time on craigslist or ebay trying to sell individual items. Thanks! : )
Yes, we still hope that this is an easy option for busy parents. Hope you enjoy our Clean Out service!
WIll this 14 day delay apply to bag deposits as well, I don’t think it should, I reuse the refunded bag deposits to order more bags!
What are super suppliers?
A thredUP Super Supplier is an ultra-savvy shopper with an eye for high-quality like-new children’s, junior’s and women’s clothes. She taps her community for the BEST like-new clothes that fit our standards and ships them to us for per-item payout – a 50% higher payout than our standard Clean Out users. You can find out more here: http://supplier.thredup.com/shipments/info
The 14 days is from the time you send me the email confirming the payment of my clothes? i.e. if I receive an email “Look what you’ve earned” with my items listed and amount totaled on 2/11 then I can expect to cash out on 2/25th? Is that correct?
Correct!
Your website says not to send generic or store brands. However you are selling Circo and other Target brands on your sight. So its a bit confusing as to what you want us to send in.
I noticed the same thing!!
I, too, wondered about this. What, exactly, are “store brands” referring to. I also notice that you sell Gymboree. They are quality items but still technically a store, as is Old Navy. Thanks for the great work you are doing! Reduce, reuse, recycle!
Hi! You can see a list of the brands that we do NOT accept here: http://www.thredup.com/bags/info#standards
Fine by me and still more than generous! You guys are always quick to process the bags too.
what are the polka
dot bags?
Hi! The polka dot bags are the clean out bags you can order: http://www.thredup.com/bags/info
I wish I knew what you were going to accept and what you weren’t. I sent in 1 bag and 23 out of approx 30 items were accepted. I sent in the next bag and only 5 out of approx 30 pieces were accepted. They were all similar quality, sizes & brands as the last bag. I would have rather given them to charity or a friend when you “recycle” 25 pieces that in my opinion were perfectly useable.
Hi! I’m sorry to hear that your first bag didn’t do as well as the first! You are more than welcome to email our customer service department about it (support@thredUP.com). They will be able to give you more information.
The same thing happened to me, except it happened on my first bag sent! 32 items sent and less than 10 accepted – all brands like LL Bean, Land’s End, Justice, Gymboree & so on. Items were in perfect condition – about half of them were new without tags. Very Disappointing – won’t be doing it again. I do way better selling on Ebay.
I’m hopin to get a responce soon, because I have other things to send and it all depends on the output on the bags that I sent back which was 2 very full bags/ anyway I sent back last week/ but I also forgot to put my email address and the envelope back into the 2 bags that I sent back/ I wrote and also called and left message about all this last Sat..to which I only could leave a message because it was on weekends..wondering about all this because I havent gotten any reply
You may want to send support@thredup.com an email and give them the email address you used to create the account. They should be able to track these bags down for you.