Depop vs Mercari: Buyer & Seller Guide [2024]

Depop vs Mercari: Buying clothes and wearing them is a different thing, but what to do with old clothes is a particularly huge problem for the current generation as well as future generations too.

There are many alternative methods to what to do with old clothes namely making do-it-yourself things to craft them out of old clothes, turning them into cloth bags, and donating them to the needy people and NGOs. 

But have you ever thought the money you have spent to buy those clothes is not having any return of investment to look in the future if you follow the methods of doing it yourself and donations? 

Exactly, donating them is a good option but unless it's your expensive clothes like Zara ad Prada, h&m, etc, ofc you want to do it more than just donating and hence nowadays the new method get the return on investment is to resale them. 

Now for reselling them, you don’t need to open local shops and do so, of course, people are working their asses off and don’t have time to open resale garages or shops to earn returns out of resale. 

There are plenty of sites that offer reselling options for their users where you can easily post the clothes that you want to sell and then customers will look for them and order them from you hence in this way you will earn a return on investments easily. 

In this article, we are going to talk about the best two online services in the reselling category namely Depop and Mercari they work for the same cause and has kind of same benefits, but yet they are a little different when we talk about them in details. 

By the end of the article, you will get a detailed idea of Depop and Mercari and what they offer for both buyers and sellers. 

Overview: Depop vs Mercari 

Depop 

Depop is a reliable website to buy and sell items at very affordable prices. Depop is known by every millennial and also almost every individual per 5 groups. The popularity of Depop is just increasing year by year. 

Depop also comes with great security features so it is no more likely possibilities of getting scammed by people or sellers or buyers. Depop can easily help you earn money from reselling the categories in fashion and accessories. 

Mercari 

Mercari is just a newly launched in 2013 and has its offices in the United States and the United Kingdom. Though being new in the market, it has gained popularity among the reselling services found online. 

It not only helps to resale clothing materials but also jewelry, home goods, collector’s items, electronics, and also fashion goods like shoes, bags, accessories, etc.

Mercari seems to be more appealing for the sellers because it has a wide category of reselling options and hence it can give the sellers to post items in one place for selling more than just clothes and fashion inventories. 

Depop vs Mercari: For Sellers 

Inventories 

Depop 

The inventories of Depop can be considered a small compared to Mercari because mercari sells other items like electronics and home goods which currently depop doesn’t offer. 

The main item of inventory listed under Depop is Fashion Marketplace. Hence you can get everything and anything about fashion items and trends on Depop in a good condition and cheaper rates than original new items.

Sellers who want to focus on selling only fashion-related items like shoes, tops, dresses, types of denim, jackets, bags, etc can rely on pon Depop since it is the expertise of Depop in the fashion industry. It makes it easy for sellers to get their items easily noticed in the fashion category at Depop.  

Mercari 

Mercari is new in the market, though has gained many buyers and sellers because of its huge categories of inventories. Mercari has inventories listings namely home goods, electronics, collectables, clothes, bags, shoes, accessories, and much more. 

If you are thinking to upscale your inventories with costly items mercury can give you a little hard run because usually, people sell their items that are used for a longer time and are no longer for their use but can be pocket-friendly options for other buyers.

Easy Listings 

Depop 

The selling category or listing made under Depop is quite similar to any fashion industry stores online or reselling stores. Since it only focuses on the fashion marketplace, it has listings made under different categories of fashion items. 

The listings given by Depop for the sellers as well as buyers come into the category like Womenswear, Beauty, Brands, Tops, Menswear, and Jewelry. Hence sellers can easily list their items by qualifying them into these particular categories offered by Depop. 

Mercari 

If you are thinking about the promotions and all those user-interface for the sellers, then you can be a little disappointed here as it doesn’t offer any promotional category or feed for its sellers. You just have to list your item properly to get it noticed by the buyers. 

Mercari has a simple interface where if someone likes your listing and is interested to buy your items, it gives you the option of making a contact and giving them offers to buy them.

 The listing feature of Mercari can be very minimal and easy for the new users because it doesn't have any complicated format to follow. 

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Selling Expenses 

Depop 

The rule that Depop follows is they charge you fees only on the product sold after you have kept your profit margin properly. It generally charges 10% for the Depop selling fees. The fees are charged on shipping labels etc. 

For the procedure of payments under the partner Paypal, it takes around 4.4% of fees as PayPal transaction fees from sellers to process all the payments accurately. Hence for the security on selling and payment procedure, you have to pay some sort of fees as it is the third party that helps you sell your products. 

Mercari 

Mercari like any other third-party app has its customized selling expenses to be paid by sellers at a profitable margin. The company does take at least 10% of fees for each item that is sold on Mercari. 

Mercari has additional fees too. The fees can be called the payment fees, printing fees, etc. The processing fees are kept at least up to 2.9% plus $0.30 per sale.

