Here, secondhand fashion buyers, sellers, and execs spill market-tested tips for making a sale, plus share their favorite places to sell, both online and IRL. Ready, set, go give that pile of clothes in your closet a sustainable second life. Photos that you take yourself will typically be better than stock photography pulled from online, as it shows you actually own the garment and are not just selling new garments directly from a brand (a growing concern in the secondhand space, called “drop shipping”). Aim to take your pictures in natural lighting in front of a neutral background, suggests Poshmark seller and ambassador Coco Kapfer. “Most buyers shop on their phones, where the image is small, so the photo needs to be clear and pop out,” Kapfer explains. “People like to see what it will look like on,” adds Tyler Chanel, the ethical blogger behind Thrifts and Tangles, so she recommends photographing the piece on a person or mannequin/half-mannequin. Sustainable fashion advocate of Acteevism Megan McSherry has also found success photographing her pieces on actual humans. “I’ve had countless items that I’d taken pictures of hanging up or flat-laid on the ground that were not selling; there was no interest,” she tells mbg. “Then when I just retook photos of me wearing them, they immediately sold.” Once you have a clear cover photo that captures what the item looks like on, Chloe Baffert, a merchandising and curation expert at Poshmark, recommends snapping a few shots that speak to the details of the piece. Poshmark allows sellers to post up to eight of these extra photos, and Baffert says that listings with at least four pictures are 70% more likely to be sold on the platform. Another Poshmark ambassador, Suzanne Butler, says she always includes shots of her garment’s front, back, label, and care tags, for example. “It’s better to be cautious than to get slammed with like a horrible rating,” notes McSherry, adding that flagging even minor signs of wear and tear, like a stain on the inside of a shirt, helps build trust with your buyers. Aaronson adds that it’s also worthwhile to write about any investments you’ve made to extend the life of the item—like placing a fresh sole in sneakers or sewing new buttons on a blouse. Be sure to include the brand name in your description of the item, too! From there, you can check how much money similar items have sold for recently. If a pair of used jeans sold for $60, for example, you could start your listing at $75, knowing that you can always lower the price as time goes on. Some platforms also have special tools to help you price your items based on buyer demand, which we’ll cover more below. “If you are aware of what’s trending in the secondhand space, you can price things a little bit higher and still get a sale relatively quickly,” McSherry notes. These include gently used sneakers (since they can be tough to find IRL thrift stores), vintage items (“We’ve seen vintage sales increase 85% over the past two years,” notes Baffert of Poshmark), occasion dresses for weddings, seasonal items (sunglasses in the summer, puffers in the winter), and anything that’s trending on TikTok. “If it hasn’t sold, I ask myself: Does it need better photos? Could my title or description use better words for search? Is the price competitive?” she explains. If you’re confident in your post and pricing, McSherry adds that simply resharing the listing so it appears on the top of your seller page can also help. Sharing your listing on Pinterest or another social media site can also give it a quick boost, Butler’s found. Each platform is set up a bit differently, so you’ll want to consider factors like how much money you’re hoping to make and how much time you have to spend before choosing one: The unique thing about thredUP is that they list your clothes for you. All you do is put everything you’re hoping to sell in one of their free clean-out bags, send it in with a prepaid shipping label, and wait to hear back on which items they’ve accepted and will put on sale. You’ll receive anywhere from 5 to 80% of the listing price on these items, depending on the garment condition, retail price, etc. For items thredUP won’t sell, you can choose to take them back or leave them with thredUP to be repurposed or recycled. You can either accept your earnings as cash or receive a thredUP shopping credit. After years of listing every garment online individually on other platforms, Chanel was happy to find thredUP’s super straightforward model. “They just make it so easy,” she notes—no photography, pricing, or marketing required to make a sale. One downside is that the payout on thredUP tends to be much lower for sellers (she’s never gotten more than $10 or so for a garment), but she thinks it makes sense because “they’re doing all the work.” Though it requires photographing and pricing your own pieces, McSherry has had a lot of success using Poshmark to sell basics from classic name-brand items that people will recognize, like J Crew, Gap, and LOFT. Aaronson adds that capsule wardrobe items from brands like Cuyana and Jenni Kayne, as well as athleisure, are also popular on the platform. McSherry appreciates that Poshmark makes it easy to relist items that haven’t been quick sells. The marketplace also features a nifty “Reposh” feature that lets you automatically re-list anything that you bought on Poshmark and are ready to part ways with. Once you make a sale, Poshmark will email you a prepaid shipping label to use to send your items. Depop charges a 10% fee on each item sold. When an item sells, it’s up to the buyer to send it out and track its delivery. The listing possibilities are really endless for eBay. Besides clothes, you might have success selling household items like electronics, appliances, and even old VHS tapes and CDs. Once you decide what to sell, Chanel appreciates eBay’s filter feature that allows you to see how much money similar items have sold for recently. You can either set your own price or opt for an auction-style listing where buyers bid on your items for a set number of days. eBay charges a ~12.5% fee on each item sold. When an item sells, it’s up to the buyer to send it out and track its delivery. StockX handles matching buyers who create a bid on a particular item (say, a Supreme T-shirt for $75) and a seller who has that item and will accept that price. Once a match is made, the seller will send the item to StockX, where they’ll authenticate it and handle sending it out to the buyer. The appeal of this system is that, as a buyer, you have a sense of what people are willing to pay for your item right away. You also don’t have to worry about covering shipping costs, meaning you can get paid really well if you have the right item—even after the 8-10% transaction fee. “It’s the highest payout I’ve seen,” Chanel says of the platform. “They’re usually looking for very specific things,” says McSherry, but she adds that doing a little research can reduce your chance of walking out of the store empty-handed. She notes that shops like Buffalo Exchange and Crossroads Trading will usually share what they’re looking to buy at any time—either through trend cards in their shop or posts on Instagram. By looking at those before sifting through her closet, McSherry has been able to make a number of in-person sales. While she notes that you probably won’t make as much money selling in person as you do online, it can be much easier and less time-consuming depending on where you live. Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on July 5, 2022. A previous version of this article indicated that vintage clothing sales have increased by 85% on thredUP over the past two years. We have since clarified that vintage clothing sales have increased by 85% on Poshmark over the past two years. Emma received her B.A. in Environmental Science & Policy with a specialty in environmental communications from Duke University. In addition to penning over 1,000 mbg articles on topics from the water crisis in California to the rise of urban beekeeping, her work has appeared on Grist, Bloomberg News, Bustle, and Forbes. She’s spoken about the intersection of self-care and sustainability on podcasts and live events alongside environmental thought leaders like Marci Zaroff, Gay Browne, and Summer Rayne Oakes.
