ThredUp Inc. (NASDAQ:TDUP) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Anna Andreeva: Great. Thanks so much, and good afternoon, guys. I wanted to follow-up. We noticed that $299 cleanout that see now in addition to $1,499 processing fee. And James, you mentioned you guys are testing some of that stuff. Just curious how did you think about that and tested those amounts specifically? And also recognizing it’s early, but just curious what the response has been from the sellers thus far. I guess, are you getting better supply coming in as now the seller is actually paying for it? And thank you so much.

James Reinhart: Yeah. Hey, Anna. Yeah. I mean we continue to test it. I think part of the insight was, as you know, you’ve been following us for some time, just incredible demand for our cleanout service has never really waned and so we’re looking for ways where we could prioritize our best sellers and also ways to monetize the brand equity that we built at thredUP being the most convenient place to clean out your closet. And so, yeah, we’ve been testing fees at different price points and also similarly with paying for the cleanout bag. And I have to say, we feel very good about the test results. We’re seeing consumers really understand why we’re making some of these changes and I think the limited number of bags that we’re processing already from these cohorts suggest like that is better stuff.

And as you might imagine, when people are paying for a service, they’re putting more items in the cleanout kits, so the amount of items we’re getting are higher and the quality of those items are better. So I think — we think this is a good positive sign for the business.

Anna Andreeva: Awesome. Thank you so much.

Operator: Your next question comes from Dylan Carden with William Blair. Please go ahead

Dylan Carden: Yeah. Thanks. Can we just stay on that for a second. How — maybe you won’t disclose this, but how many, or I guess, what percent of sales are you charging? Any way to sort of think of the reach of that piling program, is that pretty broad-based or is it in a small segment of the market?

James Reinhart: Dylan, it’s a pretty meaty experiment. So we have enough data now to feel pretty good about the results that we’re seeing. But I think we’re going to continue to evolve the mix to make sure that we get the seller experience, right, and we get the best product for our buyers. And I think we’ve talked a lot about the ability to flex both sides of our marketplace. And I think over the last couple of years, we’ve done more on the demand side and I think now we’re really balancing out how to get the marketplace to spend as fast as possible. So I think we all feel pretty good about where we are.

Dylan Carden: And then that’s not — you kind of ran their sort of some of this optimization unit economic optimization efforts you’re doing. I guess what else, if we could sort of spend some time on other initiatives you’re doing and is that embedded including sort of the charging for the cleanout kits? Is that embedded in breakeven EBITDA or is it that would be incremental?

James Reinhart: Yeah. I think we talked about sort of the three areas, the cleanout bag charges, as well as work that we’re doing around returns, a number of things around what the customer’s experience of returns is, how many products can be returned sort of the unit economics in there is we’re continuing to kind of figure out the best way to make those work. And then the work we’re doing around merchandising and the sculpting of the mix of product that’s coming in. I think those three things are experiments that are in market. And I think to the best that we can, that’s reflected in the guidance for the year, but it is still early. And but we continue to work on a number of other things on the front-end experience for buyers that we think also have some upside. So I think our guidance reflects the best case of where we think the business will be in 2023, but we come to work every day and work really hard to make it better. So we’re working on some new stuff as well.