Whenever I scroll through Instagram, I always see a plethora of people commenting on how their items are sitting stagnant in their Poshmark closets and how frustrated these sellers are. Out of curiosity, I will head on over to their Poshmark closets and take a look to gather information on why these items aren’t selling. Sometimes it is due to poor photo quality, other times it is due to an oversaturated market, but most times, it is due to incorrect pricing on the sellers part.
As much as I would love to say that reselling is as simple as photographing an item, giving it a price, and placing it on an app, it is SO much more involved than that and many people struggle as a result. Today, I want to help you to make this as simple as possible but in a way that will result in sales. When it comes to listing an item on Poshmark, there are 2 factors that are extremely important to consider: (1) Saturation of the Marketplace and (2) Selling Items at Market Value.
What does that mean exactly??? Well, it mean that you need to first, look at how saturated the marketplace is with the particular item that you are looking to sell. The more saturated the market, the harder it is going to be for you to sell that item. There will be more competition to sell the item and as a result, people will drive the market value down in hopes that by lowering their price, the item will sell. Big picture, the item will lose it’s value and in these instances, I would avoid picking up this item altogether.
Second, we need to talk about listing items are market value. What is market value? Market value is how much buyers are willing to pay for an item; it is NOT how much you think the item is worth but instead how much the market says that it is worth. Yes, your time has a price on it and you obviously need to make a profit but at the end of the day, but that should not be your only factor when setting a price. You need to check sold listings to see what other people sold that item for, see how much it is listed for currently by other sellers, in addition to, analyze how rare/in-demand that particular item is.
Let’s take a look at an example:
Example #1: Let’s say that you are looking to list a St John Couture Blue Tweed Jacket.
How would you determine it’s price? First, I would search for the item exactly how it would appear in my Poshmark listing and see what comes up. Let’s say that no one else is selling the exact item but I do see a few similar items currently priced between $75- $100. I would take a look at the sold listings to get an idea of how much similar items have sold for in the past. And let’s say for this example that they have sold between $75-$125. As I am the only person selling that exact item, I have the power to set the market value for that item. I would list the item at $100 which is in the middle of the estimated market value of that good and also allows for the item to appear in 2 price brackets in a Poshmark search.
However, let’s say that that when you searched for active listings on the Poshmark app, you found 30 other people selling the exact same item between $50-$100 and 20 of those people selling it in the same color and size as you pricing their items between $30-$100. This causes a little bit of confusion in the market value as the same item is spaced out between a $70 price difference. There is a lot more competition in the marketplace now and you need to take that into consideration if you want your item to sell. If 15 people have the item priced around $30, and 2 have it priced for $50 and 3 have it priced for $75+, what do you think that the market value is? Unfortunately, for this item, it would probably be $30 with very high competition and in order to make yours sell faster than others, you will need to price the item for less than $30 as price is the only competitive advantage that you have.
If you don’t already, be sure to check out my Instagram for more Reselling Tips at @ RecycledRosesGuide (Click HERE)
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Baci,
Bianca Ida
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