There are so many marketplaces to sell your items online for a profit. Poshmark and Tradesy are both great places to sell clothing and fashion accessories.
Fun Fact: Poshmark is the most popular resale platform amongst Vendoo users.
Poshmark reports having a large audience of over 80 million users.
On Poshmark, you can sell women’s, men’s, and children’s fashion, accessories, new personal care products and makeup, home goods, qualifying electronics, and select pet items. Poshmark is best known for women’s fashion, trendy brands, and higher-end clothing and accessories. Poshmark is available in the U.S., Canada, India, and Australia, but at this time, Poshers cannot buy or sell outside of their country.
Tradesy is a marketplace “built by and for women.” Tradesy is known as a women’s upscale luxury marketplace. Approximately seven million women in the United States use Tradesy to buy and sell clothing, bags, shoes, accessories, vintage, and wedding items.
Fun Fact: Tradesy is part of Vestiaire Collective, “the leading global luxury and designer resale platform.”
Also, make sure you check out: 10 Great Marketplaces Every Reseller Should Consider
While you can sell anything fashion-related (and even some other odds and ends), Poshmark prefers trendy pieces and desirable brands. The best-selling brands on Poshmark are Lululemon Athletica, Nike, Free People, Victoria’s Secret, and Coach.
Tradesy is a higher-end luxury marketplace, with a chic and curated aesthetic. There are thousands of designers and brands featured on Tradesy. For a full list of the brands and designers you can sell on Tradesy, click here. While you will notice many inexpensive brands are allowed, the steep selling fees make Tradesy an ideal place to sell designer and luxury inventory.
The listing process is simple and straightforward on both Poshmark and Tradesy. Both require images of the item, a title, description, drop-down selections as to the item’s category, size, brand, color(s), condition, price, tags, and a few optional drop-down fields. The process is relatively equivalent, excluding the extra shipping information in each listing with Tradesy.
Tradesy Tip: Tradesy applies a plain white background to your cover photographs for a clean and chic aesthetic. Start with a clean, clear image with a light background to optimize the result of the automatic photo enhancement.
On every reselling platform, remember to treat all “optional” listing fields as if they are required. If you are being asked for something, it is because that information is utilized by the marketplace’s search engine. In listing descriptions, the more information the better.
Poshmark Tip: Poshmark allows listing videos, whereas Tradesy does not. Listing videos enhance your search and provide for extra exposure. If a photo is worth a thousand words, a video is worth a million.
Whereas Poshmark is a little more high-maintenance, Tradesy is more of a list-it-and-leave it platform.
Poshmark requires that users “share” their listings regularly. This advances listings to the top of newsfeeds and search results and is crucial to making sales. On Poshmark, to share your listings, you click the “share” icon below each and select “share to followers.” You might consider a Poshmark bot, because pressing buttons all day is fairly ridiculous.
Tradesy has no such requirement, which also means there is very little you can do (aside from detailed titles, descriptions, and executing drop-downs) to make your listings rank higher and appear at the top of more search results.
Another major difference is that Poshmark allows users to make offers, whereas Tradesy does not. However, you will still receive offers or requests to drop prices from Tradesy buyers via message. Similarly, Poshmark allows sellers to make offers to likers, whereas Tradesy does not. Tradesy, however, has sales and smart-pricing options to notify likers when prices are dropped.
Overall, Poshmark has many more tools and features to help you to promote your listings and make sales. While Tradesy requires less work, this means less opportunities to encourage sales.
Poshmark offers the most simplified shipping process in comparison to all of the other reselling marketplaces. On Poshmark, a USPS priority mail shipping label is emailed to the seller at the time of sale. Posh labels can be affixed to any parcel, and you can use the free Priority Mail packaging available at USPS. Tracking information automatically updates for the buyer upon shipment. Generally, the buyer pays a flat rate (currently $7.67) for all orders under 5lbs. The bundle feature allows a buyer to purchase multiple items and pay shipping only once.
If you ship with Tradesy, you will need the item’s approximate weight (including packaging) at the time of listing to select the label tier. Upon sale, you will receive a prepaid shipping label via email, that you can affix to your package and ship! Tradesy shipping options are a bit pricey compared to the other platforms.
If you ship on your own, you will purchase your own shipping label and provide Tradesy with the tracking information for the package ( I recommend using Pirate Ship for the best rates when self-shipping).
A third option is to request a Tradesy shipping kit, and Tradesy will send you a polybag or box, tissue paper, and label in the mail. While this is certainly nice, waiting for this to arrive (and making your buyer wait so long) is not truly ideal.
Tradesy Tip: It is important to note that when you make a sale on Tradesy, you have four days to confirm the sale, confirming that you still have the item in the condition that you described. You must confirm the sale or the order will be automatically canceled.
On both Tradesy and Poshmark, you have the choice to offer free shipping (pay it yourself) or charge your buyers.
Tradesy allows you to charge any flat rate that you choose, whereas Poshmark allows you to offer reduced or free shipping, but requires that you pay the Poshmark shipping rates yourself (because self-shipping is not permitted).
1. First, the Tradesy fee of 19.8% on items that sell for $50 or more and a $7.50 flat rate on items sold under $50.
Note: that this makes it impractical to sell things under $20, as your final profit will be around $5.
2. Also, earnings are calculated differently depending on your shipping method and whether or not a Tradesy sale or promotion was applied to your item.
You can explore your settings for shipping, sales, and promotions from your account settings page.
3. Finally, an additional 2.9% safe transfer fee is deducted from your earnings if you transfer your funds from your Tradesy account into your Paypal or bank account (which is required to get paid).
Of course, if you decide to use your balance to shop on Tradesy, you do not incur this additional fee- clever, right?
While there are many variables, the Tradesy fees end up being only slightly higher than Poshmark when the sale price is at least $50.00.
Overall, Poshmark and Tradesy are both great platforms to consider if you sell fashion. While Poshmark has lower fees and a much broader audience, Tradesy’s niche audience for designer and higher-end makes it a perfect place to cross-list qualifying inventory.
Tradesy fees are among the highest of fees associated with the fashion reselling platforms. Tradesy is a great place for your more valuable pieces where your higher sale price will justify the heightened fees.
Because I use Vendoo, I cross-list some of my items to both Poshmark and Tradesy with just a few clicks!
Do you sell on Poshmark or Tradesy? Share your selling experience below!