I never come here..But our sales..never so bad..hardly any, we are in clothing...any thoughts?

[thefussymussy]

Help..whats going on with clothing sales? Ive been a seller for 14 plus years..Its soooo quiet!! Are we alone in this or are others experiencing the same please???

[lakefor94]

Looks like you are averaging 30+ sales a day over the last 90 days. 

Keep listing. Folks will probably start buying more in the coming months.

[axiombody · Accepted solution]

Yes, it's been down well over 90 days.  I'm down 40-50% since 6 months ago.  I am hoping the change in season helps with more purchases of outerwear and pants.  I am thinking people save money by holding off clothing purchases when the economy slows. I am trying to be much more deliberate about items I buy.  I also think people are getting into pricing wars with clothing which makes selling even harder.

[laststopgeneralstore]

I am in clothing as well(mens pre-owned) and sales have been steady and slowly going up. Are you listing consistently, using all of the tools, running sales, coupons, buyer groups, newsletters, combined shipping discount etc... I would suggest turning on returns and turning on best offer, a large percentage of my sales come from best offer, most people just want a discount whether it's dollar or 5. Don't be afraid of returns, it looks like you describe your item well with measurements so most of your returns would most likely be for fit. 95% of my returns are for fit and my return rate is 1.03% and I sell 15-20 items per day. Hopefully you're sourcing items at a good price so you have enough margin to be able to take offers. Just doing a quick search for the free people bohemian dress extra small pre-owned, their are 1300+ listed & only 283 sold and that's not specifying color either. So on average only 3 dresses sell per day, which is a very slow sell thru rate thus taking longer to sell and even though you may be priced at market, the ones that did sell looks like the sold for less or a best offer was taken. I would also work on your titles, title structure, keywords & keyword placement. Think how a buyer would search for an item. Try not to have special characters in the title IE: ()!@#$%^&*. Having a solid title with as many keywords as possible and structured correctly is extremely important. I would suggest re-doing your titles & taking the size out of the beginning of the title, most buyers don't search size first and if they do they use left hand navigation. In my opinion a better title for that dress would be something like this. Free People Dress Womens Extra Small Blue Red Bohemian Crinkle Tie Up Ladies. Most buyers search brand, style color/size or they resort to left hand navigation which is where having your item specifics up to par is important, especially in the clothing category. I would go back and research the sell thru rates for the brands/styles that you are selling and if they are extremely low then maybe run a sale or do a coupon etc... Womens clothing category is 4 times the size of the mens clothing category and much more specific especially when it comes to brand, style, color etc... Research brands that have a better and quicker sell thru rate that you can find around you for a good price so you can make a profit. With clothing, styles change, what's "in" changes, seasonal changes all of the time, especially with womens clothing so you really gotta stay on your toes,

[axiombody]

Selling items for under $4 helps also. 

[laststopgeneralstore]

Not all of them are on clearance. Actually I have less on clearance than I do over $15/$20. I'm not in the business of keeping my items and getting full price all of the time. My goal is to move inventory as quickly as possible while maintaining a profit. All of those clearance items with the exception of the "june clearance" are 6+ months old and most of them were really bad buys/brands that I picked up when I first go into clothing. Even though they sell for under $4 I still make a very small profit but it also brings velocity to my store and the average order size is 5. I make all of my profit selling the items that I've listed in the past 3-4 months as I have gotten a lot better at sourcing better brands/styles/colors/sizes with better/faster sell thru rates. My cost of goods is really low so I can accept offers. Over 60% of my sales are organic so promoted listings doesn't eat into my profits to much but I have it structured so that if 100% of my sales sold via promoted listings, I'd still make the profit that I want.

Just because I have items for under $4 doesn't take away from what I stated and honestly why does it even matter? I'm not in the storage business, I list new items every single day & have been doing so for over a year now and have not once missed a day; moving inventory is part of running a business otherwise you just have money sitting around costing you more money in the long wrong. Most business's, online & brick & mortar, don't sell the bulk of the inventory at full price, most of it gets sold at a discount to move inventory out and bring new stuff in. Go to any grocery store, tjmaxx, walmart, target, home depot etc... They are constantly running sales.

