1. Public & Collaborative Services: Case Study
thredUp
San Francisco, California, United States: http://www.thredup.com/
Description
A peer-to-peer web platform for parents to buy, sell, share children’s clothes, toys, and
books. How it works: you can get free boxes from USPS, box up your child’s clothes by
size and season and post them online for other moms to browse. Then ship directly to
the mom that picks it. Or, you can send all of the clothes to the thredUp concierge
service that will sort and post the items for you and then you will receive money for every
item that meet quality standards. Boxes start at $9 plus shipping, which averages
$2/item.
Citizen Role
It is a community of moms helping moms. Moms can become part of the thredUp
community by joining the network and trading/swapping their child’s outgrown clothes,
toys, and books. After making a trade moms can review others on the site. Moms can
participate in conversations on the thredUp blog and Facebook page about parenting,
kids, food, etc.
Degrees of Involvement
There are two options for participating. Moms can post the items they want to trade and
ship them to other moms themselves or moms can join the concierge service and have
thredUp sort and post items. The first option is more participative – moms take in active
role in trading. The web platform does not allow users to show pictures of everything
included; it just has simple descriptions of the items. To go around this moms use the
thredUp Facebook page to post photos of the items they want to swap.
Public Role
None
Service Diagram
Caring for Children and the Elderly: Kara, Rosalind, Jennifer

2. Public & Collaborative Services: Case Study
Enabling Systems
The web platform serves as the main enabling system. Moms can join the service via the
website, find information and resources, and communicate with other moms with the
daily blog post conversation. There are additional programs on the website that act as
enabling systems:
- Concierge program – send your child’s outgrown clothes, toys, etc to thredUp
and they will sort, post, and ship the items for you.
- Military program -
- Super Thredder program – moms that use the site regularly and have great
feedback can become Super Thredders, which means they earn double cash
back when their boxes of items are highly rated.
Facebook also acts as an enabling system as moms post photos of the items they want
to trade, they also use Facebook to see if other moms are interested in items not related
to children’s needs such as curtains, and, women’s and men’s clothing.
Role of Digital Environment
thredUp relies on the digital environment to operate. It allows mothers to find other
moms who have needs for the things they want to trade. The peer-to-peer swap on this
scale would not be possible without the ability to easily communicate to people living all
over the US.
Background / History
thredUp was started by three Harvard Business School graduates. The original idea was
for grown men and women to swap clothes, but after the site launch the majority of users
were mothers looking for children’s items, so the founders re-launched the company with
the idea of swapping for children’s need as children quickly outgrow things.
Caring for Children and the Elderly: Kara, Rosalind, Jennifer