Monday, July 8, 2013

Let's thredUP!

Have you heard of thredUP?  It's an online consignment shop for kids and women's clothing and accessories.

I don't know about you, but I have a lot of clothes that my boys have outgrown that are still in really great shape. We can all use a little bit of extra money, so trying to sell clothes is a great way to bring in a little extra cash. However, it can be a pain in the rear...at least for me. I've tried several ways of selling my boys clothes and haven't been successful.

Garage sale - I had NINE boxes filled with clothes ranging from newborn to 3T. At our garage sale, I think I sold five items. And I had items priced cheap...like $.50-$2!

Selling via Facebook groups - There are TONS of FB groups that are Buy/Sell/Trade, but I had a lot of people trying to bargain with me before coming to see what we have, or not showing up, etc.

Just Between Friends consignment sales - I've never participated in one of these, but I've had friends who have. I get very mixed reviews on them. Some love it, some say, "Never again!" I signed up this spring to sell, but didn't read all the fine print before I spent a ton of time pricing my items. You have to HANG everything on hangers (that you don't get back!) and then spend at least an hour waiting on them to approve your items. And I've heard that a lot of items don't sell, so they get marked waaay down and you make less profit.

Enter thredUP. It's so easy. You order a bag, fill it with clean, like new clothes and drop it off at a UPS store. It's all free to do. They inspect your clothes and let you know which ones are accepted and at what commission. You get paid via PayPal or you can use your credit in the shop. The clothes that they don't accept are sent off to be donated to those in need. It's a win all around.

So, I ordered my free bag a few weeks ago...it's huge! I grabbed a TON of the boys' old clothes, washed them, folded them, and sent them back to thredUP. Within about two weeks I got a notification of what was accepted and how much my commission was!

To be honest, I was at first a little frustrated that my commission wasn't more and that they didn't accept even half of my items. But...after thinking about it for awhile, I came to this conclusion. thredUP is a business...a big business with lots of employees and overhead. They need to make money, not just give it away. Plus, their qualifications on clothing items is pretty strict, and I totally agree with that. They want like new items so they can give you the most commission and get the best resale price. So now I understand why my commission wasn't what I was expecting.

But, it's way more than what I got from my other tries at reselling the clothes, which was NOTHING!

Will I use thredUP again? Absolutely. They're fair, their customer service is superb, and they support a great cause.

Check them out when you can and get $10 off your $20 order! You can click on their ad on the sidebar. Have fun shopping AND making some extra cash!


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