Business

One of Grailed’s most loyal users wants to create a more seller-friendly direct challenger.

NEW YORK — Streetwear resale site Grailed has served a big need for the menswear set, but it’s certainly not without its faults. A software developer, who claims to be “one of the first thousand users on Grailed” thinks he can do better.

Though an avid Grailed user, he argues that the platform overwhelmingly caters to buyers, and has evolved “into a buyer’s site that neglects the needs of its sellers.” He’s hoping to rectify that, and is creating a platform designed to be a more seller-friendly challenger to the popular site. He’s currently gauging market viability by having current Grailed fans and users fill out an interest form.

The central gripes:

  1. The fees. “I loved using Grailed in its early stages because you could buy something expensive, and if it didn’t work out, you could quickly make your money back. That’s gotten a lot harder with the high percentage Grailed takes on top of Paypal. This often makes reselling something that didn’t work out a miserable experience. Let’s say you buy a coat for $600 and it doesn’t work out. To make your $600 back you’d have to find a buyer for the item at $650, accounting for fees. If the item doesn’t work out for whoever bought it at $650, they’d have to sell for $708 to make their money back. Quickly this number rises and resale becomes untenable; the joy of trying out new clothing is quickly dampened by having to suck up tens or hundreds of dollars in loss because of high fees.”
  2. The lowballers. “I’ve seen it expressed here and elsewhere that sellers want a fuck-you button to lowballers. I identify with this feeling completely. This button is a feature grailed could easily add, but I don’t think they would, since it would anger a lot of their buyers. Given that I care about making the seller experience better even more than the buyer experience, I want to give sellers an outlet to express that frustration.”

The big pitch:

I’m considering building an alternative to Grailed which is very similar in function (in terms of listing items, making and accepting offers), with the major difference of way lower fees.

In addition to the necessary PayPal fees, I propose this new platform would take only the following simple flat fees.

  • Items selling at under $300: flat $1 fee per sold item
  • Items selling at $300-$600: flat $5 fee per sold item
  • Items selling at $601+: flat $10 fee per sold item

Doing the math, on a $300 item, you’d save $17 in fees compared to Grailed. On a $600 item, you’d be saving $25 in fees. On an $800 item, you’d save $38 in fees. This stuff adds up, especially if you’re clearing out a wardrobe or do a lot of wardrobe churn. If you sold 7 or so items, you could be saving a few hundred bucks in fees alone. And of course some Grailed users have dozens or hundreds of items listed at once and could save way more.

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  • Jeffrey Gaudette

    Hopefully this works out. Grailed’s fees are getting out of control. It’s too expensive to sell, plus low ballers and flaky offers make the platform unappealing to sell my clothes. I’ve gone back to ebay to sell my stuff.

    • marzzz

      try fulcol.club they trade and sell for free