After a year of record customer acquisition, ThredUp’s Kristen Brophy shares what’s next in her marketing roadmap

“Our success in 2025 was fueled by record-breaking customer acquisition, capped off by a 57% year-over-year surge in new customers during Q4,” the company’s co-founder and CEO, James Reinhart, said during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call. “This momentum proves that our brand and value proposition are resonating at increased scale.”

Now, it’s up to ThredUp’s marketing team to keep that momentum going and adapt to new shifts like the rise of generative search. That’s what’s on the mind of Kristen Brophy, svp and head of marketing at ThredUp. In 2026, she said, Thredup is focused on “diversifying our media mix by scaling upper-funnel initiatives on Reddit and TikTok,” while also experimenting with new tactics to win in this new generative search landscape.

Brophy is one of the upcoming speakers at Modern Retail’s Marketing Summit, taking place April 20-22 in Huntington Beach, California. Brand and retail executives interested in attending can apply here.

At the event, Brophy will discuss modern customer acquisition strategies — arguing that in an ever-changing world, new experimental channels and ways to measure your full funnel are the future. 

Modern Retail caught up with Brophy ahead of the event to talk about what benefits ThredUp is seeing with AI, how it tries to position itself as a “fashionable tech company” and more.

What marketing goals or initiatives are you focused on for 2026?

“Our 2026 roadmap is defined by three words: scale, creativity and precision. We’re
diversifying our media mix by scaling upper-funnel initiatives in Reddit and TikTok, while
pioneering AEO/GEO strategies to win in a generative search landscape. On the retention
side, we are moving toward agentic personalization, where AI anticipates customer needs
across all channels. We’re also committed to an ‘AI-augmented’ creative workflow—using
technology to handle the heavy lifting of retouching and production pivots, which frees our
creative team to amplify their creativity and focus on high-level brand strategy.”

How would you describe your brand’s approach to marketing?

“At our core, we believe the product is the marketing. We view ourselves as a ‘fashionable
tech company’ dedicated to solving the customer’s friction first. When we make the act of
cleaning out a closet or finding a one-of-a-kind piece effortless, we earn word-of-mouth
growth that no amount of ‘brute-force’ spend on Meta or Google can buy.

However, we recognize that shopping is a deeply emotional, creative act. Our brand
approach is to be a partner in style — marrying advanced technology with a promise of
sustainability so our customers can look, feel and do good.

To support this, we’ve built a ‘best-in-class’ modern marketing organization. We aren’t afraid
to be early adopters—whether that’s leveraging agentic AI to personalize the CRM
experience or using sophisticated measurement tools like HAUS and Recast to prove the
incremental value of our upper-funnel initiatives.”

Do you have a favorite marketing campaign or initiative you’ve worked on at your company?

“Our ‘Think It, Thrift It’ campaign is the perfect distillation of my marketing philosophy. It
marked ThredUp’s transition from a resale platform to a lifestyle powerhouse.

With 4 million items live and 60,000 added daily, the challenge for most customers wasn’t a
lack of options; it was discovery. We needed to show customers that our new AI tools make
finding exactly what they want, or inspiring them to try something new, effortless and fun.
The campaign was also a nod to the imagination of the secondhand shopper, who views
fashion as a creative playground for self-expression. By framing the message as ‘If you can
think it, you can thrift it,’ we subtly challenged the buy-new default, removed the stigma of
used clothing, and addressed the dual desire for style and sustainability.

Ultimately, it proved that AI isn’t the enemy of brand soul; it’s the supporter. The way we’re
leveraging AI tools allows a deeply authentic, multifaceted vision of fashion.”

What do you feel is the biggest challenge marketers face today?

“Technological advances are compounding faster than ever, and there’s no ‘success’
playbook for marketers to follow. I find that knowing what to prioritize – whether it’s a new
tool, a new marketing channel or a new approach to content – in a technology landscape that
shifts beneath our feet every single day, is really hard. It creates challenging uncertainty.
For example, the market is flooded with AI tools — which ones actually work? How do you
know if a pilot is worth the investment? Do you wait for others to test while the tools duke it
out and a winner emerges? Should you get ahead of AEO/GEO now and finally take those
agency calls promising to optimize your site for the LLMs?

The speed and rate of change can feel overwhelming, especially in a discipline as
wide-ranging as marketing, with so many areas of specialized expertise.

I’m not sure there’s a solution. I can’t tell you whether to be a leader or a laggard. But I can
tell you this: As a leader, the lens you offer your team — and the clarity of your approach — can be the antidote. What matters most to you? Is it creativity and bold innovation? Precision
in execution to compete in a saturated category? Finding scale quickly because you’re a
startup? When you’re clear on your philosophy and priorities, and you have great people,
you’ll all figure out which direction to move in. The right tools and innovations will follow.”

Is there a recent campaign you saw from another brand that made you instantly think, “I wish I had done that“?

“One is Uber Eats’ Super Bowl Campaign with Bradley Cooper & Matthew McConaughey:
Having previously worked with the Uber Eats leaders, Georgie Jefferys and Danielle
Hawley, I have immense respect for their approach. They don’t think in weeks; they
think in years. They’re geniuses at building enduring brand platforms that balance
reflecting their core value proposition — food, any time, any place — while tapping into
cultural icons to bring much-needed levity and joy to the audience. It’s a masterclass
in building a brand that resonates far beyond a single ad slot.

Another is Anthropic’s ‘No Ads’ Campaign for Claude: This was a brilliant piece of marketing
rooted in a deep human insight — reflecting back to us the notorious pause and
sycophantic AI responses. But I also loved that they found a cheeky, light-hearted way to bring to light a real tension of AI monetization. It was a bold move that framed the future of technology not just through what it can do, but through the ethical boundaries of what it should do.”

Say you are at a cocktail party with a bunch of other marketers – what are the first things you want to ask them about?

“What is a role you’re hiring for this year that didn’t exist two years ago? Are we all essentially becoming film directors now?

And a couple of jokes I’d like to make: How did you actually get your CFO to sign off on a brand and production budget? And how’d you get your CFO to onboard with a “longer time horizon” for brand investment payback?