
What It Takes to Build a Marketplace: The Poshmark Story - prostoalex
https://www.nfx.com/post/iconic-marketplace-poshmark-story
======
reeddavid
The praise here is over the top. Poshmark is a peer-to-peer clothing
marketplace – think eBay, but focused mostly on used or one-off pieces of
clothing.

Poshmark has incredible potential given the huge amount of quality clothing
inventory, but in my opinion their product and marketing optimize for all the
wrong things and make it hard to actually buy things.

What I want from Poshmark is to find and buy clothes I like that fit me.
That's it.

What I get from Poshmark:

\- They ignore "My Sizes" and show me a feed of women's clothes and incorrect
sizes every time I login. I cannot understand how this is still a problem. Why
would I buy clothes that are not in my size?

\- No way to filter out "One Size" items. Good luck finding your size when
shopping a brand that has accessories; you'll be drowning in watches, ties and
hats

\- Constant notifications for some type of event. Example: 'pm_editor has
invited you to "Street Style Chic Party" Today at 7:00 PM' – I get multiple of
these daily. I don't want to join a party, I just want to find clothes that
fit on my own time and buy them.

\- No way to set notifications when items that match my criteria are listed

\- Constant promotional emails that are not relevant to me. Example: "Login to
to get discounted shipping on your active offers, 4 hours only!" – when I have
no active offers.

\- Until recently, comments on items (e.g. questions and answers between buyer
and seller) did not trigger notifications. So sellers would have no idea that
potential buyers were asking questions on their items. I skipped many
purchases because I couldn't confirm an important detail

\- No option for returns. If I'm buying high-end used clothing, I want the
ability to return it if it doesn't fit as expected. I'm happy to pay for
return shipping, I just don't want to be stuck with something. I've skipped
many many purchases because it was too expensive to commit to without trying
it on.

\- Disempowered support team. Each time I raise an issue with support, I get
the sense they are measured entirely on how little they escalate to teams that
can actually change things.

In summary: Poshmark has an incredible inventory of quality used clothing, but
they focus on all sorts of features and activities that don't do anything to
help me find and buy more items in their marketplace.

~~~
psadri
Question: would you use a service that perfectly replicated your existing well
fitting clothing? I have this problem — I occasionally find a pair of jeans,
shirts etc that fit me really well. Then I can’t buy them again because the
brand no longer makes them. I wish I could just get more copies made once in a
while. Perhaps with different fabrics...

~~~
reeddavid
I've seen services that "clone" your favorite jeans. But it's incredibly
expensive to make one-off jeans. The last time I bought jeans I picked up 7
identically-cut pairs at once in a few different washes and colors, for
exactly the reason you describe. I've done the same with shirts (even in the
same color, just to get double the longevity for that particular style).

What would be more helpful would be true measurements for each piece. For
example, very few pants list the leg opening measurement, which is a crucial
sizing clue.

~~~
JimboOmega
I rather strongly try to avoid doing that sort of thing. I have a habit of
having an outfit that works very well for some specific context and buying
something similar to it repeatedly.

But outside of things I wear to work every day, I don't really _need_ that
many context-specific outfits. I don't need 7 dresses that are perfect for
summer weddings (even if they're cute). I don't need 7 things to wear to the
holiday party. I don't need 7 outfits to wear to the gym - even if they're
sometimes athleisure.

Quite often I very directly say to myself, "no, I can't get this, I already
have it" \- even if the thing I have is its functional equivalent, and not a
duplicate. There's no value to having two perfect things to wear to the same
event.

There are a tiny handful of mainstays I'd be happy with 20 perfect copies of
(socks, mainly). Otherwise I'm trying to match the context and venue, and
assuming that is unforeseen, I need a diverse closet to match.

To take your example, why not just get 2 or 3 and run them into the ground? I
feel like even worn every other day jeans should last several years... and how
many venues do you really wear jeans to?

------
marcus_holmes
is it just me, or does the language used in the introduction make the whole
thing feel like a huge scam?

I couldn't make it past the first transcript paragraph before my scam-sense
was screaming at me to walk away.

