Every night, Vestiaire Collective and TheRealReal appear in my iPhone's suggested apps. That's undoubtedly because browsing them for deals on pre-owned luxury goods is part of my bedtime ritual. And for good reason: I have secured incredible vintage finds, gorgeous bags, and so—so—many excellent shoes over the years. Call me a mindless consumerist, but I'm more excited to get five-year-old Louis Vuitton than brand-new anything else and, a lot of the time, what I pay for it is about what I'd pay for a new items at a lower-end store. After about a decade honing my skills as a resale buyer—and, more recently, seller—I'm pretty knowledgeable about the pros and cons of all the apps, including these two. So, which is better? Well, that depends on what you're looking for.
Who are these apps for?
Both TheRealReal and Vestiaire Collective are digital marketplaces that facilitate the resale and purchase of used luxury and designer goods, as well as common mid-tier brands. You'll find a lot of Dior, Gucci, and Prada, but you'll also find Ugg, For Love and Lemons, Cult Gaia, and even Nike or Lululemon. I've purchased Chanel shoes from both apps, but I've also been able to snag things like Reformation jeans for as low as $8. Read it again: I have nabbed $178 jeans for $8.
So, if you're a buyer looking to save money but still get your hands on high-quality items, these apps are for you—but if you're a seller looking to make money, it gets a little more complicated.
Buying on Vestiaire Collective and TheRealReal
Both Vestiaire Collective and TheRealReal have unique ways of appealing to buyers. VC is a truly global app that has spent some time in recent years trying to beef up its foothold with American consumers. I have purchased quite a few things from overseas and the app does a good job of letting you know each item's country of origin so you can get a sense of how long it'll take for it to arrive. Sellers take their own photos, write their own descriptions, and set their own prices, just as sellers on apps like Poshmark and Depop. TheRealReal, on the other hand, takes goods directly from sellers and manages the sale for them—the staff at TRR takes photos, writes descriptions, and sets prices. Everything TRR sells is located in the United States, at one of its warehouses or storefronts, and shopping on that app is a little more consistent because shipping times are more predictable.
Authentication
Both marketplaces authenticate items, which can give buyers some peace of mind. Since TheRealReal takes the goods straight from sellers and manages them itself, they're authenticated before they go up on the site.
On Vestiaire Collective, authentication is a multi-step process: The seller uploads pictures of the item and submits the listing for review. VC staffers study the pics, possibly ask the seller for more details or photos, and finally, approve the listing, which is when it goes live. After something is purchased, the seller doesn't ship it straight to the buyer. Rather, they ship it to Vestiaire Collective, where it's authenticated in person before being sent on.
Twice, something I purchased on VC didn't make it to me. Once, the item wasn't ever intended for individual sale and was instead a special gift-with-purchase that its original owner was trying to get rid of. The other time, there were international shipping rules around the material the shoes were made of. I was sad, but my money was refunded and that was that. Interestingly, something I sold also didn't make it through the process of authentication—not because it wasn't authentic, but because the bag's strap had been reinforced with wax by a third party, which I didn't think to mention in the listing. VC gave the buyer the option of whether to accept it or get a refund and that person chose the refund, I got my bag back in the mail, and I ultimately sold it on Poshmark. No harm, no foul. The point is, both companies take the quality and authenticity of sales items seriously.
Saving money
If you're looking for deals, both apps are great, but for different reasons. On Vestiaire Collective, you can send "offers" on products, meaning you offer to pay a price lower than what the seller has listed it for. In my experience, sellers are reasonable enough and usually accept offers or, occasionally, send a counteroffer. A lot of sellers want the stuff gone and will price listings affordably as a result anyway. Yes, you'll see goods that strike you as being priced a little too high, but if you search around, you're almost sure to find the same thing from another seller at a lower price. Remember, though, that quality impacts pricing, so if you really want, say, a certain bag and you find that one seller has listed it for way cheaper than everyone else, you should reach out and inquire about any damage or issues it might have. Vestiaire Collective's staffers are picky about the photos they'll approve for listings, so any flaws should be apparent in the pictures, but the app makes it easy to message sellers, so take advantage of that. As always, use some discretion. If someone is being cagey or rude when you're asking questions, just take your money to the next seller; this one could be hiding something and if they really wanted to make the sale, they'd play ball.
On TRR, you cannot send offers, as the pricing and sales are managed by the business itself—but that's actually how and why you'll end up saving money. TheRealReal operates like a store, gradually reducing the price of listings if they're not selling. With a few notable exceptions (a pair of teal Louboutins comes to mind), I almost never buy something on TRR the moment I find it. Instead, I add it to my favorites—or, as the app calls them, "obsessions"—and play a waiting game. This requires a little bit of spirituality and patience. I tell myself that if something sells while I'm waiting it out, it just wasn't meant to be, but if it lowers in price and no one snatches it up, it was definitely divinely preordained to be mine. The app allows you to save searches. Let's say you're in the market for shorts: You can set your size, select the brands you want, and save the search, easily returning to it to check for new additions.
