Your Options for Where to Buy/Sell Makeup, Skincare, Beauty Online
In a box? In a bin? Or just dumped in a beach tote in the back of your closet? Scattered throughout your house? No matter where you keep your unloved beauty products, let's call it what it is. The Beauty Graveyard. Don't think you have one? Let's not pretend you don't have a baggie of samples you've been "meaning to try".
No one knows the competitor landscape for Glou Marketplace better than me. So here it is. Us versus all your other options. Here is the lay of the land. The down low. Are you ready for your choices?
New, used, or swatched, here are your options when it comes to rehoming your unloved products, and where you can find amazing deals on popular products that didn't work out for other people. At the end of the day buying gently used from someone is still safer and more hygienic than using testers, so it's an inexpensive way to try out a new brand/product without committing to the retail price.
Glou Marketplace
Pros:
110% money back Glou Guarantee. This is important because I don't want any buyer's remorse around here. If what you received isn't what was in the listing, you'll get your money back. No need to file any paperwork and wait weeks for it to be processed - I've gotchu.
We take action against bad sellers. What I hated about other options was how easy it was for scammers to make a new account and take advantage of people all over again.
Seller reviews. I get it. When you're buying someone else's beauty products, you don't want to read reviews about what they sold, but who sold it. And we don't supply you with canned reviews that say "Great!". Reviews are written by real people and displayed on the seller's profile.
Custom shipping options. If you want to use our USPS calculator, great. You want to use a flat rate mailer (which you can get for free btw), sure. Or, you just want to set your own custom rate, that's an option too. Would you prefer to meet-up locally? It's a pandemic so I advise against it, but that's available as an option too. I personally hate it when I'm forced to pay shipping fees that don't make sense and I feel like the company is making money off of me off sham shipping fees. I'm not about that.
Easy multi-listing process that was built for beauty. I know what a pain it is to create one listing at a time when you're trying to sell a dozen items. I'm also working to make this even simpler with the help of more advanced technologies. It should be as simple as scanning the item with your phone and stating your price.
Cons:
I'm going to be straight up with you. This is my baby, and I know she ain't perfect.
Glou Marketplace can be a little more user friendly, a little sleeker, faster. Trust me, I know. And our biggest draw back? We are new and don't have that network effect yet. However, the goal is to centralize the secondary market for beauty so that one day we can tackle one of the industry's biggest issues: counterfeits. As you will see below, people are selling all over the place, so we can't identify that bad guys because they pop up everywhere. But one day, when our community is strong enough, it becomes a possibility and one that I'm stoked for. I'm also very excited about introducing ways to verify proof of purchase of authentic products.
Most companies would never be this transparent with you. But I want you to trust me, because I really want you to believe and support in Glou as much as I do. By selling/buying from our platform, and telling your friends about us, you're helping us reach out potential little by little. It means more to me that you can possibly know.
Facebook Groups
Pros:
Active communities. Some groups are big, some are small. Generally the bigger groups constantly have a stream of activity so you know people will see your stuff.
Easily share your listing into the general marketplace. Get your listings out to a wider audience is easy.
Cons:
DRAMA. Just reading about the stuff that goes down in the comments blows my mind. Anyone else get flashbacks to middle-school?
Inefficient transactions. Okay, seriously, no one has the time to field that many DMs for each item someone is interested in. And then you have to create an invoice. It takes hours to manage a small batch sale. It's a very involving process. Not to mention the prevalence of...
Time wasters and ghosting shoppers. You know the type. They claim and item, then you can't contact them, then they make you hold the item, and then a week later they're like, "nvm something came up, I don't want it anymore".
Seller feedback is a joke. There's no way to see who's a trusted seller and not. You can join a separate discussion group dedicated to feedback on sellers. But there's no one feedback group you can join. And people are inconsistent about reporting back unless they had an awful experience. And it's easy for scammers to create new accounts under new names and wreak havoc all over again.