ThredUp launches a sustainable line to extend the lifespan of clothing

ThredUp, the largest online thrift marketplace to buy and sell secondhand clothing, has launched its first clothing line. The digital retailer was founded in 2008 with the intention of making peer-to-peer online sharing more accessible, and aims to make the secondhand clothing market more popular through changing how consumers view used items.

Called Remade, ThredUp’s womenswear clothing line debuted this week and was designed with the intention of resale to help prevent the issue of clothing ending up in landfills. The current collection is comprised of eight items, including T-shirts, dresses, blouses and a cardigan, priced between 20 and 50 dollars. To incite resale off Remade items, ThredUp guarantees a 40 percent return of the original value to items sold back. In deciding which styles to use in the collection, ThredUp turned to insights on which styles perform best online, amassed during its ten years of online retail.

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Though ThredUp collects donations of unwanted clothing from its members, Remade’s initial collection is not made from recycled clothing, as recycled materials don’t always have the integrity needed in order to design a garment for longevity. Instead, the company turned to high-grade materials put together with quality stitching and seaming techniques to increase each item’s durability. All materials are sustainably sourced and sustainably crafted. The collection is produced in factories that ThredUp evaluated to ensure standards of social responsibility and compliance.

“We want to prove that the value-proposition of buying something with resale in mind works,” ThredUp co-founder and chief executive officer James Reinhart told Fortune. “We’re trying to figure out how do you make resale and reuse accessible, and that doesn’t necessarily always go hand-in-hand with recycled materials.”

ThredUp expects each item will to have a lifespan of three to four owners. The item’s selling history is traceable through a QR code on its tag, to better help the company value the piece for resale.