(Bin)eficial: Shoppers should buy clothes from thrift stores instead of resale sites

Six hours and 22 minutes. That’s how much screen time I accumulated on Poshmark this week. Don’t judge me. I needed new Lululemon shorts and who wants to pay the retail price of $68 when you could find an equal quality pair for $32?

With the cost of everything from bread to gas rising, there’s even more motivation than usual to find everyday necessities at a lower cost — including clothes. In fact, it’s more crucial than ever to buy second hand in order to keep clothing in circulation and out of the landfills after hitting a high of 16 million tons of textile waste last year, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 

Sites such as Poshmark and Depop allow users to buy and resell used clothing. However, what shoppers don’t often realize is that most pieces available on those secondhand sites are courtesy of resellers — people who make a business by going to thrift stores and loading up carts with items to resell at a markup. 

If you’ve seen anything about resellers on TikTok, you can just picture them circling the Goodwill bins like vultures, snatching at designer labels and leaving the place ransacked. 

However, in reality, resellers aren’t straining thrift stores due to the never ending influx of clothing — they could fill every cart in the store and you’d barely notice a dent in the merchandise. Additionally, resellers aren’t narrowing the selection of clothing for those who rely on thrifting because they’re usually choosing items based on their vintage or designer status, not their condition. 

Spending all day at the thrift shop, choosing designer or unique pieces, setting up pop-up events and curating a Depop profile is ultimately a beneficial and sustainable business, but is it necessary? 

Considering these resellers are simply taking clothes straight from Goodwill to Poshmark with the only difference being the increased price — sometimes claiming items as “rare” and marking them as double their original retail price — completely defeats the purpose of buying used. It’d be more practical for second hand shoppers to sort through the bins themselves and avoid the markups and carbon emissions that come with shipping. 

Resellers listing their finds at a markup is somewhat justifiable since they spent time sorting through the thrift bins for clothes, however shoppers don’t save time in the end due to bidding wars and duplicate items on the resale apps.

Resale sites are becoming equally as crowded as the thrift store floors. Scrolling on Poshmark has become just as time consuming as flipping through the Savers racks.

If shoppers were to just take a few hours out of their day to go hunt for unique pieces, they could cut out the middleman reseller, saving money and time in their shopping experience. And in case you were wondering — I found the same pair of Lulu shorts I bought on Poshmark for $36 plus $3.95 shipping for $15 at Plato’s Closet the next day.