Mercari is one of the many platforms that I utilize in my reselling business. As of the time I am writing this post, I currently have 2 Poshmark closets (more on that HERE), 2 Mercari accounts, a Kidizen account, and a Vestaire Collective account; Additionally, I sell items to buy-sell-trade stores and online platforms such as ThredUp. Over this past year, I have been trying to increase my Mercari sales and get them to be more on par with my Poshmark sales (which make up the majority of my yearly sales). In today’s post, I wanted to share with you a few steps that I have taken over the past year to improve my Mercari sales.
Before I get into what I did to increase sales, I want to share with you a little bit about my Mercari account. This will help you to get a good overview of my account and what I sell. As I mentioned at the beginning of the post, I have 2 Mercari accounts- one account exclusively sells all of my men’s items and the other account (aka my main account) sells my remaining categories (women’s, children’s, home, etc). [You can read more about why I have multiple accounts in THIS post.]
My men’s closet has between 400-500 active listings and my main closet has around 1500 listings. Additionally, before buying any items, I always run comps and check consumer trends to ensure that the items that I am sourcing are highly desirable. By doing this, I am maximizing my business’ potential success.
Now that we have talked a little bit about me and my business, let’s talk about some of the steps that I have taken to increase my Mercari sales on both accounts this year:
Consistent Listing and Re-Listing
Every morning, I list and re-list items on both Mercari accounts. Why? Where Mercari listings appear in search results is based on when the item was listed and if the item is promoted. Older listings appear at the bottom of searches and newer ones appear at the top. The only way for an older item to appear at the top of a search result after being listed is to “promote” the listing (more on that a little later). As a result, it is imperative for items to be re-listed and listed as often as possible so that they appear at the top of search results.
Promoting Listings
Another step that I take in my daily Mercari routine is to promote listings. Usually, I will promote my 10 oldest listings every morning before I re-list them the following day. Mercari only allows for 10 promoted listings per day and whenever an item is promoted, the price is reduced by 5%. The biggest perk of utilizing this feature is that it will boost your listing in search results and will notify everyone who liked your item about the price reduction.
Utilizing Smart Pricing
One feature that I have started to utilize when listing and re-listing items is the smart pricing feature. This feature is great because allows you to the choose the item’s starting price and bottom price. Usually, I will raise the item’s price above my asking price for the starting price and then, try to get the bottom price to reflect my actual asking price. Once the item is listed on the platform, the item’s price will consistently decrease until it hits the bottom price. Every time that the price is lowered, the item is boosted in search results and likers are notified of the price drop.
Not Offering Free Shipping
This one might be a little bit surprising to you but I do have my reasons…Over the past 2 years of being on the app, I have always offered buyers FREE shipping. I was under the assumption that if I offered FREE shipping then I would make more sales. The truth of the matter was that I lost out on profits because I paid for the shipping myself and I wasn’t making any more sales than if I didn’t offer free shipping.
I made the decision in October to stop offering FREE shipping on all of my newly listed items and any items that I would be re-listing moving forward. I was sick and tired of losing out on profits when I didn’t have to be. Surprisingly, as I switched over listings from FREE shipping to buyer prepaid shipping labels through the site, my sales increased. It wasn’t an instantaneous increase but a slow increase that led to more consistent sales. To my surprise, people didn’t mind paying for shipping and although their offers were slightly less than my bottom prices, I was still walking away with greater profits than I had previously.
My Takeaway
When it comes to successful selling on Mercari, I believe that the biggest key is to utilize their features in a way that will maximize your success. As with all reselling platforms, the main goal for the app and for sellers is to make as many sales as possible. Each app provides their sellers with the tools and features necessary to do this, with some making it easier than others.
In my opinion, the key to successful selling on Mercari specifically, is to get your items to appear at the top of search results as often as you can. This can be done by adding new listings, re-listing older listings, promoting stale listings, and by utilizing features such as smart pricing. The more consistently that you are able to achieve this, the easier it will be to make sales. [I will be the first to admit that doing this on a regular basis can be extremely time consuming and tedious but even doing just a little each day can be extremely beneficial in the long run.]
Also, before I go, I also wanted to say that this is only a small piece of the reselling puzzle. Reselling is made up of so many parts and it takes time to figure out what works best for you and your business.
I hope that you find this post helpful! If you have any questions or just want to chat, please reach out!
If you are interested in seeing some other items that I have found while thrifting, check out THIS post and THIS post.
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