Poshmark made it into the Sellers Choice Awards for the first time this year, coming in 5th place and picking up an award for Ease of Use. The mobile selling app focuses on fashion and consumer-to-consumer selling, but it is expanding to accommodate business sellers and independent fashion brands.
In January 2019, EcommerceBytes surveyed over 13,000 online sellers and asked them to rate the marketplaces on which they had experience selling. An introduction to the Sellers Choice survey along with a summary of the overall ratings can be found here, along with links to results for each of the 11 online marketplaces included in the survey.
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Poshmark
Year Established: 2011
Description: Mobile selling app with a focus on fashion
More Info
Summary:
Poshmark made it into the Sellers Choice Awards for the first time this year, coming in 5th place and picking up an award for Ease of Use. Poshmark is different from many other shopping venues, with a focus on fashion and consumer-to-consumer selling. You buy and sell through the mobile app, and sellers don’t have stores, shops, or booths – everyone has “closets.” Curated collections are called “showrooms.” Poshmark also offers “boutiques” for sellers who offer “diverse, brand new merchandise from emerging and independent fashion brands.”
Poshmark focuses on ease-of-use and simplicity. Sellers use their mobile device to take photos of their items. Poshmark charges buyers a flat-rate shipping fee (currently $6.49) for all orders on items weighing up to five pounds and provides sellers with a pre-paid shipping label (expedited USPS Priority Mail), and Poshmark automatically emails buyers the tracking number.
As a result, veteran online sellers who are used to taking photos and shipping certain ways may find some policies constricting, at least initially. One seller said the headline and description fields were too short, images were hard to use, and there was ability to edit images.
The pros cited by sellers: Poshmark is a viable marketplace to sell clothes, with good sales reported, and many like the simplicity of selling. Some sellers said Poshmark is a fun platform. “I’m very thankful for the community events that they throw,” one seller wrote. “They genuinely care about our success as sellers!”
“It is fun because it is interactive and social with customers,” said another.
Sellers also said they liked Poshmark’s 3-day returns policy. Poshmark states all sales are final, but buyers have 3 days to report a problem after delivery if they receive an item not as described.
Customer service got mixed reviews. Among the biggest drawbacks to Poshmark were the fees, some sellers said. (The company explains, “When you make a sale, we deduct a fee from your listing price. For sales under $15, the fee is a single flat rate of $2.95. You keep the rest. For sales of $15 or more, the fee is 20% of the listing price and you keep 80%.”)
As for the cons of selling on Poshmark, some sellers cited lowball offers from shoppers – one seller surmised that Poshmark buyers were unable to appreciate the value of vintage fashion goods.
Some sellers said Poshmark didn’t hold sellers accountable. “You can sell junk and even have a return and not get a booted off the site,” wrote one seller.
Some don’t like Poshmark being app-only, and some said the success is too reliant on social media sharing. Low or no sales if you don’t share, which is very time-consuming, sellers said.
“I feel there should be a way to weed out the lowball offers. It should only be a certain percentage or amount off the seller’s asking price. The lowball offers can get annoying and frustrating. Plus, there needs to be something done about hateful comments that can be made on someone’s page.”
“I love Poshmark. Their business model is fantastic. Allowing members to communicate with other buyers and sellers is great. I also like their Posh Parties. Additionally, they make shipping so easy – just print out a label they provide, attach it to a box or bag, and hand it to your mail carrier. Love it!”
Some sellers said they wished Poshmark was more flexible about payments. Buyers pay Poshmark with a number of payment options, but sellers can only withdraw money via direct deposit to their bank account, or they can request a check.
Those new to selling on Poshmark should carefully review all of the policies and terms, including the prohibited items policy. For example, we were interested to note that “taking portions of branded items (for example, a button from an authentic designer jacket) and re-purposing / hand-making them into other items like jewelry, is prohibited.”
Poshmark received a 6.14 in Profitability; a 6.17 in Customer Service; a 6.33 in Communication; and a 6.92 in Ease of Use. It received a 6.87 from sellers when asked, “How likely are you to Recommend Poshmark as a selling venue to a friend or colleague?”
Reader Comments:The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Love the platform! Super easy, very profitable, no hassles, the whole vibe is friendly and they encourage sharing and caring among sellers. All platforms should strive to be like Poshmark.
I always recommend Poshmark to my seller friends. It is easy to post, easy to sell, and easy to ship. Answers are a comment away in most cases. I have never waited too long to find out an answer. The ONLY thing I don’t really like, and it is NOT a big deal, is the fact you have to use their app camera to post. I tried to upload other ways and it gets cropped wrong. For what you get in return, that is NOT a complaint.
Poshmark, though for fashion only, is a great niche website. Easy to use. Great community. Google shopping. Stuff sells!
I have sales pretty regular on Poshmark. It is fairly easy to use, just snap some pics, upload, list and it’s done. It can all be done from your phone if you want. I have not heard good things about their customer service, such as not siding with the sellers. If I had more items listed, I bet I would sell a lot more, because for what I have listed now, I do pretty good. A downside is the fees. And also I feel there should be a way to weed out the lowball offers. It should only be a certain percentage or amount off the seller’s asking price. The lowball offers can get annoying and frustrating. Plus, there needs to be something done about hateful comments that can be made on someone’s page. Needs to keep it all positive.
