Goldman-Backed Secondhand Clothing Retailer Thredup Files for IPO

Goldman Sachs-backed secondhand clothing retailer ThredUp Inc made its IPO filing public on Wednesday, disclosing a bigger full-year loss ahead of a market debut.

The company, founded in 2009, has processed over 100 million unique secondhand items from 35,000 brands, according to its filing.

Users download the company’s app, or go to the website, and ship their used apparel, handbags, shoes and jewellery items. The employees receive the items, make sure they are in good condition, price them algorithmically, photograph them and ship them out to shoppers when sold.

E-commerce firms have benefited during the Covid-19 pandemic. A fleet of digital resellers, including ThredUp’s peer Poshmark Inc and ContextLogic Inc, the parent company of shopping app Wish, have gone public in recent months.

ThredUp, whose investors include Goldman Sachs, Highland Capital Partners and Redpoint Ventures, said its net loss widened to $47.9 million for the year ended December 31, 2020, from $38.2 million a year earlier.

Full-year revenue, however, jumped 14 percent to about $186 million.

The resale firm said it would use $500,000 from the proceeds to start an environmental policy function, to advocate the reuse of apparel.

ThredUp received $175 million in funding in August 2019, which it said would be used to expand its platform to offer resale clothing services to retailers.

Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are the lead underwriters for the offering.

Reporting by Niket Nishant in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta.