Resources

• ThredUp
• ACT – American Circular Textiles
• Sourcing Journal
• Ken Pucker – Tufts University
• California SB707 – Textile EPR Bill
• EU Waste Framework Directive – Textiles

Host and Guest

Host: Mike Toffel, Professor, Harvard Business School (LinkedIn)

Guest: James Reinhart, CEO, ThredUp (LinkedIn)

Transcript

Editor's Note: The following was prepared by a machine algorithm, and may not perfectly reflect the audio file of the interview.

Mike Toffel:

James, thank you so much for joining us on Climate Rising.

James Reinhart:

Thanks for having me, great to be here.

Mike Toffel:

James, why don't we start with a little bit of your background. So, you started ThredUp almost 20 or 15 years ago or so. And so, what were you doing before that?

James Reinhart:

Yeah, I started the business out of business school. So I was, you know, I was working on the business while trying to get all my casework done. So, I didn't get the best grades, you know, my final year of business school because of that. But before that, though, I worked in public education. So, I helped start a charter school serving low-income kids. I was a teacher for a few years. I was very focused on the intersection of private and public partnerships, right? And so education was a passion of mine and I thought the education system in this country could do better. And so, I was very much focused on that. And I think there's a thorough line in my career around trying to do well and do good at the same time.

Mike Toffel:

Right. So, then you were here at Harvard, HBS, and at Kennedy School doing a joint degree, the three-year program.

James Reinhart:

Correct, yep. I was there. I started at the Kennedy School and then did two years at the business school.

Mike Toffel:

So, you were here, and you were drumming up this idea while you were a business school / Kennedy School student.

James Reinhart:

Yeah Yes, yeah, I mean, you know because I was a teacher and in education before that's also a proxy for saying I didn't have any money and I went to actually sell some of my clothes at a local consignment store on Mass Ave and They wouldn't take my stuff, you know, they said we don't we don't do men's we only do luxury blah blah blah And I thought at the time I thought well, doesn't really make any sense. This stuff can't be worth zero. At the time I was taking a class all about markets and market failures and I thought, well, this turned out to be a market failure and that began what had been a long journey.

Mike Toffel:

Yeah. So that's really interesting. It's always amazing to me that people's personal experience can really motivate them to start a business. You hear this over and over again.

James Reinhart:

Yeah, yeah, I remember it vividly and I remember coming home and talking to, at the time, my fiancée now my wife, being like, this just doesn't make any sense. And she was like, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh. And I was like, you know, this is a big industry, right? We talked about Goodwill, this is a big industry and it's just broken. And she's like, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh. And so, you know, and then I went to class the next day and I actually, some of my friends, said, hey, what percentage of the clothes in your closet do you wear? I'm like, what? I was like, yeah, what do you wear? How much? I'm like, I don't know, half? They were like, what are you going to do with the other half? Literally, like verbatim, I don't know, I'll probably just give it away. And that, was like a series of those little things where I was like, ah, there's something here.

Mike Toffel:

Yeah, yeah. So, what was the answer? Why was there a consignment market for women and not for men?

James Reinhart:

I mean, think what became clear, I mean, there's a lot of nuances into how big the market is, but also the attractiveness of how you build a business in the market. What was clear is that women shop more than men and they value the freshness replacement cycle more than men. And right up to this day, we just do women's and kids’ clothing, and we don't do men's. And I get asked pretty much every day, when we're going to start men's or why don't we do men's? I jokingly have the same answer I've been saying for long time, which is men wear the same four colors, blue, black, brown, and gray. And men tend to wear out our clothes before they're ready for a second life. And so, you combine those things and what you have is not a great market. And so even though our business started with men, it was clear actually women was the answer and so that was the journey that we were on.

Mike Toffel:

Got it. Super interesting. So, we're talking in the midst of a series on circular economy. And the idea that you just described is, know, these two off-ramps after you're done with clothing. One is, does it have further life in its current form? And the second is, if not, what to do with the fibers? And we're going to talk to other companies about the fiber piece and the recycling piece. But here we're talking about prolonging the lifespan. So instead of it aging in place, in your closet, it's going to age in someone else's closet and hopefully on their body. mean, that sounds like that's the basic idea.

James Reinhart:

Yeah, that's exactly right. There's so much time in the life of our clothing where we decide that shirt's not for me. And I don't know what the stats are anymore, but back when we started the business, it was many years from when a piece of clothing had its last wear on you to when you decided to get rid of it. And it was funny, I remember making an infographic around how long this took back then and then you know, your clothing moves from your closet into a bag, right? And then it moves from the bag into the garage. Then it moves from the garage into your trunk, right? And all of these are moments that it makes its way to, you know, wherever the recycling process might take it. And our thesis was that there are so many better ways for that clothing to be reused. And what we needed to do was make it easy, and this is, I think, the core thesis for ThredUp, making it easy for people to get rid of the things they no longer wear and feel good about that. And that's how we got started.

Mike Toffel:

Got it. So also, to create an incentive to actually get rid of it in a way before it gets eaten by moths in your garage.

James Reinhart:

Yeah, and you what you find is it's not necessarily like you're never going to get rich sending, you know, getting rid of your use code, right? That is not like the goal. But I think the combination of giving people a sense of agency of, I got rid of my stuff on ThredUp and then we tell you, hey, Mike, thanks so much for sending stuff in. We were able to resell these items and recycle them. And I think that connection because often when you would just donate stuff.

There was a little of this, I guess it's just going to go somewhere, and people didn't really know and didn't have any agency there. And so, I think for us, it was really about attaching the process of doing something good with, that feels good that there's somebody else out there wearing that sweatshirt that I grew out of.

Mike Toffel:

Right, so you're providing transparency as to what its fate is. Now I imagine when you receive goods, you might have to sort them into three piles. The pile of like, yes, let's put this on the market and hopefully it sells. Another pile is like, well, this really can't be. We'll try and sell it, but then it doesn't sell, so you end up donating it. Another pile might be you receive it you're like; we can't sell this. So, you know that right away. And so that then itself goes into a donation perhaps, or to some fiber recycling or trash. So, tell us a little bit about that sorting process that your team engages in.

James Reinhart:

Yeah, so we now operate four distribution centers around the country. We've one in Pennsylvania, one in Texas, one in Georgia, one in Arizona. And yeah, we're processing hundreds of thousands of pieces of clothing every day. And you're right. I mean, some of the stuff, when we take it out of the bag or the box, is immediately available for sale. We feel great about it. We know it's going to be sold. And some of the stuff is unclear. Certainly, in the early days, we had less high-quality data. think at this point, I mean, we're closing in on I think 300 plus million pieces of clothing that we have processed through our facility. So, as you can imagine, a lot of data tells us this item is going to sell at this price. And so, we do a lot of optimizations there. And then, yeah, unfortunately, we do get stuff we have to reject or recycle. I think what we've done over the last few years, though, is to really educate people on what makes sense for resale and what makes sense for donation and what makes sense for recycling. And I think we pride ourselves on the fact that most of what we're getting is stuff that can be reused as clothing. And I often remind people that a lot of the stuff we give to Goodwill, as an example, or Salvation Army, a lot of that stuff ends up in landfill, but not because they're bad people, but there's just so much stuff.

And so, what we really were focused on is just another mechanism to create opportunity for supply and demand because Goodwill, as amazing of an organization as it is, is just overwhelmed by us dropping stuff off. And unfortunately, they have to pile it up and some of it ends up in a landfill. So, we were really focused on the new supply chain. And I think that the thesis for us at the beginning was what would it look like to do Goodwill online? And so, we built facilities to do that.

Mike Toffel:

Got it. So, you've been trying to train customers because it's kind of worse for the environment in some sense for them to send it to you and then you having to give it to Goodwill as opposed to them going down the block and bringing it to Goodwill themselves. And plus, it adds costs to your system to have to sort stuff out.

James Reinhart:

Absolutely.

So, we really are trying to get customers to be smarter across all their decisions and it seems like it's working actually.

Mike Toffel:

Yeah. So, this is essentially a consignment model, right? Like that back to that consignment store that you visited. the same kind of since the same business model. It's just online as opposed to offline.

James Reinhart:

Yes, exactly. And I think the big difference between online versus offline, just to put a pin in it, is that I think in a physical context, consignment stores are really space constrained. And so, they really have to be picky about what they put on the floor because they've got a 1,500 or 2,000 square foot store. And so, you can see a lot of them are run by sole proprietors and they can't afford to take stuff and put it, you know, at the back in the stockroom, right? They really do need to run these small businesses. We think of ourselves as a much different play, right? We have a national demand curve. And so even if a customer is dropping stuff off at a, or sending stuff to us from South Carolina, that stuff can be sold nationally. And I think that the notion of a national supply and demand curve really does change what can be resold. And that's a big part of what we're trying to do online versus offline.

Mike Toffel:

Yeah, so I imagine when you were drumming up this idea, you had lots of different business models and operating models on your mind. And an alternative that comes to my mind is an eBay or Poshmark kind of model, where you're still a two-sided platform, but you're not handling the physical goods yourself. It goes directly from the supplier to the demander. So, what made you decide to get involved in the physical infrastructure?

James Reinhart:

Yeah, I mean, so I have this prevailing thesis that I believe is proving right every year, which is that Americans are getting lazier. And we want people to do it for us. And so, our insight was that while everybody has dabbled on eBay, right, or I think since Poshmark has been around, dabbled on Poshmark, the stickiness is wanting a little bit because

it works to sell your own stuff, right? We all work every day in our jobs, in our life, and we've got kids and families. And so, the idea that we were going to spend our free time photographing clothing, listing it, being our own fulfillment and distribution center, doing customer service, right? It's just a lot. And so, there are millions of people who do that, but we were really trying to target the tens and tens of millions of people who don't.

Mike Toffel:

Got it, right? And they have to think about their own pricing as well, all that. Yeah.

James Reinhart:

There's so much right to deal with and returns, right? It's like, God. And so, when we were doing primary research in the beginning, I would ask people, “Have you sold anything on eBay?” In a room of 100 people, you'd get five, seven, 10 people raise their hand like, yeah, I sell on eBay. And then you'd ask for that same room of 100 people, how many of you have donated to Goodwill or similar in the last 18 months?

100 out of 100. And I think that insight was, okay, there's a much bigger TAM out there. If we do the work, all the while acknowledging, man, doing the work is really hard, really expensive, going to take a long time, but that's what we chose to do.

Mike Toffel:

Yeah, mean, because you're paying for labor, you're paying for warehouses. Yeah. And of course, there's additional postage or UPS involved all along. OK. So, let's talk a little bit about the two-sided market. So, any time you have a two-sided market or two-sided platform, you have to figure out

James Reinhart:

You're paying for it all. It's very hard, right? It's like what we do is hard.

Mike Toffel:

It's not valuable to buyers if there's not enough suppliers online. And people aren't going to list supplies online unless there is the perception that there's buyers that are going to be there. So, whether this is Uber or whether this is eBay or whether this is ThredUp, you always have this question of how do we invest in trying to attract enough people on both sides? And Uber, their approach was like, let's go city by city with local density. In your case, maybe that's not so applicable because you're not hiring drivers who take rides around the city. You have more of a national play. But how did you decide how to put how much emphasis to place on the donors of the goods or the consignees versus those who might be purchasing.

James Reinhart:

Yeah, I mean, my thesis for a long time, Chris and I as co-founders was it's all about supply. And so generally speaking, two-sided markets, at least our thesis is that they're all supply constrained at scale. I think what constrains Airbnb's growth today is more listings or Uber's growth. Maybe it's different in food for Uber Eats. So, we were very focused on supply.

And so, when the business got started, it was not on consignment. We believe really that you need to pay people upfront, that you really need to build an arbitrage business, because if you didn't have the supply, it didn't matter. And so, I think at the time, consignment was still not something people were used to doing online. Like today, it's funny, people are like, yeah, it's online consignment. Back then, that didn't really exist. And so...

So, we were focused on building a price arbitrage business between supply and demand. Our operating principle was always what we can do in business to make it easier for people to send us stuff? And we take a lot of pride in the fact that to this day, we've almost never spent any money acquiring sellers, which is a pretty rare thing in two-sided markets.

And it's because I think we built something that sellers just naturally gravitated to. But I often, you know, I think that our real key innovation was the clean out kit, which is the way people send us stuff and then the operations to process that. But I always, when I talk to other entrepreneurs or people thinking about marketplaces, I always say, like, hey, what part of the market needs to be subsidized, right, to build liquidity? And for us, it was all about

It was about sellers, and we did all kinds of crazy things. We bought stuff on Craigslist to jumpstart liquidity. We overpaid people. We went to the house to pick up stuff and we did all the things to build and fake it, fake having a bigger supply market than we probably did at the time.

Mike Toffel:

Yeah, just goose it so that you have more items for customers to browse through.

James Reinhart:

Yeah, and it's still true Mike today. When we process items online at a higher rate, the conversion rate goes up, and we attract new buyers. So even though there's four and half million items or something on ThredUp today, we know that the refreshment rate, the number of fresh listings we're putting online drives buyer satisfaction, drives buyer growth. So, I think these things are sticky over time around how these network effects work.

Mike Toffel:

Yeah, and do a lot of buyers become sellers?

James Reinhart:

Interestingly enough, the last time I looked at this, it's already been a year or two, so it was about a third. There's about a third overlap between buyers and sellers, which is about as high as eBay ever really became at its peak. The tricky part for ThredUp is that we don't necessarily want most sellers to be buyers. We don't necessarily want every buyer to be a seller. It really depends on the mix of goods in a person's closet, how much they have and the brands and so forth but yes in general we find our best customers the highest-life values come from who are on both sides of the market.

Mike Toffel:

Got it. And on the climate side, this is a climate podcast, business and climate podcast. So, I'm interested in it because it prolongs the lifespan of goods. It can keep them out of the landfill. But on the other hand, you know, maybe it's fueling more growth if people feel like, I can buy this item for one hundred dollars, but then I can sell it for twenty dollars. Then really my effective layout is only 80. And so, it increases my budget to buy more stuff, more new stuff even. So is there, I guess we might call that a rebound effect or something like that. Is there any sense that that's what's going on or is it indeed dominated by the idea of people keeping things out of landfills?

James Reinhart:

I don't know whether it's dominated by that, but I think our data suggests that when people start shopping secondhand, two things happen. One, they don't go backwards. So, this is interesting. Once you start shopping secondhand, it's actually pretty hard for you to go back and pay retail again, right, if you're having a positive experience. And so really what you just see is that an inexorable kind of march to secondhand being a greater share of people’s closets. And so that data to me suggests actually that people aren't really thinking about it as I'll buy new and then resell it. It's more that I'm generating great value. I think that's somehow how people get started. And I guess there's always going to be I think a segment of customers for whom they want the shiniest new thing and there won't. Right. We love the influence we can have in the organization. But changing American consumption, I think, is a high bar. But I do think this idea that once people get into the rhythm of secondhand shopping, they stay in it, to me suggests if you kind of follow the shape of that curve for 25 years, like you're better off. And the thing that we have to keep doing for brands, and hopefully we'll talk about that, is getting them to think about how they make clothing that does have the ability to stand the test of time. And I think that's the countervailing force to all of this is if clothing is made to fall apart, then secondhand we'll have challenges over the long term.

Mike Toffel:

Yeah, well, let's talk about that. Now it seems as good a time as any. I mean, I think the critique of a lot of brands, hot brands especially, many of which are low price, but not necessarily, is that clothing, especially for women, I think I've heard the critique, is worth only a few wears before it starts showing its age and may rip or shed or something.

So that is a trend that is maybe a threat toward a reuse model. If, in fact, old items used to last 100 washes and the new ones last five washes and people want to wear things kind of five times, then there's not much of a reuse market, at least in that space. So, tell us a little bit about how those trends are affecting you, if at all, and what influence, if you're having any conversations with brands, trying to influence any of that.

James Reinhart:

Yeah, look, I think it's a real issue. Ultra-fast fashion companies, the Sheins of the world, and there are others. I think Shein takes a lot of the blame, but there's a lot of fast fashion out in the universe that doesn't necessarily get marketed like that. And they're bad for the planet. I mean, not only are they bad from a few-times-consumption-linear kind of throw-out model. But they consume a lot of virgin natural resources. And then up until recently, they were shipped overseas through the loophole that the Trump administration closed in April.

And so, look, I do think they're bad. Setting aside even the environmental issue around microplastics and a lot of the data that's come out about that. So, what we're trying to do is to educate brands that they potentially can build more staying power by building higher quality things. So, we're trying to support brands and their resale initiative, so helping a brand take back the items that they've produced, in many cases resell those items to a segment of customers that might be interested in that, giving them data about what's selling and what's not and what the trends are. But I think a lot of brands acknowledge the quality decline in their products and we see it every day.

And I hate to be like an old guy who, you know, but it's like, they don't do things like they used to. That is true. And it's not just in apparel; it's in lots of things. But so, our approach is if we can just make incremental progress with brands, I think that's really important.

Mike Toffel:

Yeah, so there are some brands that are trying to take on this idea of a reused market, right? So, is that a threat to you, or is that a business line that you're engaging in? Yeah.

James Reinhart:

Yeah, I mean, that's a business line for us. We invented the term “resale as a service”, RaaS, and we work with close to 50 brands at this point. You know, big brands like J. Crew and Reformation. So, we are really trying to help them figure this out. Because I think brands are really, you know, these days, brands are in the fight of their life.

It's hard to be a brand retailer these days with all of the competition and the structural forces of labor and logistics. And so, we really think about ourselves as a partner of those brands to help them be the experts, help us be the expertise for them. Sometimes I define it as a brand that doesn't need to do everything. So, when a brand opens a store, they don't buy the building. They open a store. And so, we think about ourselves as if we can be infrastructure. Then it can help a brand in the resale industry. That's really where we want to play.

Mike Toffel:

Got it. So, is this like a fulfilled by Amazon kind of model where you're using your infrastructure but with a different flow, a different source of it, for example?

James Reinhart:

Yeah, exactly. Like right now across about there's about 900 retail stores in America. Athleta, J. Crew, Madewell, Reformation, there's a bunch. And you can go in there and pick up a ThredUp co-branded clean out kit with these brands and you can send back your stuff through one of our brand partners. And not just brand stuff, but any stuff. I think the real insight again, back to the laziness piece.

You have got to make it as easy as possible for people to get rid of things. The magic of it is, let's say, you go in and you pick up a clean out kit at J.Crew, you send back all your stuff. Instead of giving you all the money on ThredUp, so hey, know, Mike, you've earned 50 bucks, you know, we've sold your items. We give it to you in credit to J. Crew. So, we really reward the brand for educating you and driving that conversion and take back the opportunity. And so, we're getting a lot of traction with brands around this.

Mike Toffel:

Got it. Very interesting. Yeah, the credit issue is an interesting way to get the brands directly inspired to participate.

So, brands or ThredUp can think about this with the environmental overlay as a co-benefit that people can mention if asked, or they can lead with that. Where are you seeing, whether in ThredUp's own decisions, and its own website, and its own marketing, and the brands you're working with, how is this being characterized or not as an environmental play?

