Poshmark CEO talks resale trends and the future of live shopping

Over the last year, there’s been a lot of change at Poshmark, both of its own doing and resulting from the changing retail landscape.

The resale platform, founded in 2011, is just over a year out from the close of its acquisition by South Korean search engine Naver. The company promised to level up Poshmark’s tech, and delivered with the introduction of Posh Shows, Poshmark’s live shopping feature. All the while, consumers were pulling back on spending, retailers were changing their return policies to improve their bottom lines, and the trend cycle was rapidly evolving partly thanks to Gen Z, TikTok, Taylor Swift, and Barbie.

These changes led to an evolution in the way products are sold on Poshmark, and impacted which products fly off the shelves of its users’ virtual closets. Retail Brew spoke to Poshmark founder and CEO Manish Chandra to break down the recent shifts seen on the resale platform, and what’s coming next.

Live and well: Chandra said between Thanksgiving and the end of 2023, 4 million orders were placed on Poshmark, and shoppers watched over 100 million minutes of Posh Shows, the live shopping product the marketplace debuted in the US and Canada last year.

Poshmark has also introduced the concept of “share shows” that let live shopping hosts add listings from other sellers during their shows (and even allow sellers to co-host), which is a “very powerful distinguishing feature” for Poshmark compared to other live-shopping platforms, Chandra noted.

“That is something that is very hard to sort of imagine that people are buying and selling together,” he said. “That concept has taken off like wildfire.”

While livestreaming commerce has found success in China, the growth of live shopping has been slower in the US but has begun to gain some momentum on platforms like TikTok since the introduction of TikTok Shop. Now, the concept is “very important for growth” for Poshmark, but it looks different than it does abroad, Chandra noted. Success in China relies more on influencers selling products, a concept that hasn’t crossed over as much to the US, while Chandra said Poshmark believes it has “empowered a broad community.”

“Any given day, you’ll have thousands of everyday people using a live-selling product and selling and tens of thousands of people that they’re selling for or on [their] behalf,” he said. “So it becomes a much more democratized version of life shopping that we’ve introduced.”

• Chandra said Poshmark has weekly webinars and in-person “rookie hours” to help train sellers. It also has field teams dedicated to going to different cities and college campuses instructing people on how to live-sell products.

NWT FTW: The types of products sold on the platform have also evolved. Retailers like H&M, Abercrombie & Fitch, Zara, American Eagle Outfitters, J.Crew, and DSW all charge for returns, with many making recent changes to their policies. This trend has led to a 16% rise in products sold on Poshmark featuring the “new with tag” (NWT) label and a 30% increase in products labeled as a “missed return” in the description in 2023, Chandra said.

• This trend saw a bigger jump during the holiday season, with a 13% rise in NWT products and 41% boost in “missed return” products just between Thanksgiving and January, he noted.

These products are not only popular because they haven’t been used or worn, but because they’re contemporary, on-trend items, Chandra said. On December 23, Stanley tumbler sales were up a whopping 208%, while Ugg platform boot sales rose 25%. Chandra noted that Poshmark has become a more sustainable way to engage in the rapid trend cycle (and, for example, secure the perfect outfit for a Taylor Swift concert).

• Plus, the time it takes to merchandise a product on Poshmark is much shorter than a retailer or even a consignment store, so sellers and shoppers can access trendy items more quickly.

“The Barbie trend is happening and you want to leverage pink items, you can go buy pink from retail, but you can also go shop for pink in your closet, or you can go shop for pink in each other’s closets,” Chandra noted.

Looking ahead…Chandra said he is “optimistic” about this year after consumers have gone through “a lot of battering with inflation,” noting the holiday boost and a strong January have signaled a recovery in consumer spending. And with the support of Naver, Poshmark will dive deeper into expanding its tech, particularly across search and discovery and personalization, as well as using AI to keep streamline the product listing process, Chandra said.

“Ultimately, our mission from Day 1 was [to] make buying and selling fashion simple and fun, and so we continue to look at ’24 and making it simpler and funner—if that’s a word,” he said.