I just opened my closet on Poshmark a few weeks back and had my 4th sale today. I only gave an 8 rating on profitability because I am not sure if this was luck or if I really sell more items on Poshmark. I like it.
Easiest of platforms to list/do business. Highlight for me is that sale is over/completed in 3 days. I am a new seller on Posh, but big fan of this venue.
I like their prepaid postage which the buyer pays. I like the ability to list multiple items. Posh has a lot going for it. I started listing non-clothing items like beauty and health products and got sales. Posh could be the threat to eBay.
Poshmark is terrific. I have had lots of sales and they make everything so easy.
High fees, but opens a whole new market of people to my items.
They’re pretty good about updates and notifying me about my customers.
Excellent exposure. Site and App advertised on national TV. Ease of shipping (they provide the label).
I just started selling on Poshmark this past year. Sold a couple of things and will try to put more importance and time on Poshmark than eBay this year. Great site, but definitely needs some improvements.
We Love Poshmark. Will be listing more items throughout the year. They took eBay’s big mistakes and made a platform that is easy to use and profitable for the seller. Simple, easy to use, no complicated policies, etc.
Easy peasy to use, features work so easy, listings are easy to get up fast! This is my new go-to marketplace for selling on.
Poshmark is always so helpful, and you never ever talk to a robot. I’ve been able to make so much extra money by selling my clothes on Poshmark. Such a wonderful, community oriented company. I’m very thankful for the community events that they throw. They genuinely care about our success as sellers!
Poshmark is my new side gig, and it’s actually bringing in a lot of income. It’s very easy to use and to list things, it is fun because it is interactive and social with customers and other sellers in a way that eBay is not. I only for the first time felt I needed to communicate with them recently and it was very hard to find a contact us button. They don’t make it easy to contact them and seem to want you to get all your answers from past articles. So far I haven’t had a big enough problem that I needed them to step in.
Like this site but 20% fee is crazy high. Love the flat rate shipping option up to 5 lbs and giving us the preprinted label. High maintenance with all the sharing other peoples items, etc.
Poshmark’s commission is crazy high, but their website is simple and easy to use. Communication is very good and site has been profitable for me as I am a discriminating seller.
Some aspects of this site are phenomenal – the ease of listing alone gets an “11” from me – but the lack of customer service responsiveness and the absolute nonsense of sharing, sharing, sharing gets a “1” from me. I’ve had some profitability on here, and I do like how the listings stay up and you don’t have renew them, but my god the sharing …… blech. Still love it though, I sell and buy on it and I don’t want it to go anywhere – great, new site and I hope it continues on.
Great place to sell if you don’t mind really high selling fees, sometimes over 30% for lower priced items. Most focused customer base, if you have clothing that is worth anything, this is where you will find your buyer.
Super easy to use for both buyer and seller. Fee and shipping a little high but revenue better than on other sites for used / new clothing. No returns for remorse reasons such as fit or like. Easy to communicate with buyers and questions are displayed on the listing so all buyers can see. Tedious to do the constant sharing, following, liking etc but so much simpler than eBay and no renting used clothes by dishonest buyers.
Love the site but sales are sporadic and the venue is over saturated. There are a lot more lookers than buyers and buyers want your stuff for next to nothing so not a great place to run a higher end business but great for getting rid of stuff you don’t want.
I like this sale channel. I sell a lot on it, but I wish they connect with PayPal so you can track your money. Your money goes straight to your bank account, so if you have different sales channel, this money don’t get to count.
Easy to use but site practices and rules aren’t enforced enough; more seller protections are necessary.
High commissions to Poshmark and zero help if there is an issue. more sales than the other marketplaces.
One has a different level of clientele on Poshmark, who look more for current fashion type jewelry and are not educated towards vintage items. I receive a lot of extremely low ball offers for high-end vintage jewelry items. Categories are very poor and limited. The one price for all priority shipping is injurious to those who ship small, lightweight items.
I’ve sold a few items, a lot of people just lowball, 20% seller fee is high.
They tell sellers to describe items in detail but only have a 40 character title and 500 character description. Takes a while to become part of the selling family here.
Site has sellers do all the promoting and policing other sellers and when reporting sellers for not complying to guidelines, they are slow to react, if at all. Bundles & offer options not easy to use & restrictive.
This site requires a lot of networking sharing to get items to sell; time is something I do not have.
I like Poshmark. I’ve sold a few things. This reminds me I’ve got money to spend or pull on my Posh Account. I guess I wished they used PayPal or Venmo.
Seems to attract lower bids than other selling platforms. favorable returns policy for sellers. easy transactions.
Strange site… they charge too much for shipping. All this closet sharing is insane.
You can only sell on mobile, so I was not able to list anything. They were not motivated to make selling with a browser available.
Only bad thing is their fee is higher and you don’t have the option to use 1st class mail which is cheaper.