 And hence, the pricing you set for your item can become out to be more than your profit margin because of the fees charged by Mercari like the label, payment procedure, etc. 

Payment Options 

Depop 

Depop has won its seller's and buyers' hearts because it has payment proceedings done and received by PayPal as one of the payment partners. 

Everyone uses PayPal and hence it becomes very easy for everyone to shop and sell items on Depop rather than other sites for unsurety of returns and fees, etc. Depop has earned the latest revenues of $70 million and more. 

Mercari 

Mercari has many payment options out of which it has paid out from a linked bank account and also has Instantpay options. Even though choosing any opt-out of your comfort, will give you some fees to be paid like $2 per transaction, etc. 

The payment procedure is quite easy and has the fastest payment processing till now but of course, benefits come with fees and hence you have to pay more to get premium features. It has less than 20% commission than the other third-party apps. 

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Shipping Costs 

Depop

The shipping costs are also charged on the products you sold under the Depop store. The shipping costs are kept as per the location and urgency of the parcel getting delivered.

 The shipping cost is to be bared by the sellers which they can then earn by buyers with help of higher profit margins. 

The shipping charges set by Depop per order confirmation are said to be at least 3.50GBP and usually, it is considered to be s part of the selling cost when it is calculated to be 10%. The shipping charges may vary per location.  

Mercari 

The shipping costs for the seller are the main lookout for Mercari sellers doing their resale businesses. Usually, the sellers through Mercari work on the front end for shipping their items to their customers. 

So to get the final cutout of shipping costs then you have to get started by measuring the weight before packing the label and also has many labels and shipping methods to choose from and the cost depends on it. 

It also offers discount facilities for its sellers on some of the shipping options chosen. It also allows users to stay anonymous even to the buyers to whom they are shipping their items, Hence the safety of privacy of sellers of Mercari is the most important feature. 

Mercari has many shipping partners namely USPS, UPS, and FedEx for which sellers may have to pay a little commission for shipping able and procedures, etc. 

Depop vs Mercari: For Buyers 

Inventories

Depop 

The inventories are kept very easy for the buyers under the Depop Store. Depop offers easy access to the items considered to be a part of fashion. 

The inventories or listings stated under Depop Store for the buyers are stated to be divided among Womenswear, menswear, beauty products, jewelry, and much more. It also has a special category of brand inventories where you can search for products listed under particular brands. 

Mercari 

The user interface of Mercari for buyers is kept very minimal and simple just like sellers. Hence it provides categories of items to buy as buyers from Mercari. 

It also has expansive inventory in general but it doesn't mean buyers can be disappointed in the fashion category overall. It may have items like home goods, and electronics to buy for the buyers. 

But still, the main focus is given to the fashion inventory in the categories of tops, tees, jeans, bottom wear, accessories, bags, shoes, etc. So we can't just choose one inventory that is a winner for the buyers to buy items of. But it keeps on updating which keeps its buyers intact. 

Easy Browsing

Depop

It has a simple yet eye-catching user interface for its buyers. Buyers are kept intact will all the updates and new arrivals under their Depop Store. 

Buyers also have the facility to chat with sellers and clear the queries about the product and make a final deal or negotiate it to be a more pocket-friendly version. 

The browsing feature of Depop notifications is available for both buyers and sellers to track their orders, chat with buyers and sellers, etc. It also has many other features like listing them into different categories and brands to make browsing easier. 

Mercari 

The browsing facility of Mercari is kept very interesting and easy for the new beginners and new users. It has easy searching and browsing options. It also has a feature of saving searches and products you wish to like. 

It also has an easy listing category in which you select for buying a specific category of items on Merxari which will save your time on browsing and give you the exact results of what you are looking out to. 

Final Verdict: Depop vs Mercari

The features and similarities between Depop and Mercari are almost the same and hence no one can choose the perfect match for them both. 

Firstly, people do use to choose Mercari over Depop because it used to charge fewer fees than Depo and Poshmark. But now that feature has said goodbye. Mercari in the current scenario charges the same as Depop and Poshmark. 

The only difference between Depop and Mercari is in the inventories and categories offered to buy and sell items under their particular stores. If the sellers and buyers are only interested in the fashion items and beauty items, Depop can be a great store for them rather than Mercari. 

Whereas, if the buyers and sellers are interested in more items than just fashion and beauty namely home goods and electronics, then Mercari seems to be a better fit for their perfect store to sell and buy items from. 

In the conclusion, we have seen the detailed features and similarities between Depop and Mercari and we have also suggested which can be the perfect fit for you according to your requirements from reselling online services namely- Depop and Mercari. 

You can check more details about Depop and Mercari on their official websites where they have posted blog pages to help buyers and sellers with their first-time interaction with reselling services. 

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