This is a contributing post from Valerie Fidan, a San Francisco based food and sustainable travel blogger. Live The Little Things is a space filled with real food recipes, travel, and wellness. These are the bits & bites that are part of her everyday life. It’s a breeding ground for ideas and excitement for a balanced and inspired sustainable lifestyle.
Move over eBay. Consignment marketplaces, like Twice, Poshmark and TheRealReal are going head to head with the original online consignment shop, eBay. Poshmark, Twice and others allow you to sell your clothes and more online. But where TheRealReal differentiates itself from some of the others is its exclusive focus on designer goods, similar to ThreadFlip. It’s worth pointing out that this focus caters to a specific audience.
With some great online sites where sellers ship their items into the company, while with others, sellers list and ship items themselves. Either way, online consignment stores are an excellent way to purchase items at prices way below retail.
If you are interested in either buying or selling, here is our complete guide to the top 5 online consignment stores worth checking out:
ThredUp
ThredUp is a huge online consignment store that offers clothing, shoes and accessories for women, as well as clothing and shoes for babies and kids. ThredUp caters to shoppers of all sizes, as plus-size, petite and maternity clothing are all sold on the site. Because of the wide range of brands accepted by ThredUp, the site often has the best prices out of all of the online consignment stores. It has everything from the clothing lines carried at Target to luxury brands like Kate Spade.
Besides incredibly low prices, one of the biggest perks of using ThredUp is that it has a great referral program. For every new user you refer, you will receive $20 in credit to spend on the site. Additionally, ThredUp offers frequent coupons that are valid for both new and returning purchasers.
If you wish to sell your items via ThredUp, you can request a postage-paid bag, which you can use to ship your items to the company. ThredUp pays out up to 80 percent of the retail value on items it accepts. If it rejects items, then it ships them back to you for free or donates them on your behalf.
The RealReal
TheRealReal is a combination flash sale site and online consignment store. It sells high-end designer clothing, shoes and accessories from brands like Gucci, Oscar de la Renta and Jimmy Choo at incredibly discounted prices. More recently, this site has started selling authentic art as well. Most sales at The RealReal last only 72 hours and some items tend to sell out within minutes of sales being posted.
While the brands that are sold at The RealReal can cost hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars brand new, the prices at The RealReal are generally quite reasonable. Another plus to shopping this site is that they frequently offer coupons for an extra 20 to 40 percent off everything. With the additional coupons, the prices at The RealReal are easily some of the lowest ever offered for some of the brands they feature.
Selling items with The RealReal is easy. Be sure to check out its directory of accepted brands, and then you can ship the items that you would like to sell to the company. If and when an item sells, you will be paid up to 70 percent of the selling price.
Poshmark
Poshmark is different from most of the other online consignment stores on this list because there is no middle man. Using the Poshmark website or app, anyone can go on the site and list the items they wish to sell for free. Once the item sells, Poshmark takes a small cut or percentage of the profits.
There are no brand requirements to sell on Poshmark, although fakes and replicas are not permitted. With nobody viewing the items before they are listed for sale, purchasers are protected via Posh Protect. Should an item arrive that is different than described, or if it never arrives, the purchaser will receive a refund.
The nice thing about using Poshmark is that because there is no middle man, you can offer items for exchange to sellers and sellers will occasionally lower their prices for you. Additionally, when you sell an item with Poshmark, the site will send out a pre-paid envelope with which to mail the item, so the seller does not have to worry about shipping costs.
Twice
The items featured on Twice, an online consignment store for women, are photographed so well that it almost appears that you are shopping at a full-price store. Brands from Gap to Diane von Furstenberg are listed on Twice at a fraction of the original retail price. Twice only carries items for women in regular and petite sizes zero to 16. While the products on the site are already reasonably priced, there are frequently coupons available on the website for new users.
Twice is a little different from some of the other online consignment stores in that it will purchase lightly-used items from you up-front, and then list the items for sale later. This means that sellers receive money quickly, instead of waiting for their items to sell. All items must be less than five years old and there is a very specific list of brands that are and are not accepted for consignment on the site, so be sure to check that list before sending in your clothing for resale.
Threadflip
Threadflip is similar to Poshmark in that users register for accounts on the site and sell their own items. The brands sold at Threadflip are more high-end though, so this is a great destination if you are shopping for current “it” brands like Rebecca Minkoff, Kate Spade or even Louis Vuitton. A nice feature is the option to search only for items that are “new with tags.”
Threadflip keeps a flat 20 percent of the purchase price of any item sold. Sellers have the option of paying for shipping themselves or adding it to the purchase price of the item being sold.
