Peter Whitcomb, Tersus Solutions: recommerce works on economics, not mandates

Standing in Berlin on a stop between Poland and Munich, Peter Whitcomb, chief executive officer of Tersus Solutions, is mid-tour of Europe, scouting facilities and partners for a business he describes in deceptively simple terms: keeping textiles in use longer.

The Denver-based company has spent over 15 years building what Whitcomb calls a “middle layer” between new product and landfill, a closed-loop system for cleaning, grading and reselling returned and lightly used apparel and footwear. Tersus works across recommerce, firefighter gear decontamination and down recycling, serving brands including On, New Balance, Lululemon, Patagonia and REI.

“What is a sort of unifying thread across all of our verticals: it’s keeping textiles in use,” Whitcomb says.

“I don’t really care if it’s a post-consumer down comforter or a fire turnout kit or an oil and gas coverall or a New Balance shoe or a North Face Nuptse: there’s additional value in this product, how do we get it back into use.”

That North Star, he argues, increasingly makes commercial sense on its own, without regulatory pressure forcing the issue, at least in the US.

Footwear’s hidden surplus

Tersus recently opened a dedicated footwear facility in Denver, addressing what Whitcomb calls one of circularity’s hardest problems. About 20 percent of footwear products are returned, he says, and the vast majority show only light wear: scuffed soles, a few hours on pavement, nothing that should send a shoe to a landfill.

“It still has a ton of life in it,” Whitcomb says. “Historically this product was either trashed, ended up in a landfill, liquidated or, if it was really high quality, sent to an outlet.”

Tersus expects to process more than half a million pairs of shoes this year, with roughly 80 percent resold, turning what brands once sold to jobbers for two or three dollars a pair into resale items worth 60 to 70 percent of retail value.

The demand side surprised him most. A number of brand’s resale programs have seen more than 70 percent of shoppers describe themselves as “resale” customers, Whitcomb says, and 70 percent had never bought from the brand before.

“You think about this as a customer acquisition channel, because it’s more accessible price point, there’s the values-driven consumption decision.”

From outdoor roots to luxury’s reckoning

Outdoor brands were early movers in resale, Whitcomb says, largely because circularity already fit their ethos. Patagonia’s Worn Wear and REl’s cooperative structure gave both companies room to experiment outside the constraints of public shareholders. Now Tersus sees its two biggest growth areas as footwear and what Whitcomb calls “contemporary fashion, sportswear” - companies like Lululemon and a growing list of luxury names.

“They’re coming with their CFO saying this is just a good P&L decision,”

he says of footwear brands. For luxury, the calculus is different: brand control. Whitcomb points to the secondhand market for items like Hermes Kelly bags circulating on platforms such as Poshmark as a warning sign for brands that haven’t engaged with resale. “If you’re a brand and you’re in the business of building a brand and protecting the brand, I think this is one of the greatest threats to this whole category,” he says.

“Tersus exists to enable this for the brand, so they can own the experience within their own channels or build a new channel.”

Europe’s surprising lag

The conversation’s sharpest moment comes when Whitcomb is asked directly whether European brands are moving on resale because of looming regulation, or because the economics already work. His answer cuts against an assumption common in Europe’s sustainability-minded sporting goods sector.

“Five years ago I would have predicted that the European market was ahead of the US at this point,” he says. “And the absolute truth is they’re not.”

On, New Balance, Patagonia and Lululemon all run live resale programs in North America, he notes, but with the exception of The North Face, none has launched in Europe.

The reason, in his account, is not resistance but inertia: ERP upgrades, competing priorities, an unwillingness to “push the easy button” on a model with years of US data behind it. The EU’s extended producer responsibility legislation for textiles, due in 2028, is starting to change that calculus. “They’re more earnestly going, okay, we need to start to solve something,” Whitcomb says, pointing to a partnership with Belgium-based CWS Workwear that will bring Tersus-powered programs to Belgium and Poland by the end of the year.

The unfinished stack

Asked about a five-year outlook, Whitcomb reaches for an analogy from oil refining. He pictures a brand’s entire product catalog as a stack: premium products at the top that brands will always want to own, a middle layer of high-quality returns where Tersus operates, and a bottom tier of worn, harder-to-refurbish goods.

“If we can do that and cover 90, 95 percent of that stack, then you’re really starting.” 

Tersus has integrated with eBay and is working with Poshmark to connect brand supply with marketplace demand. The remaining bottom tier depends on chemical recyclers building out infrastructure that does not yet exist at scale.

What strikes Whitcomb is not the technology gap but the shift in brand attitudes. “A month ago we had a couple of brands ask us to solve this problem,” he says. “Two years ago, a brand wouldn’t even touch this.” He pauses before adding: “I don’t know if that’s five years or 10 years.”

For a company three verticals deep and expanding into Europe, Whitcomb’s closing assessment is characteristically understated.

“I’m not bored,” he says. “There’s no sort of relenting.”