~~~
dna_polymerase
It's not just you. Reminds me of this fluff piece about superhuman [0]. It
appears to be an article written by the investors, so yeah obviously they are
super hyped.

I never heard of Poshmark and I'd like to believe I am not alone with this
here either. Looks like fancy ebay with an app to me.

[0]:
[https://a16z.com/2019/06/27/superhuman/](https://a16z.com/2019/06/27/superhuman/)

~~~
JimboOmega
(Disclaimer: Former Employee)

Poshmark is quite well known in fashion (especially women's fashion). Not
quite HN's target market.... but if you're a woman who shops for clothes
online you've probably seen the ads at a bare minimum. I myself was pretty
surprised to see how it had succeeded despite being "fancy ebay with an app".
(It is almost exclusively fashion, btw).

This does seem entirely like a puff piece; there's talk of an IPO at some
point soon[0] so it doesn't surprise me that they'd be starting the hype
engine going.

[0]: [https://news.crunchbase.com/news/fashion-resale-
marketplace-...](https://news.crunchbase.com/news/fashion-resale-marketplace-
poshmark-reportedly-eyeing-ipo/)

~~~
marcus_holmes
> there's talk of an IPO at some point soon[0] so it doesn't surprise me that
> they'd be starting the hype engine going.

that totally explains it, thanks :)

------
Wonnk13
My girlfriend loves Poshmark. You can buy/sell lightly used clothing for
pennies on the dollar. Think of it as Ebay meets slightly upscale Goodwill.

------
bencollier49
This company is completely new to me, but they appear to be in North America
only. Also, is it normal to call yourself 'posh' over there? If someone did it
in the UK it would be in the same category as someone with a business called
"Honest John's Used Cars".

~~~
zrobotics
I can't speak authoritatively for Canada, but in the USA 'posh' is a uncommon
word, I associate its use with UK English. I have also never heard of this
company, so I'm somewhat skeptical of the claims in the article.

I'm guessing that although the company was founded in NA, the use of 'posh' is
related to the founder being Indian, thus acquiring UK English word
associations.

------
0898
I'm a third the way through and still don't know what Poshmark is.

~~~
arthurcolle
Poshmark is apparently the "#1 way to buy and sell fashion," presumably a
competitor to StitchFix, RentTheRunway, among a few others in the space.

~~~
elliekelly
It's more like Amazon Seller/eBay for high-end used clothing. StitchFix and
Rent the Runway focus on short-term rentals of super high-end clothing. You
can also buy SF/RtR used inventory a season or two later it's still really
expensive for a well-worn piece and not really their primary business.

~~~
arthurcolle
Gotcha, thanks for the clarification!

------
jbob2000
I flagged this because there's nothing interesting here, it's just a promotion
piece for the CEO of Poshmark (not even Poshmark itself!)

------
leovander
Someone described Poshmark as competitor to StitchFix or Rent the Runway, and
that completely missed the mark on all the products.

Comparing StitchFix to Rent the Runway doesn't seem right either, as StitchFix
doesn't loan you the clothes, you buy them. I have purchased three fixes from
them so far. From what we can tell, its their own brands they sell.

Agreed, Poshmark doesn't have a clear statement of what it actually is on the
landing page. My wife sells her old clothes on there, so I liken it to eBay as
some have mentioned.

TL;DR \- Poshmark: eBay/Craigslist/OfferUp/LetGo for used clothes \-
StitchFix: curated clothes (hand picked), subscription based \- Rent the
Runway: rent clothes, allows for clothes to not collect dust in a closet

~~~
wayoutthere
StitchFix doesn’t have a “house” brand; much of their clothing is easily found
in smaller mid-range boutique stores. It’s usually a bit overpriced for what
it is, but they also opened me up to a lot of things I wouldn’t ordinarily
have worn but ended up liking.

I look at Stitch Fix as a styling service more than clothes shopping. I can
make a request like “something fun and summery I can wear to work in an
office” and get something generally appropriate. I also don’t use it as a
subscription service; if you buy one box at a time they generally run “no
styling fee” promotions often enough there’s not much reason to do the
subscription.

