The best time to enter the resale industry was a couple of years ago. The second-best time is right now. Millennials and Zoomers, members of Gen Z, are leading the charge on all things already owned, with 42% willing to buy second-hand apparel. And it’s not only about fashion, either — these environment-conscious generations see re-commerce as a good practice in terms of sustainability.
Michael Chierchio, a long-time reseller and creator of the Magiscriptor app, agrees it’s a great time to do resales. The market is there, the customers are waiting, and the platforms are working great — most of the time. The resale industry is not perfect, and having experienced those imperfections firsthand, he decided to develop solutions for them.
Unreliable Algorithms
Consistency is one of the essential traits of any online marketplace or platform, such as those hosting resellers. Knowing the rules, what ranks and what doesn’t, and which actions lead to which outcomes is incredibly important for planning.
Resellers might especially appreciate consistency as they have a lot on their plate, handling everything from sourcing their wares to eventually shipping them to customers. Planning can help them avoid having many clothes stuck on the books for longer than they’d want to.
“On Poshmark, people can make sales one day and then not sell anything for a week. People cannot figure out how to make sales with that kind of algorithm,” Michael Chierchio explains.
He found the solution to the problem in cross-listing. That way, in case one of the platforms, isn’t working at any given moment, sellers can still count on other platforms to make their sales there. The tool he created to help resellers with it is called Crosslisting. It connects with multiple platforms and liberates sellers from relying on one platform simultaneously.
Description-Writing Fatigue
There are only so many times a person can write about a clothing item before their creativity runs out and they start writing subpar copy. Sellers who’ve had this happen to them shouldn’t feel bad — even professional writers get this kind of fatigue.
The people who specialize in selling in a specific niche and at high volume are the people who are most at risk of simply running out of things to say in their descriptions. Luckily for them, Michael Chierchio has the perfect solution.
“Magiscriptor is an AI-powered app that creates product descriptions,” he explains. “The model is trained using real product descriptions that follow current trends. We tuned it to produce search engine optimized descriptions, too.”
Magiscriptor will ensure that a seller suffering from description fatigue has plenty of original copies for their products. It will also save the seller some precious time they can instead use to upload products, source them, or do something unrelated to reselling. It’s reclaimed time at its finest.
Not Enough Time for It All
As a form of e-commerce, reselling has plenty of potential. There are financial reasons to do it, but also ethical and environmental. It’s valid for sellers and their customers. The only problem is that if a seller wants to scale up their business, they can easily find themselves with a severe lack of time to manage it all.
Writing product descriptions might be a time-sink, but it’s hardly the only one. Sourcing can be difficult, especially if the seller wants only the best products for their customers. Ideally, sourcing should be local, but finding products can quickly become a nightmare if that’s not an option.
Then there’s the process of arranging and taking pictures of each product. Using stock photos is fraudulent, and not providing good image photos might look dishonest even when there’s no intention to fool anyone. The list goes on.
Michael Chierchio sees automation as the best possible help for people struggling to keep up with the demands of a growing resale business. With Crosslisting and Magiscriptor alone, he’s helped resellers automate two crucial and time-consuming tasks in their line of work.
And they’re not even the only app he’s created to help sellers. Posh Sidekick, for example, allows Poshmark users with some of the social requirements of the platform’s business model, as well as relists and sharing. For the growing reseller, it might be just what they need.
As for Michael Chierchio, he’s pretty sure he’s figured out the right formula to succeed beyond reselling. Dealing with the issues of scaling a resale business and working hard to keep it high-quality gave him all the prompts he needed for his current endeavor. He can put it simply, too.
“You have to solve people’s problems. Then, eventually, the money will flow because you’re helping so many people,” he explains. “You have to win by helping.”
Ryan Goldberg and Presented by: Nick Kasmik.
