I’m not a hoarder but I collect things and hold on to them longer than I need to. At some point in my life, I was in to shoes and I collected a lot of shoes from regular priced to high priced designer items. In 2020, I was going through a life transition and went on a shopping spree where I spent a ton of money on a lot of designer shoes which I never or seldom wore. I considered selling them for a long time but procrastinated on this and just didn’t get to it. I finally gave myself a kick last week and got to it.
I’m using two platforms for the declutter sale – Vestiaire for the high end items and Vinted for regular items. I started exactly one week ago and so far I’ve sold two shoes on Vestiaire and one dress on Vinted. Based on my experience using both platforms and performance, I have very strong opinions to share.
First opinion, most designer items hold their value. I expected to sell my items ridiculously cheap but I’m able to get good value for them so far, even for the lightly used items.
Second opinion, Vestiaire is a great platform for designer resale. While I don’t know yet how the algorithm works, I noticed you get very high visibility for all items posted. You do not have to make extra payments to advertise or bump up. You do get pricing recommendation but it’s up to you to decide the sale price. When your items don’t sell or you get offers lower than you want, you get recommended to do a flash sale or lower price for higher visibility. If you have a high in demand item, you will get a lot of offers which can be distracting so my Vestiaire tactic is to define my personal sale price which is the value I won’t go below and add a premium to this to set my sale price. For the two items sold, I have not gone below my personal sale price as one Customer made an outright purchase and the other made an offer which was lower than my limit and I counter offered with my limit which was accepted. I will continue to use Vestiaire to clear out my items. Do note there’s an 18% fee for selling on Vestiaire.
Third opinion, Vinted is not for me. My first three interactions on Vinted were scammers posing to have pro accounts and attempting to get my personal details. Their modus is to show high interest in your item, then they come back with I’m unable to pay and will send you a screenshot requiring your email. When you decline to share, the response is I’m a pro account which you can confirm if you check my profile and with that you can share your details. Never ever fall for this, they are professional scammers. One positive is they were blocked and removed from the platform after I reported them. My other grouse apart from the high risk of scammers is very low visibility for my items. They are just not seen and it appears your items get visibility only if you pay for bump up. Now the items on Vinted are already low priced so if I pay for bumping it I will be getting almost nothing for it. I have no interest in doing this so I’ve decided to donate all Vinted classed items.
Some additional tips for designer items, dust bags and original box increases the sale value; honesty in product description increases trust and drives return Customers.
I’m looking forward to sell out all the items on Vestiaire and as I get credited for the sale, I will transfer the proceeds to my brokerage to buy more ETFs. It’s time to put the money to work instead of taking up space in my wardrobe.