James Reinhart:

Well, it's definitely a part of the story. I think we definitely talk about, you know, on every product page that exists on ThredUp, we talk about the water savings, the carbon savings, electricity savings of shopping secondhand. We do a lot of education around just in all of your clothing habits, how to be a smarter consumer of the planet's resources. I mean, little things like, you know, washing your clothes in cold water makes a huge difference, right? These are very small things. So, we're big advocates in trying to educate consumers on making smart choices. Having said that, we lead with value. Because I think at the end of the day, we want customers to think about ThredUp as an incredibly great place to shop for great value. And so, we often talk about the positioning as you have great brands at great prices, comma, in a sustainable way. And there's lots of opportunities out there where you can buy great brands on discount or on sale, or you can shop at TJ Maxx or any of those sorts of things. And we need to be aware that we compete with those guys. But Threat Up is a place that you can do sustainably. And so that's our positioning. And then when we work with brands, we know it resonates with the brands because we see it in their annual reports. They do really talk about their takeback programs and the amount of clothing they've been able to resell. Their savings across you know water carbon electricity so you know we do we do think they take it seriously. But we also recognize that that. They're in the business of building a great brand. And letting a core customer with what's new and relevant and so we don't we don't have our head in the sand about the incentives to be a great brand and the incentives for us to be a great reseller.

Mike Toffel:

Right. Well, we can't talk about complicated logistics without bringing in the concept of data analytics and AI, which is every other sentence in some people's mouths. So, can you tell us a little bit about how ThredUp is using or considering using these new tools, old tools or new tools with regard to data analytics?

James Reinhart:

Yeah. I mean, Mike, we're all in on AI tooling in ways that I can't emphasize enough. I've been one of the guys around AI being underhyped. I do think it's a profound shift in everything that's going to exist for us. So about 18 months ago, we really began this journey of what does it looks like to rebuild ThredUp in an AI first way. And what's been so exciting and gratifying is to see our growth really come from building a better product experience on top of AI tooling. So, when you have a challenge like us, every item is a snowflake, you've got this incredible long tail of product that requires technology in your distribution centers to put it online, merchandising, search.

It's quite a lot. So, AI has really helped us build a better product for customers. We started with search. So, we spent seven years building the search functionality in its form that we had on ThredUp as of January of 2024, about seven years. In about 60 days, we started using a new open-source AI technology along with some tooling that we did, 60 days we something that was better. We spent years building a tagging infrastructure in our distribution center to tag clothing with all the attributes that a customer would search. In about two days, we were able to use AI to do that better. And so, I could go on and on and on.

And so, we are really investing in the primary infrastructure around search and discoverability. And then we're really using it these days for merchandising. And so now, like, we can tell stories using generative AI that are so powerful in ways that we just couldn't do before because everything is unique and you do all this work and you'd send the email saying, you know, merchandising all this stuff and by the time the consumer clicked on the email, all this stuff was gone. And now you've got this backend system that can replenish at rates that we never would have been able to imagine. So anyway, it's very exciting for us and I think our business is taking a leap forward because of it.

Mike Toffel:

That's really interesting. I imagine it also be useful in sorting both when it arrives in your warehouses, but also maybe even by the customer scanning it before it goes to help inform them, like, is this resell-able or should you donate it or?

James Reinhart:

Yeah, we're prototyping that right now, allowing a customer to give us more information about what they're sending. And we've been prototyping it with voice, right? So, you could just look at your closet and be like, I've got this, this, this, this, this, these brands, these colors, right? And what do you think, Fred up? And we could, you know, in a voice mode be able to be like, oh, we'll take this, this, right? So, we're thinking years ahead about how, because the technology that I just described is not quite ready for prime time in a truly conversational way. But boy, it's coming. And it might be six months, it might be two years, but we're going to be ready for the future.

Mike Toffel:

Yeah. I can also imagine that you have a closet, and you put in this section, you put the stuff that you're thinking about donating and you just run a camera over it, and it starts recognizing all this.

