The Details/How to become a Reseller
Be Organized: Start an inventory system early on. You want to be able to find your items when they sell as well as keeping items organized by sizes/style/colors, whatever works for you. Track your inventory/sales/COGS/expenses with an Excel sheet.
Build Your Brand: What is your style? What color schemes do you gravitate to? What brand names are catchy? One thing to remember when sourcing: it might not be your style but it’s someone’s style. Pay attention to what buyers want. See what products have tons of likes and look for those while sourcing (we’ll talk Sourcing next!)
Listing Title: Your listing title is so important. Use this valuable space to include the brand name and item name if possible. If someone is specifically searching for Sam Edelman Rodney Snakeskin d’Orsay Flats, make sure you are being descriptive enough for them to find the item.
Take a lot of photos: What do you look for as a buyer? Visually pleasing, detailed, GOOD LIGHTING. When listing shoes, take a picture of the soles. It shows the actual wear. When listing clothing, I take close-ups of design details. I also make sure to take up-close pictures of any flaws. You always want to be transparent about a flaw or imperfection. You can still sell it, just be honest.
Use a bright, neutral background: Find a good, clean, neutral wall in your house – white if possible. Natural sunlight is best but if you don’t have the best lighting, invest in a cheap lighting kit. The new iPhone 11 has amazing Night Mode settings and shadow editing to make your pics more crisp.
Spend time on your descriptions: All resellers are different. Some do not list measurements. Personally, I’ve found that when I don’t, sure enough, someone asks for them. For any tops, I measure pit to pit (bust) and length (top of shoulder to bottom of hem). For jeans/pants I measure inseam/rise/length/waist. To save time, jot down the measurements as you’re photographing.
Do your research: To me, this is the fun part. Poshmark is the best resource for figuring out pricing. Google is your BFF and if it’s on Posh, it will show up in your search.
On the Posh app, go to Shop, in Search Listings, type in your item and be as descriptive as possible. All of the currently listed similar items will pop up. There is a Filter/Sort/Category tab at the top. If you are looking for comps (comparisons) to help with pricing your item, click Filters/Availability/Sold Items. This will show you all of the items like yours that have been sold and what amount they sold for. VERY helpful when pricing an item you’re unsure about. There are also other Apps to help with comp pricing. Sell-hound is great as well.
When setting your pricing, you want to consider wiggle room to negotiate. You should also price according to the condition it’s in. Depending on what you’re willing to give up, plan on pricing it 15%-30% above what you’d like to make from the sale. My personal goal is to always make a minimum of 3x what I paid for it.
Another consideration is Poshmark’s cut: All sales UNDER $15 = $2.95, all sales OVER $15 = 20% commission.
Watch for promotion notifications: Poshmark sends promotion notifications ie. Closet Clearouts. Meaning, if you drop your price by at least 10% they would notify all your “Likers” on that item and offer them free shipping if they ordered within a certain time frame. Poshmark also has “Parties” ie. Best in Dresses: based on the criteria, share all of your listings pertaining to that party and the algorithms kick your listings out to tons of potential buyers. I have personally found both of these promotions to work.
Bring the buyers to you: After I list an item, I spend some time finding buyers. How? I do a search for the exact item I’m selling (same size, brand, style) or a similar style in the same brand and size. I start going through those listings and following everyone who has liked that item. That will send them a notification that I’m now following them. Hopefully, they will pop over to check out my closet and see that I have that item they like. Maybe at a better price. Maybe in better condition. Maybe they missed out on the first one and don’t want to miss out again!
Offer a Bundle Discount: This is particularly confusing for first time sellers. “Bundling” or offering numerous items together for a discounted price is great for the buyer, great for the seller. I will add a tutorial for creating a Bundle later on.
Connect Your Social Profiles: Personally, I only use Instagram and Pinterest but am currently working on FB. I set up a separate business account so as not to bombard my personal profile and friends that might not be interested. It’s been great to network, share my closet, promote any specials or just communicate with other resellers of the world. If you have a blog, you can also install a widget with your listings on your site.
Stay Active: I’ve found it’s best to be as active as possible. I share my whole closet 2x/day and during any Parties that are relevant. My rule of thumb is to add 3-5 listings/day and to share OTHER sellers closets/items. It’s a favor for a favor. If I share someone’s closet who has 100k followers, they’re going to return the favor and my items will be seen by that many more potential buyers.
Bottom line? Just have fun! Just know that it will take time to learn the ins and outs. Be patient with yourself and it will come ☺️