Linking 80 Million Closets Worldwide, Poshmark Reinforces C2C Leadership with Team NAVER’s Technologies
Linking 80 Million Closets Worldwide, Poshmark Reinforces C2C Leadership with Team NAVER’s Technologies
Linking 80 Million Closets Worldwide, Poshmark Reinforces C2C Leadership with Team NAVER’s Technologies
- CEO Manish Chandra founded Poshmark in 2011 during the early days of mobile, recognizing that the future of e-commerce lies in integration with various communities.
- From the beginning, Poshmark combined commerce and community, allowing revenue generation based on communication in users’ closets.
- Connecting technology and commerce to lead the trend in the C2C market with Team NAVER’s technologies
January 13, 2023
NAVER Corporation (CEO Choi Soo-yeon) held a press conference at Poshmark’s headquarters located in Redwood City, California, United States, on the 12th (local time) and presented Poshmark’s beginning, present, and future after becoming a member of Team NAVER.
[photo] Chief of Marketing Officer Steven Young, Poshmark’s Founder and CEO Manish Chandra and Co-founder and Senior Vice President Tracy Sun
The press conference was attended by Poshmark’s Founder and CEO Manish Chandra, Co-founder and Senior Vice President Tracy Sun, and Chief of Marketing Officer Steven Young.
Poshmark focused on the possibility of C2C that brings people’s closets together with technology and generates revenue even from its early stage.
In a keynote speech, CEO Manish Shandra gave an overview of his interest in the growth potential of the C2C market and Poshmark’s development. He said that when he founded Kaboodle, a home appliance commerce service, in 2005, he saw the need for users to introduce and sell their own products directly. With the launch of the iPhone 4 and the advancement of technology characterized by the development of mobile SNS and messenger apps, such as Facebook and Twitter, he was certain that technology would connect people and create a new shopping method. This led him to introduce Poshmark, a platform for community commerce that lets users connect to each other using their closets to communicate and generate revenue.
Shandra also highlighted Poshmark’s four core values: Focus on People, Embrace Your Weirdness, Together We Grow, and Lead with Love, saying that it has a lot in common with NAVER. Poshmark has seen continuous growth based on these core values, becoming the largest fashion C2C platform in North America, with 80 million users worldwide.
Poshmark, joined by 90% of millennial women in the United States, continued growth with a focus on the community.
A representative characteristic of Poshmark is that it is a community-focused platform. CEO Manish Shandra, having grown in India, said that he experienced the value of community in the bustling markets where merchants communicated with each other to trade goods.
Millennials and Gen Z account for 80% of the Poshmark users, and in particular, 90% of millennial women in the United States are members of the Poshmark community. Poshmark is also exerting an effort to maintain the community through offline events, such as Posh Fests and Posh Parties. Poshmark’s growth potential is further enhanced by the diversity of its seller community coming from various types of communities.
Steven Young, CMO of Poshmark, said, “In addition to casual users, side hustlers who generate revenue using Poshmark as a side job, the entrepreneur group starting a business with Poshmark as the main source of income, the small business boutique group characterized by unique and niche brands, and brands with their own products are also growing through Poshmark.”
Posh Shows and Posh Lens to be advanced with Team NAVER’s technologies
Since its foundation, Poshmark has also placed a strong emphasis on the development of its own technologies.
Tracy Sun, SVP of Poshmark, said that at the heart of Poshmark lies the value of the connection between people and commerce using technology. Poshmark has been investing heavily in technology from the beginning, focusing on creating an intimate community ecosystem where both buyers and sellers can easily participate. Sun introduced the Posh Shows, a live commerce service developed with native technologies. Thus, Poshmark will upgrade the service by incorporating NAVER’s live commerce technology.
Moreover, a trial version of Posh Lens powered by NAVER’s Smart Lens technology was showcased for the first time at the press conference. It is the first of NAVER’s technology incorporated into Poshmark and is expected to enhance the users’ search convenience by allowing them to view similar products and prices when simply taking a picture of a product.
Manish Shandra said that Poshmark’s greatest advantage is that it combines commerce and community completely, allowing users to connect well with each other and enhance their sales and purchase experiences. He added that this is a powerful feature that sets Poshmark apart from other services that merely add a commerce service to SNS or a community board to commerce platforms. Shandra concluded that as Poshmark has joined Team NAVER, it will improve the seller and buyer experience across marketing, search, and community services using NAVER’s competitive technologies and establish a new C2C trend in the global market.
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