Poshmark is teaming up with Loop to resell non-returnable items

With this new partnership, Poshmark and Loop aim to keep products in circulation and out of landfills while also generating money for merchants and resellers, Poshmark’s chief marketing officer, Steven Tristan Young, told Modern Retail. Poshmark can also use the partnership to add more inventory, and Loop merchants can use it to find new audiences on Poshmark.

The partnership is a “win-win” for everyone involved, Young said. “There’s a customer pain point around people trying to return items that are no longer returnable… and a lot of retailers are actually making returns more difficult because they’re finding it is not profitable,” he explained. “We realized that this could be an opportunity.”

The partnership, officially released Wednesday, follows an earlier pilot program that Poshmark and Loop conducted in early fall 2024. Poshmark and Loop brought on select partners for the pilot, including Rothy’s, For Love & Lemons, Hill House Home and ThirdLove. Beginning in mid-October, they then expanded the function to more merchants. Poshmark and Loop have already started seeing results; between December 26-30, 2024, listings on Poshmark with “missed return” in the description grew nearly 50% year over year, according to the platform.

Poshmark expects its partnership with Loop to have an effect on its revenue and number of listings but wouldn’t divulge its projections. However, under the pilot program, a “good percentage” of people listing non-returnable items with Poshmark were new to the platform, Young explained. Others were Poshmark users who hadn’t been back to the platform in a while. “[They] saw this opportunity and said, ‘Oh, I want to sell again through Poshmark,'” Young said.

According to the press release, Loop’s deal with Poshmark is a first-of-its-kind partnership for both companies. Poshmark is in talks with other returns providers but ran its pilot with Loop “really early on,” Young said. Even without official partnerships, some retailers are seeing their excess inventory end up on resale platforms. In May, a Target spokesperson confirmed to Modern Retail that a resale account called “Bullseye Deals” buys salvage merchandise from Target and sells it on eBay and Poshmark. 

Returns, when permitted, can be costly, resource-draining and time-consuming for retailers. However, thanks to the ease of online shopping, returns have also become more commonplace. This is especially true during the holidays; according to the National Retail Federation, retailers expect their return rate for the 2024 holidays to be 17% higher, on average, than their annual return rate.

Shoppers who can’t make a return have a few options, Sean Cleland, a spokesperson for liquidation inventory platform B-Stock, told Modern Retail. They can donate an item, resell it, throw it away or shove it in a closet or a garage. However, Cleland told Modern Retail, the retail industry “doesn’t want cons” for shoppers — and that includes helping them figure out what to do with non-returnable items.

Partnerships like the one between Loop and Poshmark are important for “ensuring that product that is non-returnable has somewhere to go,” Cleland explained.

“This is just another way that the industry around retail and goods is evolving to enable this circular economy [and] keep stuff being sold and resold and usable for much longer than ever before,” he said. “I think you’ll see more of these partnerships come into play.”

This article has been amended to include an updated statistic Poshmark provided after publication.