Selling on TRR and VC
If you're used to selling on apps like eBay or Mercari, both TRR and VC will present a slight learning curve. With Vestiaire, you have to print the shipping label and procure your own box, which can take some time and eat into your earnings. (On marketplaces like Poshmark, Depop, and others, the app generates a QR code that entitles you to shipping materials and a label at the post office, so you never spend money or much time on that part.) It's also a relatively slower process, given you have to send the item to VC, wait for it to pass the company's screening, then wait for it to be received by the buyer, then wait for the money to hit your Venmo account, which is how Vestiaire pays sellers. TheRealReal, on the other hand, asks you to hand over everything you want to sell upfront. You can bring it to TRR's storefronts or schedule an in-home consultation if you live in New York, Connecticut, Illinois, Texas, Florida, or California. Otherwise, you just ship it all to them. The employees then decide what they'll take and tell you what they think it's worth. If you agree, TRR takes over, photographing, listing, managing, and potentially discounting the goods over time.
How you get paid
I'll be honest: I don't love the payment structure of either of these apps a ton and while it's not because they take a cut of your money, I'll explain that part first. VC takes a 10% cut and a 3% selling fee while TRR uses a pretty complicated tier structure to determine how much of a cut it will take. Here's a full breakdown of how the starting payouts are set up, but for clothing, you get 70% of the profit if something sells for over $5,000, 65% if it sells between $750 and $4,999, and so on down to 20% for anything that sells below $99, though the rates can vary for some categories, like handbags and men's sneakers.
The reasons I don't love their payment structure, instead, are that neither is as convenient as other apps I've sold on. On Poshmark and Mercari, for instance, sales money goes into a "balance" you can use to buy other things on the app, which helps me budget and set personal rules for how much I allow myself to spend and acquire. VC is pretty good about depositing money to your Venmo a few days after a sale is delivered, but it takes a while. TRR pays out around the 15th of each month—either via direct deposit or a physical check—to cover whatever of yours sold in the previous four weeks.
Other considerations for sellers
If you're considering selling on either app, there are some things to keep in mind. The process of listing on Vestiaire is quite involved. The app requires specific details, like pictures of any logos or branding, photos from different angles and vantage points, and measurements of every item. You put in more work creating a listing on VC than on other apps, plus you then have to wait for the listings to be approved and, in some cases, make adjustments and resubmit them, before they go live. If you really want to list on VC, I recommend using a cross-lister like Vendoo, which allows you to make one master listing and then share it to not only Vestiaire, but other apps like Poshmark and eBay. If you're going to put all that work into it, you might as well maximize your chance of selling by distributing the listing to as many audiences as possible. Vendoo will automatically delist items across your linked marketplaces once they sell somewhere else, too.
The main consideration for sellers inclined to use TRR is the payout situation. If you're selling a Birkin and you stand to make thousands of dollars, perhaps it's not a huge deal if you have to give a cut to a middleman, but remember what I said about how I get Reformation jeans for $8 after waiting for them to go down in price? Realistically, the seller of those jeans is earning a pittance off TRR's sale to me. If you want a big payout but don't have a high volume to offload to get it, just keep in mind that TRR, not you, sets the price. But if you have a ton of nicer things to sell and just want them gone and don't want to take a bunch of pictures, go back and forth with potential buyers, and handle the tedium of selling, TRR is your best bet.
Which marketplace is better?
As I write this, I'm sitting by my shoe rack, which, after years of diligent and hawkish monitoring of Vestiaire Collective and TheRealReal, is almost exclusively full of fancy, pricy, or vintage shoes. I love both apps , though I recognize each of their cons. Designating one as outright "better" than the other isn't quite a fair comparison; it's certainly not as easy as declaring Poshmark better than Depop was. Because while they both ostensibly do the same thing—facilitate the sale of used high-end goods—they do it in very distinct ways.
Buy on TheRealReal
I love shopping on VC because its global nature broadens what I can access, but ultimately, TRR is a more streamlined experience; it feels more like shopping on any e-commerce platform. All the photos are professional, you never have to wait for a random person to get around to shipping your order, it all comes domestically, and there's no waiting for your goods to be authenticated. Plus there are wild deals waiting to be scored because listings go on sale so often. The selection is also diverse. Whether you want a Celine bag or On Cloud running shoes, you're more likely to find it on TRR.
Sell on Vestiaire Collective
Although the process of listing your own items on VC is a little more arduous than on other apps, all the effort can be worth it because you get to set your price and decline offers. The payment structure is also much more straightforward. It's a simple cut of the profit that stays consistent from sale to sale. Yes, you have to wait longer for someone at VC to authenticate and quality-check your item, but that actually saves you from a situation where the buyer tries to claim there is some issue with the order and sends it back. Ultimately, all the work it takes to manage your own sales on VC is worth it—it protects you and the buyer while also allowing you to potentially recoup more of your initial cost on each item.
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