Ebay Vs Grailed Vs Poshmark Vs Japan Proxy
For those who don't care about wearing used clothes, how do you rank these websites?
26 Replies
depends which proxy site
I thought they all kinda did the same thing, allow buying from mercari and yahoo auction JP
I was browsing FROM JAPAN
nah they're different
Have you talked with sellers on Mercari? like make an offer lower than the listed price
they've got different policies about things they will/won't ship, how they'll value things for customs, promotions, etc
oh and fees of course
for example Buyee takes a 300 yen fee per item and then they cheat you maybe 2-3% on the exchange rate, but they'll frequently run promos where you can get 10-20% off items on mercari or YJA
if you want to you can spend a lot of time optimizing this but it's not a great use of time unless you're looking to operate a resale business
something you should be aware of is that the discount you get bc of the JPY/USD exchange rate varies a ton, most sellers aren't stupid and an overseas reseller's profit margin is free money for the seller in japan
Ok so if I buy a $100 item it's gonna come out to 105 after fee and bad exchange rate?
I've heard of buyee somewhere on Reddit, I think they mentioned it wasn't that good of a service
the prices are in JPY, but your $100 will get you a few % less than whatever the live forex rates say they should be. Either way unless you're buying small and very expensive items you'll probably pay more in shipping than you're paying there
buyee isn't good but their experience isn't dramatically worse than their competitors, buyer protections are limited across the board
it's very hard for a proxy shipper to both have low rates and offer protection beyond the (extremely limited) ones offered by the platforms they're an intermediary for
Don't forget shipping
Most proxyers bundle because otherwise shipping offsets the savings
I don't have tons of experience with poshmark and haven't proxied (yet) but IME ebay > grailed, just a more user friendly experience with search alerts and filters. Plus the disputes I've had were much easier through ebay than grailed. If you're hunting for something you should check all sources tho. It also depends what you're after
Yes I understand how agents work, I used to buy stuff from china
If you could guestimate how much is shipping a medium weight jacket from Japan to NY? Like $30?
to answer the actual question I'd order grailed < proxies < poshmark < ebay but none offer a service bad/good enough to play a major role in deciding to buy something
exception would be ebay's excellent return policies w/ items i'm not sure on sizing for
Yes I try and go by measurements
Imo eBay is prob the best, biggest, but the pro flippers are tough to get a deal out of
Need to wait for the sellers who just wants to declutter
Grailed seems to have more of these guys
whichever proxy you use will have an estimation tool but I can tell you that I shipped a package w/ 2 jackets and some other items weighing 4.2 kilos last october and the fee was 9800 jpy or a bit under 70 USD
EMS or sal?
SAL isn't shipping to the US atm is my understanding
ok so just the pricey ems
how do you negotiate with sellers?
You dont
on every mercari listing I go to there are comments making offers and usually they get it
Ok so there you go
So can the proxy negotiate on my behalf
there's services who'll do it for you if you look but for obvious reasons it's not good business
will from japan do this?
idk lol there's dozens of these companies that all have their own policies
I can tell you that the ones that will negotiate for you aren't officially partnered with the platforms because lol
"professional haggling agent paid by americans" is not a factor that will improve the seller experience
do you have a mercari account?
The people you see doing this are likely local buyers, not proxy agents
You seem insistent that this is possible while also asking who will do it and how to do it which is confusing
obviously
all I know is that if an items been up for awhile they will accept a decent offer