Will Poshmark’s Inactive Listings Tool Reduce Seller Friction or Make It Worse?
Poshmark is introducing a new Inactive Listings Tool designed to help sellers clean up their closets to refresh or remove items that haven't received much action. Will it resolve seller tension around controversial Excessive Listings and Cancellation policies or just make things worse?
Here's how Poshmark described the new feature in a recent blog post:
We’re introducing Inactive Listings, a new tool to help you quickly identify and manage listings that haven’t had recent activity.
We know you’re busy and managing a lot of inventory, so it highlights listings that haven’t been updated in a while, letting you quickly confirm whether those items are still available.
Active listings will be prioritized in search and browsing, so a quick review keeps your closet in top shape and your sales moving.
When a listing becomes inactive, you’ll be notified in the app or by email so you can take action. Reactivating confirms the item is still available for sale, and removing inactive listings will not count toward the Excessive Listing Removal Policy.
This will begin rolling out later this week.
Get Started:
- Navigate to Seller Tools > Bulk Reactivate Listings
- Review your inactive listings
- Reactivate items that are still available
- Delete listings you no longer have
Note: Listings cannot be bulk deleted. To remove a listing, navigate to the individual listing and delete it from there.
Sellers have been caught between a rock and a hard place for months with Excessive Listing Removal and Cancellation policies that create no-win scenarios.
The Excessive Listing Removal policy penalizes sellers for deleting, removing, or marking as "not for sale" items which have been listed on the platform for less than 60 days, with too many removals also risking account restriction or suspension.
But recent changes to Cancellation policies mean Poshmark will also penalize sellers for cancelling too many orders.
Liz Morton
That puts sellers who cross-list items on multiple marketplaces in an almost impossible situation - if an item they have listed on Poshmark is sold on another site, the seller has to either remove the item from Poshmark (risking a penalty for Excessive Removal) or if they don't immediately remove it, they risk making a sale on Poshmark for an item they no longer have (risking a penalty for cancellation).
At first glance, it might appear that this Inactive Listing update would provide a way out of this catch 22, but as some sellers have commented on Reddit - it may not be that simple.
Importantly, it does not appear that sellers can actually set an item to Inactive themselves. Instead, items will be automatically placed in that status by Poshmark using some unspecified criteria.
What is considered an inactive listing? Something marked as not for sale? Excuse the naivety on this but I when I started selling things were just normal for a while and then it’s something new every week now.
What about inactive closets in general? If they’re not on to sell then they probably are not checking for updates on posh. What happens to those listings/closets?
So basically, sellers have to clean closets on PM's schedule. ...and since no one knows how long it will take for a listing to become inactive, who knows what that schedule is. ..just gonna have to sit by our computers/phones and wait.
Others said the idea sounded good, but they were skeptical that Poshmark will execute it successfully or that there won't actually be negative consequences for sellers.
I am calling it now, this will get people in trouble for excessive listing removals as well. This won’t talk to the delisting bot monitoring system properly for months.
Okay, How are they going to mess this up. Every time they do something it goes wrong. Remember the automatic offer thing. Great idea but horrible execution. All I wanted was a limit to how much someone could offer and they did whatever they did which isn’t what anyone wanted.
The blog post listed several other recent updates, including changes to Posh Authenticate that will limit authentication services only to certain brands.
Posh Authenticate Update We’ve updated Posh Authenticate to focus on select luxury brands and categories priced at $500 (U.S.) / C$700 (Canada) or higher. Eligible listings will display an Authentication Included badge.
The help and support page for Posh Authenticate still includes a long laundry list of popular brands, leading some sellers to question what's really behind this change.
One seller on Reddit suggested Poshmark may have an ulterior motive as limiting the service to only certain brand name items may get them off the hook for authenticating no brand listings commonly used for Posh Shows where counterfeit items may be harder for buyers to spot.
So instead of every sale over $500 going to posh authentication, only listings from certain brands will qualify for authentication even if the listing sold for $500 or more.
The list includes all the brands you assumed it would which begs the question - why was this change necessary?
And the only answer I can come up with is that no brand or the listing of unlisted inventory sold at live auction is what is most likely to be affected by the change
Poshmark is also introducing new reports and metrics to help sellers track how they're performing on the platform.
Posh Stats will soon track ship time on a 90 day instead of lifetime average and will also include cancellations, returns, total sales, and more
We’re updating Posh Stats to give you a clearer view of how your business is doing. Soon you’ll be able to see your average ship time, cancellation rate, approved return cases, total sales, and shipped orders all in one place.
Ship time will be based on your last 90 days instead of your lifetime average, giving you a more accurate picture of how you’re actually shipping today. Weekends and postal holidays will be excluded, so your number will reflect real shipping days only.
Sellers who stand out on Poshmark ship quickly, fulfill orders consistently, and deliver a great experience for buyers. Your stats are a reflection of that, and we want to help you improve them.
Later this week, sellers will also be able to tracking listing level metrics including impressions, clicks, likes, offers, and days listed.
Later this week, we’ll start rolling out listing-level metrics to help you understand how shoppers engage with your listings.
Head to your listing details page to see impressions, clicks, likes, seller offers, buyer offers, and days listed.
Use these insights to spot what’s working and make smarter decisions about pricing, photos, and descriptions over time. No action required. Just check in as often as you’d like and let the data guide you.
Poshmark is also testing adding filter to the Active Offers page for sellers to quickly sort and prioritize offers that need attention, but this may not be available to all sellers during the testing phase.
And finally, Poshmark says they are listening to feedback on the recent app changes, but sellers say they aren't holding their breath the company will reconsider photo aspect ratio requirements.
Liz Morton
What do you think of the Inactive Listing tool and other recent Poshmark updates? Let us know in the comments below!
