KEH CEO Noah Treshnell on building a profitable online resale business

Resale has proven difficult for many players in the apparel space, but KEH has made it work for the camera industry.

KEH has been around for 40 years, beginning first as a used camera business. It's grown into the leading platform for pre-owned camera gear. Today, the company continues to see year-over-year growth and is profitable. CEO Noah Treshnell joined the Modern Retail Podcast and spoke about KEH's history, as well as his vision for the future.

One of the real lessons Treshnell has learned is that online resale may not work for every type of product. It's usually grouped in with apparel, which is a difficult business margin-wise. But for more expensive products like cameras, the model has proven to work especially well.

Brands have to ask, he said, "Is it a category that dramatically drops off in terms of retaining its value? So, is the depreciation curve shallow? That's very important, especially in e-commerce."

Lucky for KEH, its products work for a profitable resale business. With resale being such a buzzy word, the business is only continuing to grow.

"We've got tailwinds behind us and we're going substantially faster than even the market is growing," he said. "And that's really a testament to the team and our customer."