Poshmark Stitches Up $12 Million in Funding for Its iPhone Thrift Store

Poshmark has raised $12 million in a second round of funding, making it one of the latest used-clothing marketplaces launched over the past couple of years to raise significant funding.

The company’s second round was led by Menlo Ventures, with all existing investors participating, including Mayfield Fund, Inventus Capital and SoftTechVC. To date, the Menlo Park, Calif.-based company has raised $15.5 million.

Other companies putting a new twist on the eBay marketplace concept include San Francisco’s Threadflip and Twice.

Threadflip distinguishes itself by handling a lot of the hard work for sellers, such as figuring out shipping costs and sending sellers the correct box to their door. Similarly, Twice tries to make it easy by asking sellers to send the merchandise to its warehouse, where it handles all the photography and shipping.

In contrast, Poshmark is focused on mobile. In fact, sellers can list woman’s clothing and accessories to the marketplace only through the iPhone app, making it the platform’s virtual thrift store. Not until recently did Poshmark start allowing customers to buy from the Web site, and you still can list items only from the phone. Next year, the company plans to launch an iPad and Android app, using some of the funds it has raised.

The app also enables sellers to add Instagram-like filters to the pictures they take before posting items for sale. Poshmark also provides additional support, including sending sellers prepaid and pre-addressed boxes to their doorstep once their item has sold. Poshmark charges sellers 20 percent of each sale, and buyers must pay $7 for shipping.

Poshmark, which debuted about a year ago, reports that its customers are now posting $2 million worth of items to the marketplace every week, and that the average user visits the site seven times a day, for a total of 25 minutes.

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Another gadget you don’t really need. Will not work once you get it home. New model out in 4 weeks. Battery life is too short to be of any use.

— From the fact sheet for a fake product entitled Useless Plasticbox 1.2 (an actual empty plastic box) placed in L.A.-area Best Buy stores by an artist called Plastic Jesus