James Reinhart:

Yes, totally. Well, and we've added ways that you could take a picture on ThredUp right now. There are all sorts of ways for you to find new items that could be used. But we've also built outfitting so that you could take a picture, for example, of a silk blouse and say, hey, what can I wear with this? And we will be able to tell you, hey, you could wear these things, some of which you might already have. But some of which we could also, you know, create outfits that are secondhand mashups. And so other ways that people can bring us into their life.

Mike Toffel:

Yeah, clever. So, let's switch gears a little bit and talk about public policy. So that mentioned you have a public policy background. You went to Kennedy School here. What are the types of public policies that make your company's mission easier or harder? And what's changing?

James Reinhart:

Yeah, I think what we're trying to do is figure out what the role of government is to create the right types of incentives for customers to do the right thing. So, what I often talk about is, you know, the government played a huge role in tax credits for solar adoption, tax credits for EV adoption. One thing we've advocated for, you know, for many years is I don't understand why there's tax on secondhand goods.

If you want consumers to buy used goods, stop taxing used goods. That alone creates this mental shift like, it's cheaper to shop secondhand. And so that's just like a small example, but we're trying to advocate for policies where the government can do relatively straightforward things that create the right sets of incentives. There's no reason for that people, if you're selling

If you're selling secondhand goods, that you should pay, I believe that you should pay income tax on that. You like doing a service, you're using your talents to resell things that have already been made. Why not reward you for doing good? So, we're advocates for things like that. We also think there's a role for... So, I think that's like the honey approach.

I think the stick approach is extend producer responsibility, which is popular in Europe. And I think just holding accountable of those companies whose products end up in landfills. And I think you're starting to see more technology arrive to allow you to see what's going on there. And I don't think we're that far from being able to truly count the impact of these fast-fashion companies and what's ending up in landfills. So, we're kind of a broad range of stuff. There's a organization called ACT (American Circular Textiles), American Circular Textiles Association, and we're big supporters of them and policies they're trying to bring forth.

Mike Toffel:

Got it. Yeah, I imagine trying to get politicians to charge an additional tax on items that have a short lifespan would be easier than trying to get tax, to get yourselves tax free because one adds to the political coffers and the other one detracts.

James Reinhart:

It turns out that it is easier. You know, I don't know where we'll end up on the tariff side, you know, when the dust settles. But I do generally agree that there are, that we should figure out ways to tackle some of these things that do have real negative externalities. And I think politicians generally agree on that.

Mike Toffel:

Yeah, yeah, interesting. Great, well, let's turn to my final question, which is for those interested in working in the circular economy, whether it be fashion or other areas that I'm sure you've bumped into in your career, what do you suggest as resources for them to think about next, whether it be a podcast or websites or newsletters?

James Reinhart:

Yeah, I just mentioned ACT (American Circular Textiles). I think if you just Google ACT (American Circular Textiles), ACT (American Circular Textiles) policy, ACT (American Circular Textiles) fashion, you'll find that organization. They have a lot of great resources on their website. I would put them at really the tip of the spear for this. That’s a great one. Rachel Kibbe is the CEO. So, I think following Rachel on LinkedIn or Twitter, I think will put you really in a position to see what's new. The other one is I'm a regular reader of Sourcing Journal, which I think does a great job of just, it is often the one talking about what's changing in resale, what's changing in the circular economy. And then the other one is there's a gentleman who is at Tufts, Ken Pucker, who I recommend people read and follow because he's a prolific creator of content and I think Ken's really sharp.

And then I would just encourage people that there are lots of places to play in this supply chain, right? And you can work at the brand side, you can work at, I mean, UPS has a team working on solutions like this. McKinsey has a team working on solutions like this. So sometimes when I talk to students, I think they get too focused on being on the consumer side, like, I want to work for a company that exists in the circular economy. You talked about recycling. There are companies doing interesting work in the recycling world. People should broaden their perspective and think about all the activities that happen in this economy; there's lots of businesses out there.

Mike Toffel:

Great. Well, James, it was a real pleasure. Thank you so much for spending your busy day talking to us here at Climate Rising.

James Reinhart:

Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate the work you guys are doing.