Picture this: You’re standing between the racks of your neighborhood Goodwill, lit up by the overhead fluorescent bulbs. If you’re lucky, rifling through old and somewhat unsightly clothes pays off when you find that one-of-a-kind garment, something that rides the line between vintage and trendy for a low price. Maybe a pair of perfectly worn-in vintage Levi’s makes its way into your hands, or you find a real leather jacket that was once a cherished part of someone else’s closet.
Even before it became “cool,” thrifting often sustained low-income families who made their money stretch with the affordable prices at local thrift stores.
But buying secondhand, a practice that was a marker of low socioeconomic status for generations, has been recently popularized primarily by younger consumers. There is no shortage of “thrift hauls” – people displaying armloads of clothes purchased at affordable prices – on YouTube and TikTok, showing viewers how they, too, can get trendy pieces for a few bucks.
The fast fashion industry, which mass produces on-trend clothing items rapidly and sells them at inexpensive prices, has also been met with increasing criticism. In particular, the wastefulness and highly questionable ethics behind big-name fashion brands have led people to seek out more ethical shopping alternatives. And no longer is thrifting restricted to brick-and-mortar stores – online platforms have even made thrifting from your phone possible.
Among the major online retailers for second-hand clothing are sites like Poshmark and thredUP – but Depop, a United Kingdom-based app, has become one of the biggest digital platforms for reselling clothes. Claiming to unite more than 21 million users to “buy, sell, discover and explore the most inspiring and unique things in the world,” the 10-year-old app is essentially a massive global online thrift store, through which individual users can sell and ship their used, vintage and handmade items to buyers across the globe.
While tales of sellers who make a living from Depop are enticing, the reality is that real profits require a serious commitment. With millions of other sellers as competition, selling on Depop is not always the glamorous side hustle some might think it is, but many do make the most of it. Third-year philosophy student Luka Gidwani, for instance, turned their virtual storefront into a creative endeavor that caught the eye of Depop’s higher-ups.
Sourcing clothes from their own closet, plus their mother’s and grandmother’s old wardrobes, Gidwani went from casual buyer to prominent seller in 2018. With the self-timer on their phone, Gidwani posed and modeled clothing items for sale in their backyard. Their shop soon began to gain traction, and Gidwani found themselves featured on the “Explore” page – where standout items are curated and highlighted by the Depop Editorial Team.
“That kind of caught a lot of attention on Depop’s part,” Gidwani said. “And I got not like a huge following, but I noticed that a lot of people were following me. And on Depop, it's kind of hard to get a larger following.”
Now, Gidwani’s shop has more than 2,000 followers and more than 300 sales.
Hanna Yocute, a UCLA alumna, launched her own shop in January 2020 and has since gained more than 800 followers. Yocute has been shopping at thrift stores – one of the only places her family went to when they needed clothes – since high school. When she decided her wardrobe needed an upgrade, she took to Depop to give her old favorites new homes.
During the pandemic, Yocute found the perfect opportunity to devote herself to her shop as she was figuring out her post-graduation plans. Running a Depop shop is not unlike running your own business, Yocute said. She developed her photography and modeling skills as she tried on and took pictures of each item. Yocute also learned how to creatively market her products by formulating detailed captions for each post and colorful Instagram stories advertising her shop.
In any given week, she chooses 20 to 30 pieces to list, then styles each piece as part of a complete outfit and photographs each one before posting on Thursdays or Fridays. Measuring each item as well as writing a caption for it, is also time consuming, Yocute said.
“When I joined Depop, I would buy from other vintage sellers, and I was really inspired by their pages,” Yocute said. “And I was thinking: OK, I can do this. I would learn from other top sellers, and I think that was part of the reason why I started to grow a little bit faster than people who just jump in.”
But even with newfound interests in buying used and vintage pieces – things aren’t necessarily becoming more ethical. Apps need to make money, and to make money, individual sellers’ prices need to go up.
“(Depop) prioritizes ‘Top Sellers,’” Gidwani said. “Smaller businesses don’t get much attention from Depop. It’s more about profit.”
In February 2020, Gidwani received an email from a Depop employee inviting them to participate in the company’s Level Up program – a workshop intended to teach sellers how to become Top Sellers. The program promises access to mentors and insider tips for users hoping to make selling on Depop a full-time job, Gidwani said.
