How to Sell Your Pre-Loved Clothes Online 2024
Introduction
At Athena's Market, we love buying and selling pre-loved clothing. It's great for the environment and good for your finances. It can also make it easier to let go of items that have sentimental value, like baby or maternity clothing. Knowing that someone else will enjoy our special items can make it easier to say goodbye.
Selling Your Clothes Online
If you live in the Sun Prairie/Madison, WI area, I hope you will check out our events to buy your gently used clothing to sell in our store and online. But if you live elsewhere or prefer to sell your own clothing, online can be a great option. I've tried a few different options the past couple years, and I personally prefer Kidizen for selling my kids' clothes and my own clothing online. But in 2024, there are so many different options depending on your preferences. So let's talk about the different services for selling your secondhand clothing online.We will go from least amount of person effort to most efforted needed.
Trashie
Trashie offers a "Take Back Bag". You pay about $20/bag and can recycle about 15 lbs per bag. You fill it up with unwanted clothes and textiles, send it back, and they keep as much as possible out of the landfills. In turn, you earn $30 worth of reward dollars to buy items off their platform. This is a great option if you aren't looking for a large payout, want to clean out your closet in a socially responsible way, and don't want to put a lot of effort in.
ThredUp
ThredUp is an online consignment store. Similar to Trashie, they send you a clean out kit, you fill it up, and they sort through your items and determine what to post on their app and online store. They also handle the photography, selling, and shipping for your items. These benefits makes this a decently low-effort option. It's a good idea to read their selling guide, payment structure, and rules before sending your items in. Because they are essentially taking ownership of items you send in (unless you pay a fee to get them back), it's important to set your expectations and really understand how this works before handing your items over.
Poshmark
Poshmark is a great option for people who are looking for a larger payout and able to put in some work. You are responsible for choosing your items to sell, taking photos, posting items, accepting offers, and shipping items. While there is some risk of getting scammed, having a Poshmark account and using their payment tools reduces the risk greatly as long as you never move a conversation/sale outside of the app. Poshmark is heavily saturated, so don't expect to just post your listings and be done. It helps if you are active on the app and work on developing your own following.
Kidizen
As I mentioned in the beginning, after trying several different options, I personally like using Kidizen the best for selling women's clothing and kids' clothing. Like Poshmark, you need to put in some work to get your items listed. However, unlike Poshmark, it's currently a smaller community of people, so I found it a little bit easier to get my items seen. I find consistently posting new items and using high quality images goes a long way towards helping me get sales.
Tips for Listing Your Items
If you go with a platform like Poshmark or Kidizen, here are a few tips for getting your items noticed:
1. Use High Quality Images
I can't stress this point enough. You want the item to look great AND accurate. Ask yourself, would I buy this item based on these photos? If not, you need to try again, and I will show you why. Look at the pictures below. They are pictures of the SAME maternity tank top. In the first one, I struggled to get the shirt to look good in a flat lay position and the coloring wasn't showing up accurately. The buyer would have to use their imagination to decide if this shirt looks good.
In the second picture, the coloring is accurate and the buyer gets a much better sense of how this shirt hangs. It looks crisper and newer, making it much more desirable to a buyer.
2. Provide a Great Customer Experience
Your customers experience matters just as much as the quality of the item you are selling them. After a sale, the buyer will have a chance to rate their experience. So make sure you get the item out the door quickly, communicate any additional information needed, and are honest about any of the items flaws. It's ok for secondhand clothing to have some minor signs of wear. It's not ok to surprise your buyer with these details when they receive the item.
3. Stay Active in the App
In order to stay active in the feeds, it's a good idea to post new items frequently. So if you have a handful of items to post, you may want to post one a day instead of posting them all at once. Other ways to stay active are sharing items (your own or other people's) or creating collections. Just like in the real world, networking tends to pay off in the online clothing selling game.
Wrapping it Up
I hope this was helpful, and you find the right option to help you sell your clothes online in 2024. Want help selling your clothes? Feel free to reach out to info@shopathenasmarket.com to see how we can help!