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Get rich selling used fashion online—or cry trying

December 13, 2020 | by Julian L. Mertz | No comments

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12.13.20

It sounds pretty good: Pick through thrift stores to find a few gems, buy them cheap, then sell them for a tidy profit on the buzzy used fashion platform Poshmark. Some sellers—there are 60 million of them, mostly women—bragged about pulling in $80,000 a year in revenue. But as Alden Wicker writes this week on Backchannel, it was too good to be true. Wicker takes a deep dive into the experience of one Poshmark seller, Rachel Petersen of Chattanooga, Tennessee, who quit her nursing job to pursue her dream of making a killing in the used rag trade. At first it seemed she was on her way. One month she brought in $10,000. But to keep that pace up she found herself working 16 hours a day—buying the clothes, photographing them, catering to customer requests, packing, shipping. The girl boss had turned into a drudge. "There was never enough time to get it all done," she tells Wicker. "I would stay up late taking pictures once the kids went to bed." In other words, spinning gold out of used threads is harder than it looks.

Mark Robinson | Features Editor, WIRED

Image may contain: Clothing, Apparel, Human, Person, and Pants

BACKCHANNEL

Get Rich Selling Used Fashion Online—or Cry Trying

BY ALDEN WICKER

The social shopping app Poshmark promises women the chance to spin gold out of secondhand threads. The reality is a lot of spinning, and little gold.

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