“I guess they selected buyers they saw quote-unquote potential in,” they explained. “They claimed I had some kind of potential to become a Top Seller.”
To become a Top Seller, Depop lays out specific criteria that sellers must fulfill. Sellers must make at least 50 sales a month and maintain a rating of at least 4.5 from their customers for four straight months. Then, they must meet the quota of 200 or more items sold every four months and average $20 per item in order to maintain Top Seller status.
According to Depop’s website, Top Sellers get their own account managers and a coveted blue tick mark on their profile, denoting their elite status. But Depop’s methods for recruiting and training Top Sellers were troubling, Gidwani said.
“I wasn’t a fan of (the Level Up program), because it’s kind of like another form of gentrification,” they explained. “When I showed up, I was one of the only Brown people there. It was a really white space, and Depop is known for that.”
Held in Silver Lake, California, the Level Up program introduced Gidwani to white sellers from outside California who seemed to dream of coming to Los Angeles to start their own businesses or be artists. Depop encouraged program attendees to buy clothing in bulk from specific thrift stores to resell for at least $20 on their own shops, Gidwani said.
“(Depop was) treating it as some trend, just ignoring that there are people who really depend on thrift stores for clothing, especially in low-income communities,” they said.
Although Depop recommended sourcing items from thrift stores, Gidwani chose to avoid doing this, they said. Upselling – where people take inexpensive goods from thrift stores and sell them at large markups – is common within the app, Gidwani said, who personally disagrees with the practice.
“The bad thing is ... this encouragement of kind of stealing from low-income communities,” Gidwani said. “I don’t know what type of impact it’ll have on the future of thrifting, but that might mean higher prices.”
According to Kimberly Miranda, a graduate student in Chicana/o studies, gentrification is a phenomenon in which typically low-income or working-class people are displaced from their homes when those in higher social classes move in and reap the benefits of the community, whether that be the community’s real estate or its proximity to popular regions.
There seems to be a connection between gentrification and cultural appropriation, Miranda explained, where the resources and culture associated with working-class people and people of color – such as thrift shops – become trendy to those with more capital.
“This quote-unquote culture of poverty gets romanticized or becomes a trend,” Miranda said. “Which is unfortunate because then it trickles down to these things becoming inaccessible. So where does that leave people?”
In July 2020, Yocute attended a different Level Up program herself and found that the rigorous requirements for Top Sellers were not achievable for her. Other sellers might be able to invest in a lot of high-quality vintage pieces to resell and meet the quotas, she said, but sellers like her don’t necessarily have the funds to constantly replenish their stock.
“For a person of color who might not have the ability to keep buying and posting stuff, I need to make sure I sell out of these pieces (I already have) before I can invest in new pieces,” Yocute said. “Other people ... can just keep finding items and posting and growing. That’s the challenge.”
It’s unlikely that thrift stores will run out of clothes anytime soon, and the ability to build a miniature thrift store from your own home has facilitated a platform for creative expression as well as income. Despite the pitfalls of owning a shop on the app, both Yocute and Gidwani were able to find supportive communities within the online marketplace. Gidwani, who now focuses on selling handmade jewelry on the app, said they were able to find and make friends within the white-dominated space. Similarly, Yocute said she found Depop offers a tight-knit community for creatives.
Instead of trying to adhere to Depop’s requirements, Yocute said she was more intent on growing at her own pace and remaining consistent in posting quality pieces and content. The $20 pricing requirement did not sit right with Yocute either. Selling an item like a regular T-shirt at $20 felt strange, she said.
Rapid growth was never the goal, Yocute explained. Instead, it was building a business for herself that she actually loved.
Because there is an overabundance of clothes out there already, Yocute said she feels using her thrifting skills – including identifying quality brands and materials – to resell clothes is OK and helps bring quality vintage clothes to more people. Yocute was well aware of the controversy surrounding reselling but saw it as a way to tackle the unsustainable amount of clothes produced and discarded.
Admittedly, apps and social media do make buying used clothes accessible in some ways, Miranda said, and they allow people to make extra money on the side, as with any other side hustle. But Depop still has its drawbacks.
“It shouldn't be about just money,” Yocute said. “It should be about the community. We're all here supporting each other.”