In another reflection of the constantly evolving digital retail sector, peer-to-peer marketplace Poshmark is expanding its social selling network to include men’s and kids’ categories, highlighting the importance of continually updating social merchandising tools to drive mobile inspiration and sales.

Poshmark enables sellers to distribute merchandise via its social selling network, a platform that allows users to more easily discover and purchase items well-suited to their personal styles. Its in-application Wholesale Marketplace tool has extended its reach to men’s and kids’ fashion categories, allowing pre-qualified sellers to connect with brands and purchase inventory from these categories to sell in the marketplace – all at wholesale prices.

“The personal connection and discovery experience of shopping offline in shops and boutiques was sacrificed when a lot of people’s shopping moved online where selection price, and speed reign supreme,” said Joanna Riedl, director of public relations at Poshmark. “Yet, fashion consumers still crave a highly personalized shopping experience, much of which has been accelerated by the emergence of social mediums, like Pinterest and Instagram, which allow users to easily discover and share fashion.

“The rapid adoption of mobile and mobile shopping, alongside this, has allowed commerce companies to connect intimately with consumers, or even better, help them connect with each other – which is preferred by millennials who love peer recommendation and discovering brands in a social environment,” she said.

“Our massive network of buyers and sellers create a unique social merchandising engine – when they curate items to their followers they help match supply and demand – leading to better discovery for buyers and more sales for sellers.”

Tying in social merchandising
Poshmark’s decision to expand its social merchandising tools to the men’s and kid’s categories demonstrates the importance of online marketplaces including all fashion sections in their arsenals, rather than focusing exclusively on women’s apparel and potentially alienating many other customers.

The company’s app users can now enjoy a slew of new enhancements, such as choosing the “My Shopping Interests” option under the preferences tab to further personalize their mobile shopping experiences.

If parents are in the market to sell and relist their children’s clothing, they may leverage Poshmark’s social commerce platform to do so while simultaneously setting a revolving budget for new purchases.

Male consumers can also take advantage of Poshmark’s social merchandising engine to discover and shop new styles from well-known brands to emerging labels.

The peer-to-peer marketer’s Wholesale Marketplace platform has been expanded to cover these new categories. The portal lets pre-qualified sellers connect with brands and purchase new inventory – which can then be sold in the marketplace – at wholesale prices.

Wholesale Marketplace leverages Poshmark’s backend payment system, customer service platform and logistics to allow retail sellers to purchase new items and enable brands to receive pre-paid, pre-addressed labels with which they can ship the inventory to sellers.

This tool helps brands reach a wider mobile shopping audience. By expanding its capabilities to the men’s and children’s categories, that outreach will increase even more.

“At Poshmark, we introduced a very important role into the marketplace equation – every buyer and seller on Poshmark can also become a curator by sharing items they love,” Ms. Riedl said. “These Poshmark ‘stylists’ are curating over four million items daily, leading to a sale being made every two seconds on the app.

“Further driving discovery on the app, we’re processing and analyzing hundreds of millions of pieces of social data points every day to personalize each person’s shopping experience – introducing them to relevant people and products based on similar style preferences.”

Mobile marketplace sales
Consumers increasingly appreciate the ability to search for new items and share interesting pieces with friends and family via social media, a trend that has propelled social merchandising to the top of peer-to-peer marketplace’s must-have lists.

Online retailer Bluefly recently updated its iOS and Android apps with integrated social platform features, allowing users to click on the #MyBluefly tab in the app menu to view a curated Instagram feed of shoppable looks (see story).

Additionally, an eBay executive at Forrester’s Marketing 2016 Forum claimed that the online marketplace continues to optimize its mobile offerings from both transactional and research-oriented standpoints in the hopes of giving more control to its buyers and sellers (see story).

Poshmark continues to innovate within its mobile platforms after seeing many of its sales stem from smartphones.

“From day one, Poshmark was built entirely focused on mobile and just more recently built out the Web experience,” Ms. Riedl said. “In order to maintain a seamless selling experience, you can still only list items for sale via the phone.

“As a result, 95 percent of Poshmark’s sales come through mobile. Our average users spend 25 minutes per day in the app, opening it 7 to 8 times each day to browse, shop and interact with other women on the platform.”