I am fairly new to selling on there, but so far it is somewhat profitable. But I don’t understand some of the concepts, such as buyers adding only 1 item to their “bundle” and expect the sellers to automatically give them a discount? And there needs to be SOMETHING to stop the lowballers, it is very annoying and disheartening. Like they should not be able to make an offer 50% or more off the seller’s asking price.
Site has to get a request to release money to you, even though you are the vendor. Fees are very high in relation to value. Flat rate shipping is not flexible. No way of checking out from multiple sellers in one transaction.
Poshmark’s customer service is horrible. Their fees are very expensive. One major issue is their historical pricing with lowering prices…having to end items and relist due to historical pricing feature. Also, there are a lot of replicas. “Knockoffs” being sold on Poshmark is growing too rapidly and needs to hire more staff to deal with issues. They should not rely on sellers to keep them in tip top shape as they call it. Also, they never deal with sellers selling non compliant items. They need to open up a housewares section if they are going to allow numerous, numerous sellers to sell these items when they are clearly on their prohibited list.
Interesting idea but very limited. Headline & descriptions too short, images hard to use, no image editing. Still, tho I only started recently I like the site.
Taking 20% of sales hurts the bottom line! Having to spend so much time sharing & liking is time that should be spent on working. Between that and the lowballing I left recently, won’t go back there either.
Super easy to list. Pain in the ass to constantly share, and customers are pretty well trained to buy only when you send offers now. Their customer service is slow AF, and I did have one terrible experience (just really poor communication of a process, maybe employee was new) but other experiences have been good – just takes a really long time.
I have also recommended Poshmark to friends and family. My biggest problem with that is the time to share and care. I sell on there but sales slow or stop if you aren’t sharing daily and sharing to parties. It is very time consuming. I know big sellers who won’t’ sell on there because of the time commitment to share. They are also very bad and removing items that are not supposed to be listed/sold on Poshmark which is unfair to those of us who adhere to the rules.
20% too high. Shipping rate good for heavier items but high for very light items.
I’ve used them for 1.5 years and have literally 1 sale. I don’t like having to use their app to list and manage my items, buyers make ridiculous offers that are less than what it will cost me to ship the item. Not worth bothering with.
I’ve had pretty good success on Poshmark. I wish they offered sellers the ability to mark down items in bulk rather than just doing it one item at a time. Sellers also can’t edit their closet to include built in coupons or other discounts at checkout. The positive side is sellers have the ability to negotiate prices and sellers get a lot of traffic with potential buyers liking their items. Sellers can then respond to the likes by giving a potential buyer a lower price. I wish the payout was quicker though (payout doesn’t happen until the item is delivered and the buyer accepts the item~If the buyer doesn’t accept the item the seller has to wait 3 business days to get the payout).
Poshmark doesn’t work for boutiques/retailers. It only works for people cleaning out their closet or sellers selling used clothing. They don’t have the functionality for a retail store to use their site.
I wish there was a phone number to contact them for customer service issues that may require more immediate attention.
It is expensive and as far as items that you can sell there go, it is limited to fashion items and jewelry. I liked that I could make money there, but because of the price of shipping there, people low ball you to death.
Too much spam. They want you to join parties and do stupid stuff. I just want to sell.
I dislike all the sharing and parties, and they have a basic problem with their shipping charge. Lightweight, should be 1st stuff, like blouses, scarves, etc cost way too much too ship.
Poshmark has NO support. There is no way to call when there is an issue. Luckily, they don’t happen often, but a buyer couldn’t pay and there was no way for me to call. Also, they ignore all the counterfeits and not-allowed items, and the sharing gets old.
Poshmark needs to work on their email services. When we email off the app it takes days to reach someone and it’s confusing. Poshmark needs to make selling easier than the constant follow, like and comment. When notes are left in the App to customer service that’s the quickest way. I do not like that everyone can become a top rated seller for even selling junk. I have had three returns from purchases I made for myself from my funds I earned. I will never ever buy from the Poshmark site and I will only sell, as I know I sell perfectly clean items or new with tag. These sellers that state something is new and they lie Poshmark does nothing. I received a disgusting purse I won the return back to the seller and I saw later that Poshmark awarded her top seller. Wrong! It is all over the Facebook groups for all of us seller using the site and that Poshmark does nothing about it. You can sell junk and even have a return and not get a booted off the site. I work hard at my site and the sales do not come easy. There are too many people added daily that I believe it clogged up the site. As a seller we should we should not have to do so much for so little profit.
If you’re Keeping Up with the Kardashians then this site is for you!
Listing is easy, selling is hard – the sharing is too much – seems like mindlessly doing something that you’re not sure will work.
Someone wanted to buy one little item from me. I had to pay a large fee on the item and the buyer had to pay $7.00 for me to ship it. Poshmark’s commercials state people make thousands of dollars by selling on their site, but I don’t see it. Fees are high for sellers and shipping costs are high for buyers. Poshmark’s customer service is blunt, not helpful and appears to be run by teenagers.
Sellers Choice Awards:
We thank all readers who took the time to rate the marketplaces. If you have comments about the Sellers Choice Awards, please feel free to post them below.
