One of the biggest challenges within my reselling business is figuring out what to source within brands. Back when I lived in Upstate New York, I familiarized myself with local thrift store brands and built my business around them by learning what styles within each of those brands sold at my desired price point. Now that I live in Florida (almost 5 years later), not only has the reselling market changed but so has the types of brands that I find regularly at my local thrift stores. Today, I wanted to share with you how I am able to easily figure out what sells within brands that I find at my local thrift stores.
Why I Utilize This Method
As I mentioned earlier in this post, I used to live in rural Upstate New York. If I wanted to source for inventory, I either had to travel an hour away to find items or shop at the few stores that I had available to me locally. Since I lived in a smaller area, I didn’t have access to many of the BOLO brands that I would see other resellers sharing on social media. Although at times I would get discouraged when I would see these posts, I quickly learned that a reselling business can thrive by selling high-demand pieces from the brands that I was able to find locally. After a little experimenting, I was able to figure out a method that worked for me as a reseller regardless of where I lived. When we moved to Florida, I was able to use these same principles to grow my reselling business.
My Step-By-Step Process
1) Make a List of Common Brands That You Find At Your Local Thrift Stores- The first thing that I do is make a list of common brands that I find at my local thrift stores. To make this as easy as possible, I will just add a note on my phone with my list; My list usually ranges anywhere from 5-10 brands. Some brands that I commonly find at the thrift store include: J. Crew, Ann Taylor, Ann Taylor LOFT, Zara, and American Eagle.
2) Open Poshmark and Do Some Research– Next, I will head on over to Poshmark and do some brand research. Using one of the brands that I wrote on my list, I will try to figure out what styles/categories within that brand are selling at my desired priced point.
Below is an example of how I would do this using the brand Ann Taylor:
First, you will want to locate the brands homepage on Poshmark. This can be done through the phone app or through the desktop site.
Next, you will need to adjust some of the filters within the search parameters (This can be found on the top of the screen on your mobile device or on the left hand of the screen on a desktop). I would suggest adjusting the following:
Categories- This can be set to “All Categories” unless you are trying to look at specific ones
Size– Make sure that it reads “All Sizes”
Colors- This can be set to “All Colors”
Price- I would use the custom pricing option to personalize your numbers. Let’s say that you wanted to look for items that are listed for/ have sold for $40+. To have the correct results, you should set the minimum to “$40” and then leave the maximum price blank.
Item Availability– Make sure that this is set to “Sold” if you are looking at sold items, otherwise, you can leave it alone
Sort By- This can be found in the top right corner of the screen and should be set to “Just In”
Once you have adjusted all of the search parameters, start scrolling through your results and look for commonalities and trends. These can include categories, styles, colors, textures, and anything else that you might notice.
Personally, I am interested in looking at what items have recently sold from this brand. My search results showed a few noteworthy trends: (1) Most of the sold items were either dresses, suiting, or outerwear, (2) Many of these items were new with tags, and (3) Many of these items were either neutrals, a neon color, and/or tweed.
3) Utilize eBay Search Results- With these trends in mind, I am going to head on over to eBay to calculated sell-through-rates. (To learn about how to calculate sell-through-rates, visit this post HERE.)
Once I log into eBay, I am going to be searching one of the trending categories or styles that I noticed on Poshmark. In this example, I am going to do a broad, general search of the term “Ann Taylor Trench Coat” as we are heading into spring:
Without adjusting any of the search filters, I can see that there are 572 Ann Taylor trench coats listed on eBay with varying price points. In order to look at the results that I am interested in, I will need to adjust some of the search parameters.
First, I adjusted the price to reflect a minimum of $40. By doing this, I immediately narrowed down the results to 288 available items.
Next, I am going to compare NWT versus pre-owned items and make note of these numbers. I also going to make a note of how many total items are available.
In this example, there were 89 NWT items with no flaws, 72 NWOT items, 2 NWT items with flaws, and 125 pre-owned items totaling 288 items.
Now, I am going to change the search criteria so that it reflects all Ann Taylor trench coats that have sold for over $40 in the last 90 days:
The results show that 93 Ann Taylor trench coats have sold for over $40 in the last 90 days. Of these sold items, 15 were NWT, 22 were NWOT, and 56 were pre-owned.
This means that the sell-through-rate for Ann Taylor trench coats selling over $40 is 24%. In other words, 24% of the items listed as Ann Taylor trench coats have sold for over $40 in the last 90 days.
24% is not a great sell-through-rate but that doesn’t mean that we should be discouraged by it. Instead, it means that I need to narrow my results down even further an explore other factors such as colors, textures, and keywords.
I’m now going to change the search criteria to be a little more specific. I noticed on both Poshmark and Mercari that a unique trench coat color was selling- the color is called “Razzle Dazzle”. I was curious to see how that specific color is performing on eBay.
The new search results using the keyword “razzle dazzle” show that there are 3 available Ann Taylor trench coats for sale on eBay, however, none of the search results are what I was looking for. That being said, there are 0 available Ann Taylor razzle dazzle trench coats.
When I looked at the sold search results, I noticed that two of these jackets had sold. This means that this jacket has a 100% sell-through-rate as all of the available items sold for over $40 within a 90 day period.
What Exactly Does This Data Mean?
Looking at the example above, it can be really overwhelming to try to figure out what all of this data means. In this example, specifically, I am able to draw a few conclusions:
1) Items have different sell-through-rates on different reselling platforms- Just because an item may have a lower or higher sell-through-rate on one platform, does not mean that its’ sell-through-rate translates across all resale platforms. I noticed that there were many items that were performing well on Poshmark that were not performing as well on eBay and vice versa. Being aware of this can help you to figure out what items perform best across various reselling platforms.
2) Ann Taylor does have specific colors/styles that perform better than others– As you saw in the example, the overall sell- through-rate for Ann Taylor trench coats is not great. However, certain colors and styles can perform better than others. In this case, the “razzle dazzle” fuchsia trench coat was in high-demand with a 100% sell-through-rate on eBay.
3) Trench coats are increasing in demand– I am not surprised that the demand for trench coats has been low in the last 90 days as most of the country has been experiencing colder temperatures due to the winter season. After looking at the sold comps from the last few weeks, it is clear that the demand for trench coats is increasing.
4) People are willing to spend $40 on Ann Taylor trench coats in various conditions– Although the sell-through-rate might not look promising right now, it is encouraging to know what buyers are willing to spend $40 on an Ann Taylor trench coat regardless of the condition. Surprisingly, most of the items that sold were in pre-owned condition.
Before I go, I wanted to disclose that this is not a sure proof way to figure out what is selling within various retail brands. Instead, I like to look at it more as a guide of what is potentially worth sourcing within brands at various price points. By looking at sell-through-rates and comparing data, resellers can make more strategic and informed decisions that can help them in their reselling businesses.
I hope that you find this post helpful! If you have any questions or just want to chat, please reach out!
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