She told me one time it was on its 17th day and still nothing...that's why she started calling after day 7 to make sure to push it along.
Anyone Ever Buy and/or Sell on Tradesy?
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Consider yourself lucky, because I've had to email the last two times when I've hit the 2 week mark on a transfer. I get the formula email that says the wait is not acceptable and they are working on it. I've been getting this email for months so they really are not working on it. I used to leave money in my account and transfer when it gets to a larger amount. Now I transfer immediately because I am worried that one morning I'm going to wake up to see that Tradesy is no more.
The idea that Tradesy has to “manually” release all the funds to sellers is complete BS. Their website is supposedly built with advance searching and recognition algorithms yet when it comes to bank transfers they use 1950s practices? It’s just a lame excuse to cover up their failing business.
I agree that the customer base is generally better on Tradesy but for me the negatives and stress of dealing with the company outweighed that too much so I left.
I agree that the customer base is generally better on Tradesy but for me the negatives and stress of dealing with the company outweighed that too much so I left.
And why have these transfers become an issue over the last year? It never was a problem in the past so how were things different then?
According to crunchbase they haven’t had an infusion of investor cash since March 2018. And they’re not making enough money otherwise to sustain themselves.
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Just saw this article from 7/2019.
As Fashion Marketplaces Soar, a Bumpy Road for Tradesy
By
Priya Anand
July 19, 2019 7:01 AM PDT
Online marketplaces for buying and selling used Gucci handbags, Prada dresses and other secondhand designer goods are finally coming into their own. One of them, The RealReal, had a hit initial public offering last month and is now valued at more than $2 billion. Another, Poshmark, is reportedly preparing for an IPO of its own as early as this fall.
But the outlook for another such marketplace, Tradesy, appears less rosy. While its competitors saw consistent year-over-year sales growth during each month of last year, Tradesy saw declines during several of those months, according to credit card transaction data compiled by the firm Second Measure. It did, however, eke out about 4% annual growth in U.S. gross sales for the full year, Second Measure said.
In 2017, Tradesy—which has raised about $100 million in equity and debt from Kleiner Perkins and other firms and was valued at around $155 million in 2016 during its last major funding round—attempted to merge with the Paris-based secondhand fashion site Vestiaire Collective, but the talks fizzled, two people familiar with the matter said.
THE TAKEAWAY
• Tradesy saw 4% growth in 2018 gross sales, Second Measure estimates
• Merger discussions with Vestiaire Collective fizzled in 2017
• Returned merchandise has accumulated at Tradesy’s office
At the same time, Tradesy has also struggled with costly returns of customer merchandise, which have piled up in its offices, those people said. And then there is the dog situation at its Santa Monica headquarters.
The company’s pooch-friendly office policy has led to a surfeit of the furry creatures, leading to urine-stained carpet tiles, said two people familiar with the situation. One person said they were aware of an employee being bitten by an office dog. Employees commonly bring dogs to meetings in cramped conference rooms, some of which have been disrupted by barking as other canines pass by, the people said.
“It is mayhem,” a former employee said.
In an interview, Tradesy founder and CEO Tracy DiNunzio said most of the company’s employees consider the dog-friendly policy to be a perk, and that the company offers a service to walk dogs midday on behalf of employees. She said the company has rules in place to ensure canines aren’t disruptive and that the company has never received reports of employees being bitten.
Ms. DiNunzio also disputed Second Measure’s estimates—which reflect the total value of merchandise sales on the site, from which Tradesy takes a cut—saying the company's overall sales grew more than 4% in 2018 compared to 2017, though she declined to provide a figure.
According to Second Measure, Tradesy’s steepest sales declines last year occurred in January and February, when they fell 37% and 28% from the same month a year earlier. Second Measure’s data doesn’t include customers who pay for items using Tradesy store credits, which could under-represent sales growth if there are big monthly swings in customer use of those credits. The data also does not include purchases made with Affirm, which allows people to pay in monthly installments.
