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How to Sell Clothes Online Using a Reselling App

We’ve created this ‘How To Sell Clothes Online Using A Reselling App’ guide to help entrepreneurs up level their ecommerce business in short easy steps. The reselling – or  upcycling business as it is also referred to – has seen a boom with more people buying, selling and trading previously owned items online. In fact, Vogue Magazine called upcycling “the biggest trend in fashion…from Balenciaga to Miu Miu, creating new clothes out of old materials is finally being embraced by major luxury brands” wrote Vogue UK Fashion Editor Emily Chan recently. You can be successful selling clothes online due to the increased interest in upcycling over the last two years. In fact, this trend is fueled by consumer behavior demanding more fashion-forward sustainable options. Furthermore, reselling app marketplaces empower digital shop owners enabling them to make incremental income from home or anywhere. In addition to this shift in behavior, the pandemic brought to light just how important supply chain, sourcing materials and sustainable production practices are. Moreover, consumers are actively seeking out upcycling fashion finds online. In addition, traditional brick and mortar stores have had to pivot toward a digital-first and direct-to-consumer model (D2C) to meet this demand over the last year. Listed below are tried and true best practices to employ when considering how to sell clothes online using a reseller marketplace app. We’ve also highlighted helpful information as it relates to the most popular reselling apps on the market right now and the unique features that they offer.

How To Be Successful Selling Clothes Online

The first step when considering how to be successful selling clothes online is simple. Take great product shots on the reselling app of your digital storefront! Optimized product photography is critical to the success of your online business. Ensure that all product imagery is clean, uncluttered and has a uniform look and feel. Fashion reselling app storefronts can easily lack a polished look. When images are haphazardly uploaded with bad lighting etc., potential customers notice.  High bounce rates, low click through rates and minuscule conversion rates are not success metrics. In order to be successful selling clothes online your product imagery needs to indicate through high-quality visuals, the clear value-proposition offered with the potential sale.

Reselling Apps: Product Photography Best Practices

  1. Remove backgrounds that are distracting and cluttered
  2. Ensure that all images in your storefront have some sort of consistency and uniformity 
  3. Shoot product photography images in well-lit places
  4. Include several angles of the product
  5. Showcase lifestyle imagery of the product (i.e., in a ‘real situational’ setting) but always. lead with a clear product shot
  6. Utilize the ghost mannequin feature on garments as needed
  7. Smooth skin with natural skin retouching
  8. Ensure that product page item descriptions are detailed and include items like brand name, color, size, and category

How To Sell on Poshmark and Other Fashion Reselling Apps

Launching your reseller app marketplace online is easy. Several reseller apps focusing on direct-to-consumer have made it turnkey for resellers to create their optimized digital storefront with ease. Please see our hand-picked favorite turnkey fashion reseller apps listed below. We like these because of their targeted market saturation and popularity, ease of use and efficient workflows. Each of these options is slightly different and caters to a specific audience. Depending on how you plan on marketing your vintage goods, you may even consider creating several storefronts across one or multiple fashion reseller apps.

How To Sell on Poshmark

Poshmark has been around a little bit longer than some of the other popular reseller apps and caters to a more mature audience target (i.e., millennials). Pre-loved fashion items and accessories inclusive of high-ticket luxury garments, shoes and accessories account for a substantial amount of Poshmark transactions. Items in your fashion marketplace will populate on search engine results so ensuring that your text copy is search engine friendly is key. For all sales under $15, Poshmark takes a flat commission of $2.95. You keep the rest. For sales of $15 or more, you keep 80% of your sale and Poshmark’s commission is 20%. The community-focused functionality of Poshmark enables sellers to host “parties” virtually to mingle with other community members, welcome new sellers, interact with listings with the end goal of creating a beloved eCommerce store.

How To Sell on Depop

Depop can be best described as the “Instagram of the fashion reseller market”. The website mission statement reads “Depop is the fashion marketplace app where the next generation comes to discover unique items. With a global community buying, selling and connecting to make fashion more inclusive, diverse and less wasteful. This is what transforming fashion looks like.” Depop’s reseller audience target is cool and unique and are typically Gen Z. Furthermore, Depop will charge a 10% fee on the total amount of your listing once it is sold, which includes shipping costs. The platform has partnered with PayPal to secure transactions.

How to Sell on The Real Real

The Real Real is the ultimate luxury fashion reseller app. As the name suggests, this fashion marketplace concentrates its efforts in reselling real and authentic luxury goods. Online sellers ship second-hand items to Real Real locations where items are authenticated, photographed, priced, processed, uploaded onto seller profiles by The Real Real associates. The Real Real also processes returns. With these added services, come increased fees when items are sold. The percentage of each order that it keeps as a percent of revenue, is 50% which is considerably higher than other consignment reseller app competitors in the market. There is also an option to directly sell your luxury goods to Real Real before an actual customer buys it from the digital shop.

How to Sell on Etsy

Then there is Etsy, the seller app for unique, hand-crafted and vintage goods. Etsy is the reseller marketplace known for diverse, one-of-a-kind fashion and art finds. Etsy charges $0.20 per listing and the listing will stay active for four months or until the item sells. A 5% transaction fee, 3% + $0.25 payment processing fee will be included as part of its commission once the item sells. Lastly, Etsy charges 15% for ‘Offsite Ads fee’ if an advertisement generates a sale. Etsy regularly includes paid media as part of their marketing strategy to get their item to sell.

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