If Pinterest and eBay Fashion had a love child, it’s likely it would look something like Threadflip, a new social shopping site launching today. Focused on resale and secondhand merchandise its young and – for the moment – oh-so-stylish user base uploads to share and sell, the site greets newcomers with a scrolling wall of items that look culled from the pages of popular personal style bloggers’ web sites.
Not surprisingly, you’ll find many style bloggers already involved. Jennie Lodge of Going West now works there as a brand manager. And for the launch, bloggers Laura Ellner of OntheRacks and Late Afternoon‘s Liz Cherkasova will be collaborating with the site to offer pieces from their own closets. Joining them are yet more arbiters of cool, including Vogue’s Preetma Singh and Tennessee Thomas, drummer for The Like. You’ll also find plenty of well-known bloggers already using the site and building followings.
The site’s allure is hardly limited to the chance to buy fashion bloggers’ cast-offs. Users can find deals on gently worn clothing, shoes and accessories and sell their own to make extra cash. When something catches your eye, you can like it, leave a comment or add it to your cart. Sellers are sent “shipping care packages” with a pre-paid shipping label and wrapping materials once an item is sold.
The idea, CEO Manik Singh told me when we spoke last week, is to make selling the things you’ve already got in your closet easy and fun to do (a macro goal not far from that of Poshmark, though the two go about accomplishing this in different ways).
“What’s happened over the years with marketplaces is that they cater primarily to power sellers, people who have the time and the resources to set up shop. We truly want to build a P2P platform where an everyday woman seamlessly can use it,” he said.
But perhaps the best part has got to be the promise of the White Glove Service. Instead of slogging through the process of styling and photographing your own goods, Threadflip will do it for you, if you’ve got worthy enough items (see the FAQs for more details) and you’re willing to part with 40-50 percent of the sale price (that will go to the company). Something like a traditional consignment arrangement, but with better merchandising built in, they’ll not only snap what you send in, but also style your items, research pricing and put them up on the site for you. It’s just the thing for those of us with “when I get some free time…” excuses standing in the way of an otherwise really-necessary closet clean-out.
As you’d expect from a social shopping site, you can connect Threadflip with your Facebook account to share items you like and recommend others to friends in your network.
And of course you want to know about their funding: the company’s seed round was led by First Round Capital and Baseline Ventures with additional participation by Dave Morin from Slow Ventures, Forerunner Ventures, Greylock Discovery Fund and Andreessen Horowitz Seed Fund.
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