By Alex Moore
The typical senior household spends nearly 2 percent of its budget on clothing and apparel, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That isn’t all seniors, though. Aging fashion-lovers often spend much more, and luckily, there’s a great way to cut costs on purchasing clothes and make a few dollars selling clothes you don’t want anymore, all from the comfort of your couch.
Enter online consignment stores. Much like traditional consignment stores, which are physical stores where people can display used goods for sale in exchange for the store keeping a percentage of the sale price, these businesses provide a service that helps you buy and sell used goods like clothing.
Here are a few popular options (although this is far from an exhaustive list):
- Queenly
- The RealReal
- Vestaire Collective
- Poshmark
- ThredUp
Some stores, such as ThredUp, offer automatic pricing that can help you ensure the clothes you’re getting rid of actually find buyers. Competitor PoshMark lets you choose your prices on your own, and it provides you with prepaid and pre-addressed shipping labels to get your clothes out of your house and into buyers’ hands.
In terms of buying clothes, online consignment stores have several advantages over both physical consignment stores and traditional retailers for new clothes. First, the prices. According to The Motley Fool, it’s common to see items in online consignment stores selling for less than half of what they cost new, even for clothes in like-new condition.
Second, the searchability. Unlike traditional consignment stores, which sometimes make it difficult to find clothes that fit your taste and body due to disorganization, online consignment stores let you search for different types of clothing by keyword and apply useful filters, such as brand, price, color, and material.
Third, the selection. Online consignment stores tend to offer more than tattered hand-me-downs. They can provide a selection that feels comparable to even Amazon, and they offer access to unique items and vintage styles. While it might take some digging, they’re one of your best bets to find that model of shoe you love from a brand that went out of business, or a style that’s just become trendy again.
