Depop has quickly become Gen Z’s secret style weapon. From quirky jewelry to vintage jeans, Depop has it all. The easy to use buying and selling app perfectly combines the great deals and unique finds of thrifting, with the convenience of online shopping.
The rising popularity of Depop, which has amassed over 13 million users since launching in 2011, is part of a larger shift in fashion and consumerism. Today, it seems like young people are almost more interested in buying other people’s clothes than they are in buying new clothes. So much so that second-hand retail is predicted to grow 1.5x faster than fast fashion in the next coming years.
Dasha Goncharov, a 20 year old Cal Poly San Luis Obispo student, has taken advantage of this growing market. Since downloading Depop in August 2018, Dasha has sold over 3,000 total items and earned countless five star reviews. As a Depop verified Top Seller, Dasha posts about 40-50 new listings each week and sells an average of 15 items a day.
Photos courtesy of Dasha Goncharov.
What separates Dasha from the casual depoper is that she buys clothes with the intent of immediately reselling. And she buys a lot of clothes. Before coronavirus shut down thrift stores, she went out 2-3 times a week to source items for her shop. Dasha pretty much picks up anything she finds cute and thinks will sell quickly, from jackets to dresses to shoes. Additionally, she’s managed to secure some suppliers whom she pays upfront for bulk quantities of cargos and jeans. Through her thousands of sales and $20-30 markups on items, Dasha has managed to turn a hobby into a notable income. “I make more doing this than I would working a minimum wage job, which I did for a little bit, but I realized this just made more sense for me.” Since Dasha has always loved thrifting, she saw Depop as a great opportunity to make some extra cash doing something she enjoys.
While Depop allows sellers to become bedroom entrepreneurs, it also expowers buyers to experiment with different looks and reinvent themselves with reused pieces. In an age where a lack of conformity in one’s clothing choices is cool, apps like Depop provide a much needed alternative to mass produced fashion. It will be interesting to see how this trend endures in the future, and how new-age buyers and sellers continue to influence the realm of fashion.
