Her social media consignment idea caught on like wildfire, but Jenny Kramer of Fickle Resale quickly found out that monetizing that idea is more challenging than ever in a crowded online marketplace.
Kramer started her business in 2012 after posting some of her children’s clothes on her personal Facebook page, hoping to sell them. “My brother called me and said, ‘Nobody wants to see that!’ But some people did – those that had little kids. So I started figuring out how to make it private.”
Sell-and-swap groups have since become common on Facebook, with thousands of pages focusing on geographic areas, brands or specific products such as ski equipment or firearms. Locally, online consignment groups have sprung up to serve the downtown area, Simpsonville and the Eastside. SIFT, a local Facebook group created by Trina Conley, has 4,763 members, with KidSIFT bringing more than 3,000 more.
Consignment – brick-and-mortar and online – has been on the upswing since 2008, with more than $16 billion in revenues, according a First Research profile. Used clothing makes up about 25 percent of those sales. General e-commerce growth continues unabated and is expected to reach $327 billion in the U.S. by 2016, according to Forrester, a technology and market research firm.
Kramer said Fickle Resale was one of the first on Facebook, and she learned through trial and error the rules that would make the group run smoothly. It quickly became a full-time job as the 1,300-member group – purposely kept small and selective – worked to iron out the rules.
With no shipping element, it works more like Craigslist, with people connecting on Facebook and agreeing on price and pickup arrangements. Items must be valued at $10 or more and new members are only added if they are Facebook friends with multiple members.
Beyond Facebook
To create income to offset how much time she was spending on it, Kramer started charging a $25 annual fee for membership. Then she began contemplating ways to take the idea further. “We got a group of people together who believed in the concept and wanted to invest in it,” she said.
Jim Twining, former CEO of Southern Tide, agreed to look into taking the business nationwide. She took Fickle Resale off of Facebook and moved to a website, but found that having the business on Facebook was key to its popularity and ease of use. “People are on it anyway, so they like seeing items in their newsfeeds,” Kramer said. “Going to a separate website was one extra step they weren’t interested in taking.”
With more than 1.4 billion active users and 963 million people logging on daily, Facebook has become a prime place for businesses to advertise and sell. Facebook reports that they have 45 million small businesses pages, and demand has been so large that they recently began offering new formats and “call-to-action” buttons.
Another early Facebook-focused resale site, Re-Lilly Group, which resells Lilly Pulitzer items, launched in 2009 and grew to 78,000 in less than five years. Though free to shop, the group charges $1 per item for sellers listing their items, a route Kramer considered.
“Re-Lilly really pioneered reselling on Facebook,” Kramer said. “We came quickly after that. But the legwork of keeping up with every individual posting, and invoicing each posting – it was more manpower than we had.”
Once she moved off Facebook, she also found that it would be challenging to compete against major online resellers, including Poshmark, the Real Real and other companies with Silicon Valley backers and fashion industry ties.
A saturated market
“We looked at it and said, ‘This is a saturated market at this point, and it’s too risky,’” said Kramer. “Our competitors were raising $20 to $40 million in venture capital and were working at a loss for 10 years before trying to sell based on the number of eyeballs they get. Jim did an awesome job of helping us realize that this is not a wise step to move forward.”
Now back on Facebook, Fickle Resale is still growing, with new members added regularly in Greenville and groups opening in Charlotte, Anderson, Charleston and St. Louis. Kramer finds local people to manage each group and spends much less time managing them. “This has become the way women shop on Facebook,” she said. “They get the rules and don’t need much help anymore.”
She is happy to be spending more time with her kids, ages 7 and 4, and moving her focus toward new ventures such as K & K Collective, an online retailer for home decor, rare vintage goods and antiques that is – of course – highly active on Facebook and Instagram.
Though the nationwide rollout of Fickle Resale didn’t go as hoped, Kramer is pleased with the imprint the group has made on the online world, and proud of how it has brought women together and helped them build income.
“A lot of women were looking for a way to make extra money,” she said. “Porch money, we call it, since a lot of people pick up items and leave the payment on the porch. It’s just a great, logical way to make money and recycle things.”