Ms. DiNunzio initially said the company had never seen year-over-year declines in monthly sales, but later revised her comments, saying there were four months in 2017 where sales saw single-digit percentage declines compared to the prior year.
“We’re not the market leader in terms of overall scale on the luxury side—that’s The RealReal,” said Ms. DiNunzio, who added that the market is “big enough and growing fast enough that there’s room for a whole bunch of players.”
In 2017, the company began focusing on the goal of turning a profit rather than increasing Tradesy's overall sales volume, she said. “We’re not profitable today, but we’re real close and we’ve been kind of periodically profitable over the last few years,” she said.
Competing Marketplaces
A number of online fashion marketplaces have taken on eBay with various twists in their approach.
The RealReal focuses on online luxury goods consignment, offering to pick up clothes or jewelry from people’s homes and paying them a cut when the items sell through their website. The company’s stock closed at $25.06 on Thursday, up more than 25% since its IPO.
Poshmark lets customers buy and sell high- and low-end clothing, accessories and home goods directly to one another, unless an item is valued at more than $500, in which case the company inspects the item to verify it is authentic. ThredUp, which is more of an online version of Goodwill, is limited to women’s and children’s items. Customers can ship their old clothes to ThredUp, whose employees sort through the bags at its distribution facilities, weed out undesirable items and post what remains to its site.
Tradesy, which lets users upload photos of their designer clothing and accessories, allows its customers to buy and sell directly with each other. But it has still found itself dedicating part of its office to storing customer merchandise anyway. The company allows buyers to return items for any reason and covers the cost of shipping.
Ms. DiNunzio said Tradesy’s return rate has remained stable and that the company believes returns are an important service for customers. She said the company can incur losses due to returns because it pays for return shipping and then sometimes discounts those items when it posts them to its website in an effort to offload them quickly.
She said the company is working to reduce the losses it incurs from returns, and that those losses are down 40% so far this year compared to last year.
Tradesy’s challenge with returns became clear last year as items piled up from floor to ceiling in several rooms and a hallway in its Santa Monica office, while the most expensive items were locked in a separate room, said one of the people. Ms. DiNunzio said the company has at times needed to reconfigure the layout of the floor where it keeps returned merchandise because returns have grown alongside the company’s overall sales volume. She said the inventory in its office, which at times is “densely stacked,” has not become a business issue.
Asked about the collapse of Tradesy’s 2017 merger talks with Vestiaire Collective, Ms. DiNunzio said Tradesy has in the past held “occasional talks with a number of players in the category about what consolidation would look like.” She said Tradesy knows Vestiaire and has spoken with the French company, but “the nature of the discussions isn’t something we think is advantageous to share publicly.”
A spokesperson for Vestiaire Collective said the company did not have a comment.
Ms. DiNunzio said Tradesy is currently talking to investors about raising more money. In a separate conversation, she added that the company worked with bankers late last year through early this year and that there are “a few exciting things” to come out of it that she could not yet share.
—Cory Weinberg contributed to this article.
As Fashion Marketplaces Soar, a Bumpy Road for Tradesy
By
Priya Anand
July 19, 2019 7:01 AM PDT
Online marketplaces for buying and selling used Gucci handbags, Prada dresses and other secondhand designer goods are finally coming into their own. One of them, The RealReal, had a hit initial public offering last month and is now valued at more than $2 billion. Another, Poshmark, is reportedly preparing for an IPO of its own as early as this fall.
But the outlook for another such marketplace, Tradesy, appears less rosy. While its competitors saw consistent year-over-year sales growth during each month of last year, Tradesy saw declines during several of those months, according to credit card transaction data compiled by the firm Second Measure. It did, however, eke out about 4% annual growth in U.S. gross sales for the full year, Second Measure said.
In 2017, Tradesy—which has raised about $100 million in equity and debt from Kleiner Perkins and other firms and was valued at around $155 million in 2016 during its last major funding round—attempted to merge with the Paris-based secondhand fashion site Vestiaire Collective, but the talks fizzled, two people familiar with the matter said.
