Resale might be ready to have a trade war moment — and ThredUp Inc. is looking to get more brands in on the game by removing fees and switching to an “open source” approach. 

“Over the past year, we’ve seen the market evolve in ways we think are counterproductive to building scalable circularity business models,” said James Reinhart, cofounder and chief executive officer of ThredUp, on a conference call with analysts on Monday. 

“A lot of what’s being counted as resale is overstock and customer returns masquerading as secondhand product,” Reinhart said. “This is largely because brands have been unable to scale their take back and circularity programs and are left with no choice but to fill their shops with other branded product. In reality, they’re paying software, management and consulting fees for programs that are doing very little to build native circularity into their strategies.” 

If brands’ own resale efforts are held back by a lack of technology or operations, that’s something ThredUp can help with. 

“We’ve decided to begin open sourcing our front-end technology and back-end logistics chain to encourage brands to make a bigger impact,” Reinhart said. “We’re excited to pioneer the next generation of branded retail, pairing free branded resale shops with clean out programs that significantly reduce barriers to entry for brands and retailers.”

ThredUp has made some other pivots to adjust to the market, for instance exiting its European business, which has allowed it to focus on its home market. 

Reinhart said it’s working.

First-quarter revenues rose 10 percent to $71.3 million while the company’s active buyer count of 1.37 million marked growth of 6 percent from a year earlier, for continuing operations. The number of new buyers grew by 95 percent, the biggest jump in the company’s history. 

Losses from continuing operations for the quarter ended March 31 narrowed to $5.2 million from $12.2 million a year earlier. 

While resale has long been an intriguing business that’s hard to make money in, it’s a sector that might now have the wind at its back. 

U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war slapped 145 percent tariffs on goods from China while also closing the de minimis “loophole” that let fast-fashion companies like Shein send orders directly to U.S. consumers without any charges at the border. 

Those two changes — which represent just part of the Trump trade push — promise to both ratchet up prices and constrict the supply of new goods for consumers. 

ThredUp, which has a supply chain that reaches into consumers’ own closets, avoids all of that. 

While Reinhart said the company’s growth in the first quarter was not tied to the trade war, it does help set the scene for ThredUp.

The CEO said the changes to the de minimis rule, which ThredUp has been advocating for, would have the biggest impact by far. Tariffs could also help push consumers to resale, but that might be fleeting. 

“While we expect tariff induced disruptions to global trade to normalize over time, we do not anticipate a broad rollback of the minimis loophole closure,” Reinhart said.