Is eBay finished for clothing sellers?!

[trpltrendsltd]

So I've been selling on eBay for several years now and the last 8 weeks have been dreadful. Utterly dreadful. 
I am used to doing 4-5K a month in sales and for December I took less than £2000... this month so far I've done £71..... 

In many years I've never had weekly payouts under £500.

i haven't had a weekly payout of more than £500 in 7 weeks. This weeks is looking to struggle to get to £100.

i don't think that with 500+ items and thousands in stock I can afford to pay to use eBay anymore. After the addtional fees and shop cost I'm better off closing and selling on a private account ......

I sell purely clothing and it seems like nobody is buying clothes from eBay anymore, I recently set up a Vinted page and I'm selling more on there than eBay with only 10-15% of my stuff listed on there.....

would like to hear from any other clothing sellers as to how they are doing; whether good or bad. 

[nigewrigh-79]

I cant speak as a seller but can as a buyer.

I recently searched for a mans t shirt and the results were many thousands.

So it looks like the problem might be simply too many sellers of clothes.

Pre 2017 I was selling an item for £30 a pop and did ok from it.

In December 2017 someone else came on ebay selling similar item for £4 !

That just killed my sales dead.

Its amazing how quick a good item can turn into a waste of time.

[trpltrendsltd]

I sell high quality used clothing.

There isn't that many sellers.

Just seems like very few buyers.

im also now minus this week as within 5 minutes of posting I've had two returns. Thanks eBay 😉

[floral.lines.supplies]

Ebay is finished for many sellers not just clothing. I sell artifical flowers, wedding sundries and fabric....used to be vat reg with a £120000 turnover - only make about £300 a month and making a loss after all bills are paid. Going to do my best to sell off stock and close shop down.

[cobwebcottage]

Vinted is definitely better for selling pre owned clothing. I cleared out my wardrobe last year and nearly sold the lot. It is also the first point for me when looking for an item. The issue is, they do not allow businesses to sell on there so be careful.

[bravergrace]

I think this Christmas has been rather odd over the last few years.

During COVID, income patterns were severely disrupted - people being unable to work, government help being rough-and-ready, working from home, shops being closed, people off work sick because they couldn't get medical treatment etc.  This boosted online sales, especially of essentials, but now things are settling back into a new pattern.

Just speaking from my experience,  I've noticed changes this Christmas:

- I've had more useful gifts than usual - lots of home-baked or home-pickled food,  socks etc, and far fewer toiletries or frivolous presents.  And when I've asked "what would you like for Christmas?", the replies have been basic stuff - kitchen basics, bed linen, hot-water bottles, walking boots.

If there are lots of families like mine (and I don't know whether there are), then Christmas spending may be less - and clothes spending may be the first thing that can be cut if people are feeling the pinch.

I think a lot of people are still struggling after a difficult few years, and less inclined to splash out on avoidable purchases.

[magpiecorner1]

Not yet, but expected to do so very soon.

[cobwebcottage]

Well that will change things!  Interesting.

[bricklanebargains]

I thought the same for a while but no clothing sales is not finished. When I first started selling on Ebay 10 years ago, it was mostly small sellers like myself and a few established vintage stores but things have changed. New large scale Ebay sellers emerged over the last few years who list and sell thousands of used clothing items each month based on their feedback (one of them got over 4,000 feedback in a single month). You can`t really miss their listings when you search popular stuff like Levi`s jeans or Carhartt jackets. Some of those sellers, who I believe are originally textile recycling companies, carry over 100,000 pieces of used clothing stock at any given time. They were recently given "Ebay preloved partner" badges and their listings are frequently promoted on Ebay main page under campaign titles like "buy preloved, save the planet", etc. Anyway, they get priority and there`s not much we can do about this. For items that you think should sell for good money but not selling, there are a few things you can try to increase your chances like starting an auction slightly below buy it now price and pay £1 to promote it for 5 days, offering cheap postage to US and Europe therefore attracting more potential bidders. I`m definitely trying new things everyday. Some work, some don`t.                            

[bojangled]

@bravergrace 

Completely agree, I've been saying similar over the last couple of years. Christmas 2019 is the only 'normal' benchmark. 4 years is a long time in the online sales marketplace arena. So many advancements  in technology and competition. ( I started on QXL and yahoo auctions in the noughties.) 
Covid disruption also engaged a whole new army of sellers, some who took it on full time, and others that dipped in and got out. 
To OP and clothing sellers, I do applaud you, the time effort and detail required to list a vintage pair of jeans is way beyond my comfort zone. 
Give me an old theatre programme or a piece of music memorabilia any day.

