As social media platforms slowly nix their live shopping efforts, fashion resale marketplace Poshmark is adding the feature with the official debut of Posh Shows following several months of testing.
Available in the U.S. and Canada, Posh Shows enable sellers to livestream on Poshmark for the first time. The platform has long hosted Posh Parties — themed virtual shopping events in which any seller can share listings that fit the theme. In contrast, Posh Shows allow sellers to host their own livestreams with buyers able to communicate with the seller and purchase items in real time.
Poshmark began testing Posh Shows in Q4 2022 and said that sellers already have hosted more than 100,000 shows, with shoppers placing more than 4 million bids in live auctions.
“With Posh Shows, we are reinventing fashion resale for the next decade,” said Manish Chandra, Founder and CEO of Poshmark in a statement. “Poshmark was designed from day one to create a shopping experience built around community and real-time social interactions, making it the ideal destination for live commerce. Since we began testing, our community has embraced this interactive and fun approach to shopping, energizing our marketplace, transforming the experience on Poshmark, and strengthening the human connections that are the foundation of our business.”
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Posh Shows are designed as fast-paced auctions, where hosts set the starting price and duration of the livestream, enabling them to quickly move through inventory. Shoppers engage in a dynamic, entertaining shopping experience, discovering products, communicating with other buyers and the seller and scoring deals. Sellers must sign up to become Posh Shows hosts and are admitted on a first-come, first-serve basis.
Designed to be easy to use for sellers of all sizes, the Posh Shows interface offers a suite of tools such as Quick List, which allows anyone to take an item, create a listing on the fly and sell it live in seconds. Hosts can add Show Tags to describe their show and more easily connect with shoppers interested in trends or styles the seller is featuring in their livestream. Hosts also can collaborate with sellers through the Sell Together tool, which lets hosts auction items from others sellers’ closets, thereby curating their shows with fresh inventory while helping others make sales.
Poshmark said it hopes this community-based approach will fuel “a continuous growth engine that allows every seller to succeed, bolstering social connections and scaling the live shopping experience to everyone.” The platform also said it plans to add new features to the program in the coming months, with a focus on creating new ways for users to shop and connect live.
“We saw a huge gap in live commerce in the U.S. — the need for a platform that could help anyone be successful with live selling by making it incredibly simple and fun,” said Tracy Sun, Co-founder and SVP of Seller Experience at Poshmark in a statement. “The community reception has blown us away, and I’m excited for what’s ahead as we make Poshmark the number one place to shop and sell live.”
