Poshmark and Snapchat team up to court Gen Z consumers for ‘Posh Parties’ and shopping
It’s the Zoomer dream team: Poshmark—a leading web marketplace for vintage clothing, jewelry, and decor—meets Snapchat, the new king of social media platforms for the teenage bracket.
The two tech-focused companies are together launching Poshmark Mini, a social shopping product housed within Snapchat. According to a media release, Mini will bring “the thrill of the Poshmark treasure hunt” to the app, by letting users interact with other shoppers during real-time “Posh Parties,” browse the entire catalogue of 200 million-plus items for sale, and see what brands are trending.
In doing so, Poshmark is capitalizing on dual shifts accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic—the digitalization of retail, and the embrace of thrifting. And in 2020, a year of quarantine-induced solitude, retailers also leaned on social features. According to Poshmark, its users engaged in more than 30 billion social interactions, largely driven by younger generations. Now with Snapchat, which reaches about 90% of Americans aged 13-24, Poshmark is more directly targeting Gen Z as a key future consumer.
It’s not alone: Last year Walmart hosted its first live, virtual shopping event with TikTok, another social platform favored by teenagers.
It’s a strategic move for Poshmark, which has apparently been struggling since its public debut on the Nasdaq in January. Despite Gen Z’s professed love of vintage goods and secondhand stores, which boosted sales for thrift-sellers like Poshmark and ThredUp in recent months, gains have been overshadowed by widening losses. Poshmark reported a net loss of $75 million for the first quarter of the 2021 and its stock is down 65% from its opening price.
For Snapchat, meanwhile, the move furthers its foray into e-commerce, which CEO Evan Spiegel highlighted as a bright spot in recent earnings calls. It began testing brand pages with Target, Adidas, Ralph Lauren, and Dior last summer, and has been steadily upping its investments in augmented-reality fitting room tools, full-body scan technology, and digital clothing for avatars. As it continues to compete with the likes of TikTok and Facebook to diversify revenue streams, we can expect more retail partnerships to come.
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