thredUP Launches Toy Swaps for the Holidays

• 

Our first priority was to build a remarkably simple swapping experience on thredUP. Now that we have the groundwork in place and a community of supportive swappers, we can both refine and evolve the service.

San Francisco, CA (Vocus) December 6, 2010

thredUP, the premier peer-to-peer online children’s clothing exchange, has extended the swapping platform to include toys. Just in time for the holidays, parents can exchange boxes of toys their kids no longer play with, for boxes of toys their kids will love.

Since the company’s spring launch, thredUP has helped busy families conveniently exchange boxes of kids clothing online. Just like clothes, kids outgrow toys. Costly toys typically sit unused taking up storage space, or are thrown away after just a few months. Starting today, parents can trade boxes of second-hand toys online, using the USPS flat rate box and door-to-door service thredUP is famous for.

thredUP’s toy exchange works exactly like the existing swap service. Members can browse “Toy Boxes,” and pick one they’d like to receive -- paying only $5 plus shipping. That box of toys is sent to their doorstep. On the “send” side, swappers list boxes of toys their kids no longer play with. Box owners are notified when another member has picked their listing. thredUP generates the shipping label and schedules home pick-up -- facilitating a seamlessly even trade.

“Our first priority was to build a remarkably simple swapping experience on thredUP. Now that we have the groundwork in place and a community of supportive swappers, we can both refine and evolve the service,” said James Reinhart. “As Chief Knitwit at thredUP, and Chief Dad at home, I’m thrilled to expand to toys! Since kids outgrow more than just their clothes, we’ve started to think of ‘the box’ as the swapping platform for a variety of children’s goods. If it fits, it swaps.”

To kick off the expansion to toys, thredUP is powering the nation’s largest Online Holiday Toy Swap, encouraging families to reuse during this typically wasteful season. Through the company’s traditional clothing swap service, parents can also cut costs on winter and holiday gear, leveraging what they already have at home. In total, thredUP aims to save parents $500,000 in holiday shopping costs this season.

About thredUP
thredUP.com is the brainchild of co-founders James Reinhart, Oliver Lubin, and Chris Homer. Both Reinhart and Homer are recent graduates of the Harvard Business School and all three developed the idea in the Spring of 2009. thredUP aims to help parents “conveniently exchange outgrown kids clothing for clothes that fit.” The company is based in San Francisco, CA and is advised by current Netflix CEO Reed Hastings.

###

PDF Print