‘The Posh Life’ Reports On Poshmark’s Progress

Poshmark has released its first state-ofthe-state report, “The Posh Life: A Year in Social Commerce,” which shares metrics that explain why the social shopping platform has become a force with its 40 million-member community that powers a sale nearly every second and with sellers located in 80 percent of U.S. zip codes.

“A Year in Social Commerce” leverages data Poshmark has been collecting from members and 5 million sellers.

The Real Real issues a “State of Luxury Resale” report twice a year, analyzing data culled from the over 8 million items it’s sold. The stats give the Real Real a picture of different emerging directions of luxury buying and selling, which informs the resale site’s choice of brands it accepts from consignors. The Real Real shares the information with sellers, advising them on the labels with the highest resale value.

ThredUp offers a glimpse of what its customers are buying in its “Year in Thrift” reports. “We upcycled and extended the life of 20 million items in 2018,” said a report issued in January that listed the top three brands as Free People, Madewell and J. Crew.

According to ThredUp, the total resale market in 2022 will be $41 billion, from $20 billion now, a 49 percent increase. Resale’s growth will come at the expense of offprice retail, 9 percent; traditional thrift stores, 7 percent, and all apparel retail, 2 percent, ThreadUp said.

Poshmark founder and chief executive officer Manish Chandra in the report identified the holy trinity of “communities of friends and influencers that drive incredibly high engagement, human interactions that foster personal connections while enabling scale, and seamless and trusted transactions and easy discovery,” as the e-tail grail. “Our community spends 23 to 27 minutes every day on the app, moving seamlessly between buying, selling and socializing,” he said.

“The influence on retail by [our] approach has been getting bigger and bigger. It made sense to produce a very detailed analysis of social commerce,” Chandra told WWD. “Social commerce is the next generation of retail. We’re vetting a massive amount of data.”

To make his point, he said brands are integrating social shopping features in an effort to keep up, adding that $6.5 billion was generated by the top 500 retailers with social shopping platforms in 2017. Another statistic: 33 percent of retail businesses conduct sales from online social commerce sites, up from 17 percent in 2017.

“A massive amount of conversation is fueling the trends,” Chandra said. “We’re seeing adoption of social with an increasing number of retailers. You’ll see other folks jumping on the bandwagon. We’re starting to see mainstream adoption. Social shopping is a bigger audience and has the potential of doing a much higher volume. It’s influenced by an influencer or a blogger. If you’re not present, you’ll miss out.”

Full-time boutique owners with hundreds of thousands of followers are creating their own retail apparel brands, including 11thstreet by a seller named Kristin, and Classic Woman, by Evelyne. “Many brands are now being created from social. We have a brand, Infinity Raine, which started to sell on Poshmark. Recently, we were able to feature the brand at Macy’s with Poshmark and have it on Poshmark’s wholesale engine. You have this force happening,” Chandra said.

Besides mega-influencers such as Meghan Markle and Cardi B, regular folks across the country are having a profound effect on consumer trends.

“The ability to engage and energize each kind of community is why we launched Poshmarkets,” the ceo said. “We have a plus-size Poshmarket and luxury Poshmarket. It allows brands to come together around people and communities.

“We see also brands and products transcending niches and communities. Some of the most popular items in 2018 such as Off-White sneakers, acrylic earrings and teddy coats [have far-reaching popularity], but they have specific nuances for specific communities,” he added.

The platform is both highlighting large communities, such as plussize buyers and sellers, and homing in on local tastes.