With children that grow out of clothing at lightning speed, parents with limited time and resources are uniting online to exchange the clothing that no longer fits their tots with clothing from other parents that will. The online organization ThredUp has taken the old-fashioned model of a neighborhood hand-me-down and turned it into a streamlined clothing swap nationwide and on military bases throughout the world.
While the site serves more than 36,000 civilians and military members alike, Sara Gibbs, ThredUP’s “Chief Military Mom,” points out that for families that are often on the move from base to base, the site has become indispensable for many service families.
“Military families move all the time and the last thing on your mind when you have just moved to a new post is ‘where am I going to find a new consignment shop’ to get some new, used clothing for my kids,” Gibbs said. “So I think this is a great service because we just make it one step easier, one less thing to worry about. Now military folks know, wherever they go in the world, it is not something they need to give up.”
After only 9 months since its launch, the group already serves more than 1,300 military families in 11 countries on over 140 bases.
Membership to ThredUP is free and since it is an exchange, the only cost is the shipping fees. So, when little Johnny grows out of his size 3T onesies, all mom needs to do is pack them into a box, get onto ThredUP and trade them in for a box of 4Ts from another family.
“There’s no bidding, no auction lots, no rifling through consignment racks, and absolutely no trips to the post office domestically,” Gibbs told TheDC. “All swaps are done online, with automatically scheduled home pick-up and delivery by the USPS,”
The site boasts that the average family saves $569 a year by swapping cloths rather than buying new.
“We’re like a virtual neighborhood block party (without the pasta salad),” the site jokes.
ThredUP is making itself even more accessible to military families by offering them the chance to pick one extra box without sending the usual reciprocal box, 33% off a “Pro Membership” (while basic membership is free, “Pro Membership” offers more benefits such as “first dibs” and “favorite sender notifications”), and the obvious convenience of being able to cloth their crumb-snatchers easily and frugally.