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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.