As I was writing this I just got an offer for $14.50 on an item that was listed for $21.77 + shipping, I accepted and will still make $10.15 in profit if it's organic and if not I'll make $8.41. Now I could have just let that sit their and it may sell at full price in a few weeks or a month but I'm not waiting that long. I get offers like this every single day and I'd rather accept 10 offers a day at $14.50 and make $100 profit(pre-tax) than wait weeks or months to sell the same amount at $21.77 to make $165 in profit. I'm giving up $65 dollars to turn and burn that inventory quicker because in the long run I will make more than waiting to get the full dollar amount. I would probably sell 30 or 40 at $14.50 before I sold even half at full price. The fast nickle beats the slow dime.

[soh.maryl]

"Folks will probably start buying more in the coming months."
May I respectfully ask what information (or crystal ball) this prediction is based on? 

[axiombody]

Just thought clearance pricing figured into your advice since it seems a big part of what you do and should have been offered along with your statement.  Personally I average a cost of $5 an item so selling that low would be a loss.  Selling at $4 even getting the item for free would be a profit of $4-$5 max with the $7 shipping charge you charge so it figures into my statement about price wars. Don't take it personally, we all have to make money even people who are selling their old clothes which they don't wear any more is stiff competition for a reseller.

[lakefor94]

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@soh.maryl wrote:

"Folks will probably start buying more in the coming months."
May I respectfully ask what information (or crystal ball) this prediction is based on? 

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Crystal ball says that buyers overall spend more money when shopping for the holidays and a change of seasons. 

[chapeau-noir]

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@soh.maryl wrote:

"Folks will probably start buying more in the coming months."
May I respectfully ask what information (or crystal ball) this prediction is based on? 

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I can say that based on years of selling clothing.  There's always an uptick mid-September through November. 

[chapeau-noir]

I like to factor in my work to obtain and produce listings - thus a regular stream of slow dimes for me beats a regular stream of quick nickles.

[lakefor94]

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@chapeau-noir wrote:

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@soh.maryl wrote:

"Folks will probably start buying more in the coming months."
May I respectfully ask what information (or crystal ball) this prediction is based on? 

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I can say that based on years of selling clothing.  There's always an uptick mid-September through November. 

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@soh.maryl 

I am not a big shopper at all. 65 year old male. I have not worn long pants here in Texas since early May. I bought 2 pair of new pants yesterday at Costco. Those ought to get me thru the fall/winter. Done with my fall/winter shopping.

My wife does the shopping for kids/9 grandkids. She will be hammering the online shopping starting next month, maybe even some this month. 

[krazzykats]

I agree and also Turn and burn to generate sales. 

I've always called them loss leaders, but I like the term Turn and Burn better....😻

[simply-the-best-for-you]

As a women's clothing seller, for many, many years, it's very different from selling men's clothes.  This is traditionally the slowest time of year & this year is no exception.  Might even be worse than usual.  As you likely already know, the in-between seasons are the worst & end of Summer is the worst of all b/c everyone is busy with BTS & getting their last vacations in.  Even the podcasts I listen to, are not back from Summer vacation.  Some kids are back in school, other districts are just abou to start.   

Then you have the issue of being bombarded with Halloween & pumpkin spice, but the temps are around 100 degrees with much of the country experiencing record highs.  Sept/Oct is usually my BEST month, but exactly when Fall selling really kicks in, varies each year based on weather.  

ETA: I'm not sure why that post is saying OP is selling 30 items/day.  They are not selling anywhere near there.  Just the typical 1-3/day of most women's clothing sellers. 

[dolcetreasures]

Best advice I can give you from someone who has sold a few million dollars worth of clothing and accessories, start decreasing your reliance on these categories ASAP. I would strongly recommend you sell off your items and find something else.