[alexander-litty]

My partner is a top seller on Depop. We send and receive packages pretty much every day, it’s been great for them during the pandemic.

Depop has done a great job fostering a more human experience than other platforms. That’s definitely a huge factor in their success.

Buying and selling is pretty involved. Haggling is super common. If you’re selling many items, people will message you and ask for bundle deals. If you’re a regular, sometimes people will just throw you a discount. If you just buy something silently, you’ll often get a short thank-you message.

There’s a culture around the packaging, too. People tend to put candies, stickers, hand-written thank-you notes, extra things the seller doesn’t need anymore. It’s fun to open packages coming in, and it’s fun to pack them out with little surprises.

My partner has made a lot of friends that way, which has led to trading of talents and services. Sometimes it’s just people helping people, sometimes it’s commissions, sometimes it’s bartering, but all originating from the platform.

I definitely see why Etsy’s interested.

[brobdingnagians]

I once bought a bottle of expensive fountain pen ink for my sister as a present; the thing that struck me most about it was that they included a hand-written thank you note in the packaging. It was a family business, and I remember it, years later, because it was such a pleasant surprise, and an unexpected one from all of the other commercial encounters I have. It taught me the value of the personal touch and attention to detail for customers.

[xmprt]

And as a note to any big companies thinking of doing this, it has to be personal. I've gotten tons of cards and brochures in packages from big companies that I instantly throw away because it's usually just corporate jargon about how much thought was put into making this product "just for me".

[45ure]

>Depop has done a great job fostering a more human experience than other platforms.

You paint a pretty picture; the camaraderie of buying, selling, haggling in an online cobbled internet town square, make for an idyllic setting. The tug-and-pull of reuse/recycle, vintage vs fast fashion are noble principles.

However, there is a murky side, which is infused with extreme expectations, toxic and churlish behaviour e.g. Amazon Prime type service, petty haggling over a few pennies, sellers abusing their privileges, limited understanding of fees and/or how PayPal works, unnecessary spats and an appallingly high level of entitlement etc.

Nevertheless, there is synergy, but have doubts about long-term prospects ─ Depop might just become another case study in acquihire or perhaps just a blot, as there is no shortage of other contenders nipping at their heels e.g. Vinted.

https://www.instagram.com/depopdrama/

[alexander-litty]

The drama is pretty ridiculous sometimes, it’s true :)

This aspect isn’t unique to Depop however. Other buying and selling platforms that allow negotiation are full of people trying to assert their nonsense onto you.

It feels like it’s just part of organic haggling culture. And for some people, like my partner, I think wading through the nonsense and having a handle on it can be part of the fun.

Likewise though, I’m interested in seeing how the acquihire goes.

[Nextgrid]

Just wondering, is it profitable? I believe the Depop fee is 10% plus payment processing fees, which to me doesn’t sound like a great deal, but then again I’m not really familiar with that whole market.

[tinco]

My sister runs a succesful shop on Depop, she's the starving artist type, and the income from her Depop puts her suddenly at a decent median income. I don't know how sustainable it is, who knows for how long her artistic taste aligns with Depop's target market, but it does seem like a great way to run a business.

It is very surprising to me that it's as low as 10%. I bet that even if it were 30% or even 40% it would still be profitable. The way she operates is she buys lots of second hand clothing from Japan, for lets say $5 and then from that lot she sells a pair of jeans for $50. So her profit is $40 on the lot. Maybe she makes 15 sales per week, and boom there's a decent wage.

Numbers are all extrapolated from when I talked to her about her business one weekend a couple months ago. I have no idea how much she actually sells or makes at the moment.

Maybe also interesting to note that this is a scale up from what she already did locally. She's been trading second hand clothing for years now. The Depop thing is new and it transformed her business from being a side gig to a primary source of income.

[sjg007]

I've been listening to Galdwell's audiobook Outliers and he talks about the NYC garment industry in the late 19th and early 20th century. There's a lot of parallels with today. You might find it interesting.

[alexander-litty]

Anecdotally, this platform gives liquidity to your otherwise unsellable clothes, and that is the big appeal.

If you have a dress you’ll no longer wear, you have a few online platforms to sell it on, but they’re not known for fashionable clothing. Nobody will be looking for your clothes on there organically. It drives the price of your clothes down, if you’re even able to sell them at all.

A lot of people use this to recycle interesting fashion and keep their closets and outfits interesting at a really low cost, as my partner does.

You do have flippers of course, it’s common enough that they call Depop-flipped items “repops”. I suspect this can be profitable, but you need to source your items at a great discount.

[gnopgnip]

The market for used things is not very liquid, selling online is often the most profitable choice. Selling locally directly to consumers mostly means not finding any buyers or greatly reducing the price. Reselling used clothing to a brick and mortar store, or to be consigned will vary. It often takes 80-90% for children's clothing, 50-70% for most women's clothing, as low as 20% for very valuable items like designer purses. There are other online markets but most of them charge more in fees, and really only Ebay has as much traffic from buyers

[ckdarby]

I have a family member who just left her banking job to expand more into Depop and yesterday she mentioned she hit the milestone of making more than her bank job now.

[an_opabinia]

Definitely not if you account for time.

Sellers are making subminimum wage profits per hour.

On the one hand, a medical resident also makes very close to minimum wage.

[matsemann]

Isn't that also how Etsy was, before it became a drop shipping marketplace?

[JohnWhigham]

Pretty much. I remember someone showing it to me in 2010 and I was floored at all the cool vendors on it. Expect Depop to be gutted soon like every other startup purchase.

But then again, those were probably the founder's plans.

[antihero]

I mean now Etsy is interested I'm sure it won't take long to become another wasteland of shit-tier mass produced products from Chinese sellers.