THE TAKEAWAY
• Tradesy saw 4% growth in 2018 gross sales, Second Measure estimates
• Merger discussions with Vestiaire Collective fizzled in 2017
• Returned merchandise has accumulated at Tradesy’s office
At the same time, Tradesy has also struggled with costly returns of customer merchandise, which have piled up in its offices, those people said. And then there is the dog situation at its Santa Monica headquarters.
The company’s pooch-friendly office policy has led to a surfeit of the furry creatures, leading to urine-stained carpet tiles, said two people familiar with the situation. One person said they were aware of an employee being bitten by an office dog. Employees commonly bring dogs to meetings in cramped conference rooms, some of which have been disrupted by barking as other canines pass by, the people said.
“It is mayhem,” a former employee said.
In an interview, Tradesy founder and CEO Tracy DiNunzio said most of the company’s employees consider the dog-friendly policy to be a perk, and that the company offers a service to walk dogs midday on behalf of employees. She said the company has rules in place to ensure canines aren’t disruptive and that the company has never received reports of employees being bitten.
Ms. DiNunzio also disputed Second Measure’s estimates—which reflect the total value of merchandise sales on the site, from which Tradesy takes a cut—saying the company's overall sales grew more than 4% in 2018 compared to 2017, though she declined to provide a figure.
According to Second Measure, Tradesy’s steepest sales declines last year occurred in January and February, when they fell 37% and 28% from the same month a year earlier. Second Measure’s data doesn’t include customers who pay for items using Tradesy store credits, which could under-represent sales growth if there are big monthly swings in customer use of those credits. The data also does not include purchases made with Affirm, which allows people to pay in monthly installments.
Ms. DiNunzio initially said the company had never seen year-over-year declines in monthly sales, but later revised her comments, saying there were four months in 2017 where sales saw single-digit percentage declines compared to the prior year.
“We’re not the market leader in terms of overall scale on the luxury side—that’s The RealReal,” said Ms. DiNunzio, who added that the market is “big enough and growing fast enough that there’s room for a whole bunch of players.”
In 2017, the company began focusing on the goal of turning a profit rather than increasing Tradesy's overall sales volume, she said. “We’re not profitable today, but we’re real close and we’ve been kind of periodically profitable over the last few years,” she said.
Competing Marketplaces
A number of online fashion marketplaces have taken on eBay with various twists in their approach.
The RealReal focuses on online luxury goods consignment, offering to pick up clothes or jewelry from people’s homes and paying them a cut when the items sell through their website. The company’s stock closed at $25.06 on Thursday, up more than 25% since its IPO.
Poshmark lets customers buy and sell high- and low-end clothing, accessories and home goods directly to one another, unless an item is valued at more than $500, in which case the company inspects the item to verify it is authentic. ThredUp, which is more of an online version of Goodwill, is limited to women’s and children’s items. Customers can ship their old clothes to ThredUp, whose employees sort through the bags at its distribution facilities, weed out undesirable items and post what remains to its site.
Tradesy, which lets users upload photos of their designer clothing and accessories, allows its customers to buy and sell directly with each other. But it has still found itself dedicating part of its office to storing customer merchandise anyway. The company allows buyers to return items for any reason and covers the cost of shipping.
Ms. DiNunzio said Tradesy’s return rate has remained stable and that the company believes returns are an important service for customers. She said the company can incur losses due to returns because it pays for return shipping and then sometimes discounts those items when it posts them to its website in an effort to offload them quickly.
She said the company is working to reduce the losses it incurs from returns, and that those losses are down 40% so far this year compared to last year.
Tradesy’s challenge with returns became clear last year as items piled up from floor to ceiling in several rooms and a hallway in its Santa Monica office, while the most expensive items were locked in a separate room, said one of the people. Ms. DiNunzio said the company has at times needed to reconfigure the layout of the floor where it keeps returned merchandise because returns have grown alongside the company’s overall sales volume. She said the inventory in its office, which at times is “densely stacked,” has not become a business issue.
