Selling Your Old Handbags? Check Out These Quick Tips Before You Begin
If your home is overrun with handbags you swore you’d never part with but can’t bear to look at anymore, it might be time to sell. Luckily, there’s a lot of potential business out there — especially if you’re selling a designer bag. In 2021, the global luxury resale market reached an estimated $33 billion, according to Fashionista, and that figure is expected to rise to $47 billion by 2025.
Before you jump in, though, you’ll want to take certain steps to ensure you get the right price. A good place to start is researching a bag’s value. Fashionista recommends looking up previous sales of a particular bag, which you can find on various resale sites. After that, set a price range based on that sales history. This will give you solid footing if anyone questions the price.
Your next step should be analyzing the market to find out how much demand there is for the handbag(s) you want to sell. If you see a lot of sales of your bag for prices at or above the average, your item might be hot enough that buyers will overlook imperfections in quality.
“If the bag is highly coveted, or in high demand and low supply, it’s more likely that our buyers will make a good offer that could even be more than the bag’s original retail price,” Charles Gorra, founder and CEO of resale platform Rebag, told Fashionista.
On the other hand, if your bag isn’t seeing much action from buyers, you’ll need to think about adjusting your price — and ensuring the bag is in very good condition.
From here, you need to decide where to sell your handbag. If you’re looking for an online marketplace, InStyle recommends these five sites, especially if you have luxury bags to sell:
- Rebag: The process here is pretty simple — just upload a few photos of your bag onto the Rebag website and you’ll get an instant quote.
- StockX: To list your bag, either select to sell it in an auction or set a designated price for it. Once you get an agreement with a buyer, StockX sends a pre-paid label, which makes shipping easy for the seller. There’s a 14.5% seller fee and a 3% payment processing fee, according to InStyle.
- The Real Real: You get three options to consign your bag here — set up an in-home appointment, visit an authentication center, or ship items for free. Commission rates at this online consignment shop range from 40% to 70%.
- Vestiaire Collective: The Vestiaire app gives you access to the platform’s concierge service, which takes care of things from there. Another option is to upload photos to the Vestiaire website and sell the bags yourself.
- What Goes Around Comes Around: With this platform, you send a simple email with photos of your bags to the What Goes Around Comes Around team, which will then buy them and immediately send you check or store credit.
Other digital resale options include Bag Borrow or Steal, Fashionphile and The Luxury Closet. These kinds of resale platforms have several advantages (including a quick and realistic sale), TikTok creator Charles Gross told Fashionista.
“The fees resale platforms take [are] well worth it, considering the risks of the other options,” he added.
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Those other options include peer-to-peer listing sites such as Depop, eBay, Mercari, Poshmark, ThredUp and Tradesy. These are good for recouping the money you spent on your initial purchase, Fashionista said, but they require more time and effort than digital resale platforms.
Finally, you can also look into brick-and-mortar consignment shops. This is a convenient option if you happen to live near a shop, but it might also come with steep consignment fees and inconsistent timelines.
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