Jo

[bravergrace]

Perhaps with the big sellers being favoured by eBay, we smaller clothing sellers need to specialise more - we can find ourselves a niche clothing area that doesn't interest the major recycling companies (maybe they don't bother with vintage wedding veils, or Edwardian spats or whatever), or else target more specific types of buyer.

My clothing sales patterns have certainly changed a lot over the past few years, and I've had to adapt to cope with it - but there are still buyers out there.

[litp*records]

---

@magpiecorner1 wrote:

Not yet, but expected to do so very soon.

---

Interesting. They already do so in France.

Nevertheless I have seen sellers on there who are obviously a business going under the radar (flashy logo, branding, 100s of items for sale..)

If that place opens up fully and officially to businesses then it's going to go crazy

[soniaden1933]

I think Ebay is finished for most people now.  Me and my friends have ended all our listings today as its just not worth the hassle of HMRC fuss.  This will have a huge knock on effect for post offices too.  

[bojangled]

The Post Office won't feel much of the effect, they have their hands full with High Street banks closing, endless Amazon returns, travel documentation and so many other processes I'd never heard of. I only worked there for a year and there is so much more to the PO than stamps. 

I don't think eBay is finished either, all the other platforms will be under the same HMRC requirements. 

Jo

[wyntersemporium]

Seems to be most people. This time last year every day I had 30 orders, now lucky to have one.  No idea why, I'm slowly changing the backgrounds of mine which takes a while.

[nigel_paul_wright7557]

Its strange how quickly some previously items that sell well on ebay become no good.

I was selling some software for £30 a go in 2016 and did ok from it.

In December 2017 a new seller came on ebay selling theirs for £4 !

Completely killed my sales dead.

[tribalgiftsuk]

As a personal buyer of clothes on Ebay i find it a nightmare now to find anything! Because of all the 1000's of duplicate listings of the same products, it can take hours to find anything you might remotely like or that might fit. 

I dabbled in selling clothes on here when i first started selling and i found branded items did well, unlabelled or budget labels not so much.

So i look by brand names now of companies that i know the cut and fit of so M&S and Next etc. It still takes ages to find anything but it cuts the time down and the duplicates a bit. Ebay is just flooded with clothing so its like a needle in a haystack finding anything on here now.

In a previous job i was a clothing buyer for a high street retailer, that was much easier than looking for clothing on here! 😂 

[bravergrace]

Here are a few factors affecting clothing sales on eBay:

- The site doesn't favour browsing, and for some types of product (like "pretty" clothes, or books), people want to browse.  If you want a plain bog-standard tee-shirt, a pair of size 6 green wellies or the latest best-seller, it's a doddle, but browsing is hopeless.

- There are many sellers fiddling the item specifics  or categories to manipulate search, which results in specific searches being flooded with irrelevant results.

- Postage costs are a large proportion of the price for many low-value garments - and for most garments which are sold to overseas buyers.   The buyer has no way of predicting combined postage costs, so if they want to buy several different garments, they need to message the seller in advance.  This is slow and time-consuming, which means if the seller responds favourably, the buyer will probably make multiple purchases from that seller, rather than spreading their sales out.   So 1 seller gets a £600 multiple sale, and 5 sellers get nothing.

- Sellers who offer "free postage" are at a disadvantage when it comes to multiple purchases, because their item prices are ridiculously inflated, so they are reduced to offering coupons, discounts etc.  These make it impossible for buyers to compare bundles of purchases.  Is it better to buy 5 pairs of socks, 2 hoodies and a pair of trousers from seller A, who offers "buy 2 get 1 free" on the socks, or seller B, who offers "free postage"and "spend £25 on hoodies, get 10% off, or seller C, who doubles all their prices and offers a "50% off coupon" across the board?   Honestly, you could spend all day trying to compare prices, even if you're buying identical products.

- Most of the "discounts" or "special offers" or "coupons" or "sale events" are totally artificial, and are based on pretend prices.  So people wanting a single garment will find it far more expensive on eBay than in the shops or on the "proper shop's" website.   People don't enjoy being treated like suckers, with "Buy this pair of cheap socks for £700, get £695 off with our coupon".

[oneblankcard]

Well as eBay is now offering  No Fees for preloved clothing, the place will be flooded. Vinted I believe had a ot to do with this. Wait until over seas sellers add pre loved new with tags to their listings! Perhaps chop up the clothes and make rag rugs!

Regards

[trpltrendsltd]

lol.

final nail in the coffin mate.....

it's finished and been a good ride, my shop subscription ends start of the month so this is my final few days as an eBay business seller. 

im now selling all my stuff on Vinted depop and fb marketplace. 

eBay is trash. lol