There are many benefits of selling your items on consignment rather than listing and selling them yourself. Consignment is a great way to send your items off to someone else to do all the work and just receive cash when your items sell!
But, when you send your items off to someone else to sell, someone else takes part of your profit. Selling items yourself allows you to control your profit. You might consider cross-listing your items to multiple marketplaces to maximize exposure and increase sales.
Let’s explore the pros and cons of consignment selling and cross-listing.
You might also be interested in the blog article 10 Great Marketplaces Every Reseller Should Consider
Consignment selling refers to an agreement in which one party (the consignor “client”) provides items to another party (the consignee “seller”) to sell. In return, the seller (consignee) receives a portion of the sale price as a commission for their work in selling the item.
Consignment is a great way to make money on your items without all the work entailed in processing, listing, managing, storing, selling, and shipping them yourself. This is especially beneficial if you can source inventory inexpensively, and then have someone else do all the work, and still make a profit after the fee you pay to the consignee seller.
In fact, many resellers have adopted consignment selling as a part of their business model. If you can source items inexpensively, have someone else sell them, and still profit from your payout, this model can be incredibly lucrative.
Consignment is an opportunity that broadens your sourcing; you might come into contact with decent and well-priced inventory all the time that you don’t want to sell, but someone else specializes in!
This is also a great avenue for your stale inventory that just won’t sell, as a last effort to recoup any small amount that you can, rather than donating or discarding it.
In fact, many resellers have adopted consignment selling as a part of their business model. If you can source items inexpensively, have someone else sell them, and still profit from your payout, this model can be incredibly lucrative.
You might consider private consignment, by working with another reseller in a mutually-beneficial fee arrangement. There are also consignment stores and thrift stores that offer consignment in brick-and-mortar locations. You might also consider online options such as The RealReal for luxury consignment and ThredUp for clothing consignment.
Learn more about how to sell items on consignment in this article.
Cross-listing or cross-posting refers to the process of listing items for sale on multiple online marketplaces. For example, if you are an eBay seller, you might consider cross-listing your listings to other places such as Poshmark, Etsy, Grailed, Mercari, Depop, or Facebook Marketplace, just to name a few.
Cross-listing is the key to reselling, as it provides new audiences and greater exposure; infinitely broadening your reach and sales potential. When you crosspost your items on various platforms, each provides a new audience by way of their customer base, but also a potentially higher ranking in search engines.
As you can imagine, creating listings on multiple marketplaces is tedious and time-consuming. Thankfully, Vendoo provides resellers the ability to crosslist their items on multiple marketplaces with just a few clicks!
To learn more about making more sales by cross-listing, check out this article.
There are only so many hours in the day. You will need to determine what makes the most sense for your business in consideration of time and money.
The benefits of consignment include the ability to outsource labor and yield a profit in a relatively effortless manner. Plus, the person/entity selling your item might have more resources, a larger audience, or just be better at selling items than you.
The cons, however, include that you are surrendering a portion of your profit, and losing control of the item; the physical possession, the sale price, etc. You also might find that the person/entity selling your item did not do as good of a job as you could have to yield the most profit per item. Plus, there is some risk involved in every business arrangement, and consignment is no exception.
Alternatively, there are many benefits of cross-listing; primarily that you keep the profit and you control your items.
With Vendoo, you can crosspost your items on multiple marketplaces with just a few clicks, making reselling easier than ever.
However, we all know that reselling is a lot of work. Processing inventory is time-consuming. While there are so many tools and resources to scale and grow your business, there is only so much you can do to maximize your valuable time.
I recommend that you explore each option and see what works best for you, personally. It all comes down to weighing the pros and cons in consideration of your time, resources, skill level, and margins.
I do both. The items that are decent but not fabulous, I send off to another person or business to resell, being careful that there is ample room for profit in consideration of my original costs. The items that I anticipate will yield the highest profit, I sell myself by cross-listing on multiple marketplaces such as Poshmark, Depop, Mercari and more with Vendoo.
Try it yourself! Vendoo has a no risk free trial so you can easily list on multiple marketplaces, delist and relist for maximum exposure, manage your inventory, track your profit and revenue, and receive business insights and analytics. Try it today, to make the most for your items!