Asked about the collapse of Tradesy’s 2017 merger talks with Vestiaire Collective, Ms. DiNunzio said Tradesy has in the past held “occasional talks with a number of players in the category about what consolidation would look like.” She said Tradesy knows Vestiaire and has spoken with the French company, but “the nature of the discussions isn’t something we think is advantageous to share publicly.”
A spokesperson for Vestiaire Collective said the company did not have a comment.
Ms. DiNunzio said Tradesy is currently talking to investors about raising more money. In a separate conversation, she added that the company worked with bankers late last year through early this year and that there are “a few exciting things” to come out of it that she could not yet share.
—Cory Weinberg contributed to this article.
Interesting, thanks for sharing. If the company had been more open about the returns thing not working for them and given fair notice to sellers about the changes in policies I might have more respect for them. But the way they handled it was horrendous.
I think it would be a total mess if they had merged with VC. Not really sure what value add each would give to the other. At least VC pays when they say they will!
ETA: I do sell on VC and while sales are very slow there, when items do sell you never have to worry about a crap SNAD because VC inspects the stuff first and they don’t allow for returns. In my experience they have the best seller protection in the industry.
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I wonder if any of the dogs are lifting their legs on the returns stacked in the hallway!
The situation is a farce and indicative of the way the company is run! There was an episode of Silicon Valley on HBO making fun of start up dog policies
I’ve been selling for a little bit over a year, and the last two months payouts’ve been taking much longer. I have two payouts that were supposed to be released to my PP on October 1. It’s October 21 today. I called Tradesy and was told they will expedite my payouts. Now when I open my account and check the status of these payouts, it just says expedited for release or something. I kind of think their new return policy did no good for them, it does appear to me that Tradesy is struggling now more than before.
It kind of scares me, because I sell high end items, so sometimes amount of money they owe me exceeds $10k. When Designer Vault filed for bankruptcy, people lost their luxury handbags and thousands of dollars the company owed them.
I also started slowly moving some of my inventory to Mercury. So far so good.
Poshmark just sucks. Maybe for items that are within $10-$50 price range it’s good, but for luxury items it’s no good. Also I think people don’t want to buy anything expensive on Posh since they started charging buyers sales tax.
It kind of scares me, because I sell high end items, so sometimes amount of money they owe me exceeds $10k. When Designer Vault filed for bankruptcy, people lost their luxury handbags and thousands of dollars the company owed them.
I also started slowly moving some of my inventory to Mercury. So far so good.
Poshmark just sucks. Maybe for items that are within $10-$50 price range it’s good, but for luxury items it’s no good. Also I think people don’t want to buy anything expensive on Posh since they started charging buyers sales tax.
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Tradesy had to start charging sales tax too.I’ve been selling for a little bit over a year, and the last two months payouts’ve been taking much longer. I have two payouts that were supposed to be released to my PP on October 1. It’s October 21 today. I called Tradesy and was told they will expedite my payouts. Now when I open my account and check the status of these payouts, it just says expedited for release or something. I kind of think their new return policy did no good for them, it does appear to me that Tradesy is struggling now more than before.
It kind of scares me, because I sell high end items, so sometimes amount of money they owe me exceeds $10k. When Designer Vault filed for bankruptcy, people lost their luxury handbags and thousands of dollars the company owed them.
I also started slowly moving some of my inventory to Mercury. So far so good.
Poshmark just sucks. Maybe for items that are within $10-$50 price range it’s good, but for luxury items it’s no good. Also I think people don’t want to buy anything expensive on Posh since they started charging buyers a sales tax.
I just sold a pair of $800 boots on Posh. The luxury buyers are there, maybe not as many as Tradesy but there are some.
Until we read about a new investor infusion I don’t think it’s safe to be selling that high dollar value of an item on Tradesy. If you do it is at your own risk. All the signs are there.
oh didn’t know about sales tax on Tradesy.
Yes there are some buyers on Posh, but compared to Tradesy it’s 1/20.
Yes there are some buyers on Posh, but compared to Tradesy it’s 1/20.