Sales problems

I understand your point of view well, and it seems entirely consistent to me.
For my part, I have still had two listings removed, which prompted me to ask for more precise feedback from Vinted.
Perhaps this does not represent a « sufficient threshold » in their eyes for them to take the time to provide a more detailed response, which I find a bit regrettable. This could precisely help prevent the situation from happening again.

After that, Vinted customer service is very random. It all depends on who you get.

And besides, I still have the vague impression that Vinted doesn’t really care if we’re not happy.

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The real issue isn’t the platform, it’s the quality of the offering: those who work on their image, their titles, their restocking, their customer relations… continue to grow.
I agree with you.
It’s not the end of the cycle, it could take 5 years.

There is room for growth if we consider the whole market, but on Vinted there is a near saturation of all item categories, hence a drop in sales, a drop in prices, and dubious methods used by some to achieve this; however, elsewhere there is still room in many sectors, in a short period of time, new items will be very minor.
General consumption has been declining since 2007. GDP growth is fictitious and is offset by price increases.

Nevertheless, second-hand shopping has a bright future.

For booksellers, the proximity bias leads us to make analytical errors. Many closed due to Amazon’s dubious commercial practices, but some survived, and fortunately.
Sorry, I don’t have accents on my keyboard.

ebay, rakuten have followed this cycle.

of course, many nuances and details would be needed to explain everything

They especially made a series of very bad decisions that drove away individuals.
And unlike Vinted, they did not see the mobile phone coming and remained on overly complicated sites when Vinted understood (this is their greatest success) the benefit of offering a very easy-to-use mobile application.

Thank you, that’s interesting.

I understand better why my revenue is decreasing month by month, even though I have thousands of subscribers/reviews and 2000+ articles :sweat_smile:.

5€ for a sale in 3 days, I had never seen that before.

ebay also has quite a few disadvantages, they are different.

example this morning, I receive a dispute for an item sold on… February 2nd, item not received, so 4 months later, and what’s more, there is tracking and it says delivered. the site doesn’t take it into account.

how much time and money I have lost with these so-called lost items, well a means of pressure for the buyer to be reimbursed otherwise a red rating, not like that on vinted

Are you on a niche or general articles?
Thousands of subscribers is a dream

[sorry for the accents]

10 years since I’ve had a dispute on eBay, so it’s hard to complain.

For packages not delivered despite tracking, that arrive empty, damaged, etc… as a professional, there are little tricks that allow me to calm things down quite a bit.

For example, when they report a suspicious problem to me, I tell them that no worries, as a professional I will ask Mondial Relay’s legal assistance to investigate the package using weight scans and locker videos to see where it went wrong and then proceed with the refund.
When they claim it arrives damaged, that no worries, you just need to start a return process to get it refunded. And then if the person hits me with « no, but we could settle this » well I tell them no, I have to get the product back so that I can, on my end, use my professional insurance to get reimbursed.
Strangely, most of the time the packages reappear by miracle, the items that arrived in a shameful state become perfectly acceptable, etc…

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It needs to be suitable for the category :slight_smile:
If I sell a comic book, they will send it back to me, possibly damaged, to justify the defect. Because the buyer will have had time to read it, and will have no problem returning it, especially if they don’t have to bear the cost.

no bad decisions, it’s intentional, and Vinted is going the same way, exactly the same. Always the same dynamic, all the time, it’s cyclical; except you can’t chase two rabbits at once; and it always leads to the same remarks from professionals, unfair competition, etc., word for word the same things.
eBay has become and the parties have left elsewhere, and it will be the same here, second-hand will become a real business, with channels, wholesalers, well… it’s already the case but not many professionals in the sector yet because it’s still a demanding and insecure job, not to mention everything else

Let’s admit it…
So, what’s the next wave to surf?

This weekend, the excuse for poor sales on Vinted will be that Leboncoin is offering free shipping at €0.99.
By the way, we would like Vinted to do the same from time to time.

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:slight_smile:
Hard to say.
Not for now, but I see a future with many niche sites and a fragmented market, that’s the trend it’s taking.
People who want to create platforms sense the vein and have to find a niche.
General sites will persist.
There could be dozens of sites for clothes, for young people, old people, women, men, just jeans, just shirts, just dresses, luxury, why not a site between 5 and 10 euros etc., you see? to the point where in each category we could create a dedicated site.
To that you can add toys, records, etc., whatever.
Before, the market was more restricted, so I think the market was too small to sustain a niche site.
Easier for the buyer to find their way around, the seller too, they are more visible and target their clientele.
eBay, LBC, have, whether intentionally or not, sectors where they work well and others where they don’t, even though they did everything at the start; e.g., cars, real estate, or furniture.

Hence, in my opinion, Vinted’s mistake was to aim too broadly. I wonder if they haven’t opened up to in-person pickup because I’ve seen bikes or washing machines, and for shipping with Vinted Go, it’s going to be difficult, unless they form partnerships, but it’s not coherent.

Of course, you can succeed against a generalist site like Vinted, but they will inevitably lose market share.

A bit like Facebook for social networks. After that, when you have their striking power, they can themselves create other platforms, in a way the motto is, the best defense is attack, but I don’t understand their contradictory strategy, or they are fumbling, or they are overconfident.

Regarding in-person drop-off, Vinted still encouraged it a few years ago. But the decision to hide the selling location, both on profiles and in searches, amounts to eliminating it.

An example of a niche site that has been successful for years: okkazeo, for board games and role-playing games. No commissions => highly appreciated.
Boardgamegeek also works very well and allows for international reach. Modest commissions.

Counter-example, for records, vinyl, etc.: discogs. A reference database. But complicated to use: You have to know how to pinpoint the exact edition of the item, and there are sometimes fifty to choose from, entering nuances in the item’s condition requires an engineer’s level, etc. And the commissions, when you add what the site takes and what PayPal takes, are at the outrageously high level of Rakuten - except that Discogs doesn’t display it at all.

Thank you, I’m not familiar with these products as I’m not a consumer of them.
Of course, the site needs to be easy to use, not too expensive, and easy to set up, otherwise it won’t catch on. That’s why Vinted works, with very attractive prices for both fees and shipping. The downside is that it’s not suitable for professionals, although… some are developing paid products to compensate, and there’s a huge opportunity to exploit there too.

I’m answering myself: Vinted also just made VintedGo shipping costs zero!