Manish Chandra is the founder and CEO of Poshmark, a mobile marketplace for women to buy and sell clothes from their closets with each other. In this interview, Manish shares some fascinating insights on the Closet-Sharing Economy and their millions of users. East Coast Curator, Melissa O’Young, got the download from Manish on this quickly growing marketplace.
1. How did the idea for Poshmark come about?
Several years back when I looked at my own closet, I could see my wife’s shopping bags sitting on the floor unopened and unworn – but frequently she would still say “I have nothing to wear!” Women in America put over one trillion dollars worth of fashion in their closets every three years. Nearly a third of this is never worn and another third is worn once or twice. That’s a ton of inventory and money just sitting around.
Having founded social shopping site Kaboodle and spending the last 10 years working in the realm of women’s fashion and communities, I started to realize that women want more than just a platform for shopping — they want to be part of a community where they can share their love for fashion. It wasn’t until the iPhone 4 came out that I saw the perfect platform to create Poshmark on. I made an early bet to create an end to end commerce experience through a simple mobile app that made it easy for women to upload and share items from their closets. Two years since launch, with millions of items sold and hundreds of millions of dollars in fashion inventory, we have become not just one of the largest fashion destinations in the country but also a lively and engaged community full of millions of women who connect around their style every day.
2. How is Poshmark different from eBay?
I really see three things that set Poshmark apart from eBay. First is the community. For women, shopping is inherently a social activity. They love to discover new fashion trends with each other, get a second opinion and share the hottest deals. At Poshmark, we’ve built something that brings these real world interactions to the online marketplace, and it’s addictive. Our users are spending 20-25 minutes in the app daily, opening it 7-10 times each day. These women want to connect with each other. We have found that women come to Poshmark buy and sell and they stay on the app because of the relationships they establish. At Poshmark we really believe that a community can’t be slapped on top of commerce – it has to be nurtured to grow and mature. The commerce transactions we’ve seen on Poshmark are really a byproduct of the vibrant community we’ve built.
The second is Poshmark’s mobile-first platform. By creating an easy to use iPhone and Android app, Poshmark was finally able to tap into the trillion dollar closet in America and empower millions of women to come together every day to buy and sell clothes from each other. Together they have created a close community of women who share a passion for fashion. We’ve entered an era where we’re all walking around with smartphones in our pockets, and these mobile devices make it easy and convenient for women to run fashion businesses right from their phones. By simply and quickly snapping a photo of an unwanted item, it’s easy to get a closet up and running in 60 seconds or start shopping hundreds of thousands of closets across America from wherever you are!
Lastly is the ease of use. Poshmark has made it simple for users to buy and sell items by providing full customer service for processing transactions, managing payments and creating easy methods of shipping. By becoming the mediator between buyers and sellers, Poshmark removes many of the frictions that might scare users away from a marketplace like eBay. Poshmark keeps the entire process fun and simple in the app, and that keeps these women coming back for more
3. A unique statistic that surprises people about Poshmark is…
The surprising thing is that these women are shipping at records speeds! This closet-sharing economy moves at a quick pace and women don’t want to wait to mail products to each other. The average shipping time is only five days from order to received product, which rivals most e-tailers like Amazon, Gilt Groupe, Zappos, and Modcloth.
This speaks volumes to the community aspect — these women are eager to please their customers and create trusting relationships to get them to come back to their closets. Plus, Poshmark doesn’t release payment to sellers until the buyer has accepted the item and confirmed it in the app — perhaps some added incentive to get packages out the door even faster!
4. What other collaborative consumption company do you admire and why?
I think what’s most interesting about collaborative consumption companies is the new ability to connect two people who may never have met under normal circumstances. Airbnb is a fascinating example because it’s turned the hotel and lodging industry into a personal experience, and is connecting people across the globe. Unlike combing through staged pictures of hotel rooms, searching for an Airbnb place in another country or city lets you step into someone else’s life. When browsing on the site, you look for a place that speaks to you and gives you the comfort of a home away from home, and when you stay there, you go about your day as the owner would. In a new city and new place, the idea of sharing spaces and experiences is exciting. I see this same concept in Poshmark in the way that women are buying items out of each other’s closets, becoming each other’s style mates and literally walking around in each other’s shoes to bring new life to someone else’s old items.
5. Tell us something about yourself that we can’t find on the internet.
I was part of the University of Texas Ballet Folklorico group and danced to La Bamba at Texas State Capitol Building in Austin.
–
Poshmark has raised $15.5 million in funding from investors such as Menlo Ventures, Mayfield Fund, and SV Angels. You can read more about it in TechCrunch.
Pingback: Social Shopping: las segundas oportunidades siempre fueron buenas
I expect eBay to take notice of Poshmark.
Do you foresee eBay asking to buy Poshmark since they buy companies such as Paypal etc?
If so, is it possible that you would sell to eBay if they asked to buy Poshmark?
I think eBay would ruin Poshmark with many changes considering eBay is a buyer’s world and the seller doesn’t have much recourse or support from eBay when sales go wrong especially when it involves a buyer from hell.
An example would be that a seller can’t leave negative feedback on a bad buyer even though they deserve it.