It all works out in the wash ...

David Meister Dress

So, you've read my previous post (hopefully) about selling to the online consignment store #ThredUp. Well, they accepted (and paid cash up front) for 15 items I sent and are consigning two higher ticketed items for me. Yes, its true they paid me only $103 for all 15 items which works out to less than $7 an item. And I can see how some people would get really angry about that (you can view some reviews about ThredUp at http://www.complaintslist.com/websites/clothing/thredup/ ). But I am not.


To tell you the truth, I used my experience with ThredUp to pay closer attention to what I purchase and what earns (that's right, EARNS) a place in my closet. Let's look at a few reasons why I am not angry about getting less than $7 an item on the clothes ThredUp bought from me:

1. I cleaned out my closet -- My closet should be a reflection of me but lately that reflection has been pretty ugly and cluttered with JUNK (remember, one woman's junk is another woman's treasure)
2. I made money -- albeit not a lot but more than I had with clothes sitting in my closet that I never wore or if I had donated them to the charity thrift store
3. They did all the work -- sent me a bag, photographed my clothes, took payments (on consignment orders), shipped the items to buyers, marketed my items to hundreds of thousands of shoppers
4. Online transparency -- I actually got to see how much my clothes were listed for (honestly, the prices they charged for some high-quality stuff like #JuicyCouture and #AnneKlein were really reasonable and they didn't make much more than $7-15 dollars on each of my items anyway -- so its not like they gave me $1 for a #Talbots skirt and sold it for $100, far from it) and which items sold 
5. Consigning made simple -- I got to control the price of the consignment items (see photo above of my only remaining consignment item)
6. Store credit -- About what I said before about being more careful about what goes into my closet of reflection ... well, I used my store credit to really concentrate on buying high quality items that were timeless pieces

A few things I didn't like about selling to ThredUp:

1.  I had to pay $12.99 to get the clothes they didn't want back. Of course I didn't have to pay anything to ship the clothes to them so maybe that evens it all out
2.  The suggested retail prices for items was a bit too hard to believe -- I suppose its from the tags with the brand new items but I know I didn't pay $398 for the cute white dress (photo above) by #DavidMeister at #Neiman Marcus, it was more like $250-$300
3. The processing time for them to go through your bag of items is a little long -- it took them more than a month to go through and post my items
4. They don't contact you to let them know they received you I had to send an online form asking if they got it or not to which they replied they got it more than a week prior

Let's face it, ThredUp is a business to make money -- they provide a service and get paid for that service (i.e. providing sellers a place to show their wares and buyers a medium to purchase from many sellers). First of all, no one is going to pay you 50% of your purchase price for pre-worn clothes. It ain't gonna happen no matter how well you took care of them. Clothes are like cars, they depreciate 80% as soon as you remove the tags and wear it once. Secondly, no one values your clothes more than you do so you gotta let it go emotionally. That #BetseyJohnson tutu skirt has been in your closet for 5 years, you don't want it (or in my case should NOT wear it), so let someone else love it. Finally, think about the buying aspects. If your clothes are cheaply bought, so are someone else's and then you can go buy other people's clothes for cheap. Like my grandmother always said, "it all works out in the wash."