You've been able to use the Internet to swap books, CDs, and DVDs. Now -- kids' clothes?
ThredUP offers a standard form factor for exchanging kids' clothes -- a UPS flat-rate box, packed full of clothes for a girl or a boy, of a certain size, for a certain season, and the clothes can either be tops, bottoms, or mixed. People select a box, pay $13 to have it shipped to them, then pack one of their own and list it for selection by someone else. (The company makes $1.50 on each box.)
But this isn't just an easy way to avoid going to garage sales. ThredUP was named one of five Boston-based startups to watch by Techland earlier this week, and received $1.4 million from four early-stage investors, including Founder Collective of Cambridge and New York, Trinity Ventures of Menlo Park, Calif., High Line Venture Partners and Nextview Ventures, according to Mass High Tech, which also reported this week that the company was moving from Cambridge, Mass., to California.
The site launched in April and now has 15,000 users, with 1,000 new ones signing up each week, reported the Associated Press. Thus far, it has shipped 3,000 boxes of clothes and has 1,500 listed, according to the Boston Globe. Initially, it was set up for adults, but shifted its focus to kids. It was also featured this month in Redbook, and is also starting to make the rounds of the Mommy blogs.
