How to Sell Clothes Online [2025 Complete Guide]

If you recently cleaned out your closet and found a mountain of clothes that look like new but no longer feel like your style, you might not know what to do with all those clothes. You don’t want them to go to the landfill and contribute to pollution and waste. Plus, they’re still in good enough shape that someone else might love them. You could donate them, but it might make more sense to sell them and earn some extra income.

Selling clothes online takes some effort, but it’s worth it if you’re looking to create a side hustle or grow a business over time. It gives your clothes a new home, creates space in your closet for items you’ll actually wear, and brings in the money you need to keep buying new stock. In this article, we put together a step-by-step guide for how to sell clothes online, from sourcing to shipping.

• How to Sell Clothes Online
1. Source and create clothes to sell
2. Create incredible-looking product photos
3. Create an online store to sell clothes
4. Set up a payment gateway for clothes sales
5. Market and promote your clothes business
6. Ship and fulfill clothing orders
• How to Sell Clothes Online FAQ

How to Sell Clothes Online

1. Source and create clothes to sell

If you’ve been holding onto clothes for years, you might already have a decent stock ready to go right in your closet. But sooner or later, you’ll run out. If you want to continue your business, you’ll need to find new places to source items or create them yourself.

Many online clothing sellers get their stock from wholesale suppliers since they can find cheaper clothing from them than they would off the rack at a store. With an online wholesaler, you don’t have to search and shop for clothing in a physical store, so your business can operate entirely online.

If you have the time and don’t mind shopping in person, you can buy clothing from thrift stores or wholesale markets or find clothing manufacturers and vendors at trade shows. These are also great places to network and build relationships with suppliers, so you can order from them directly when you need to restock.

If you know how to sew or do fiber arts, like knitting or crocheting, you can make some of your own products. This route isn’t for everyone since it takes a lot of time and skill, but it can help you build a name for yourself by making unique products. You can also use these skills to alter or improve the clothing you buy from a thrift store or wholesale supplier to make them one-of-a-kind items.

2. Create incredible-looking product photos

Visually appealing product photos are the first step to selling your items. They should catch each customer’s eye and encourage them to click on your listing. Without product photos that clearly show your clothing items, visitors and potential customers are more likely to click away and choose another seller.

While you’ll almost certainly have to edit your product photos on some level, it helps to start with a high-quality image to make that part easier. If you can, model the garment you’re selling — or have someone else wear it — so you can get a picture of how it looks on a real person. If you don’t have a human model, you can use a mannequin or take a photo of it on the hanger. Try to use natural lighting with a complementary background that shows off the garment’s color, style, and quality.

Once you’ve taken your photos, refine them using image editing software. There are a lot of photo editors out there, and the one that works best for you will depend on the features you need and how extensively you want to edit your images. We recommend using Promeo, since it has tools specifically for creating beautiful product photos.

Promeo’s AI Creative Studio comes with a background remover to change your backdrop, an object remover to get rid of clutter, and a stock library of royalty-free images. You can also use its AI image enhancer to bring out the details of your clothing so customers get a better look at what they’re buying from you. Overall, the software has a wide range of tools to make your product photos stand out among other clothing stores.

3. Create an online store to sell clothes

There are lots of platforms where you can sell your clothes, and you can cross list between more than one if you have a wide variety of items. But maintaining multiple stores can be more work than you want in the beginning, so consider these options for your first one.

• Poshmark:

  Poshmark is one of the best platforms for designer brands and finding high fashion at a low price. It’s one of the most popular platforms among buyers, and it’s easy to set up.

• Mercari:

  People shopping on Mercari are looking for deals. This platform is better for sellers who are more interested in getting rid of their stock and are offering clothing at much lower prices than retail.

• eBay:

  eBay is easy to use, but it’s not exclusively for clothing and may not be the first place buyers look for your items. However, if you have a lot of different styles of clothing to list, you may reach a wider audience there.

• Depop:

  Depop caters to a younger demographic and is a good place for trendy clothing. It also has a social media vibe, so be ready to engage with other sellers and buyers there.

• Website:

  Your own website gives you more control over your process, and you can keep all your items on one platform. You’ll also need to do more marketing to get customers to notice your brand.

Before you start selling, consider what you plan to list and where it would fit best. You should also look at any flat selling fees and how much each platform takes from sales so you know how much you need to charge to make a profit. Once you choose your platform, add your brand information, including your logo, and list your products.

4. Set up a payment gateway for clothes sales

Many platforms, like Poshmark and Mercari, have their own payment systems. If you have your own website, you’ll need to add your own. Most website builders have plugins and integrations that you can add to accept different types of payments.

You want to make sure you have more than one payment method to make it easy for as many people as possible. Include options like credit and debit cards, digital wallets such as PayPal, Venmo, Google Pay, and Apple Pay, and bank transfer.

Having multiple gateways lowers the risk of people being unable to shop with you because you don’t accept their payment method. You’ll also need to verify your information and make sure you connect it to your bank account so you receive the payment.

5. Market and promote your clothes business

Your customers won’t know you exist if you don’t talk about your business where they can see you. Even before you open your shop, you should be posting about your store online, researching your audience to find out what resonates with them, and creating a strategy for how to reach your ideal customers.

The right messaging in your marketing materials, combined with high-quality images, will draw in customers. On the other hand, inconsistent or unclear messaging will prevent them from even visiting your shop.

It takes time to develop your brand, but having marketing tools can speed up the process. This kind of software can help you organize your marketing materials, improve your messaging, create posts and ads, and share it all with your audience on your chosen platforms as part of your marketing campaign.

While many software options will work here, Promeo’s AI Magic Designer lets you jump right into marketing without a long learning curve. To start, it generates complete, customizable ads based on prompts and keywords from you. Then, you can edit the text and images so the ad captures your brand voice.

Promeo’s brand kits keep your tone, brand colors, and other marketing materials together. Plus, its batch editor lets you refine multiple posts and ads at once for faster editing and visual consistency. After you’ve created your posts, you can share them directly to popular social media platforms to promote your clothing and generate interest from potential customers.

6. Ship and fulfill clothing orders

Now that you’ve got your shop set up and have started marketing your products, the last step is fulfilling customer orders. At this point, make sure you have a policy set up for customer service. It should include shipping and returns, how long customers can expect it to take you to fulfill an order, and how to contact you if they have questions or problems with an order. Having this information where they can easily find it will make order fulfillment easier and more efficient for you and your customers.

When it comes to choosing a shipping carrier, you want to consider things like where you’ll ship to, shipping rates, package insurance, and service options. You’ll have to charge customers shipping, so you want reasonable rates for them and yourself, so it’s still worth it for everyone.

You’ll need the right packing materials to ship your items, too. Since clothing doesn’t get easily damaged during transit, most sellers use soft packing envelopes. Still, try to pack them neatly since many customers appreciate careful, attractive packaging. That can mean folding the clothes so they don’t arrive wrinkled and getting custom tissue paper or branded stickers to include in the package.

Use a package insert with branding information, like your store’s social accounts and website, to give customers a place to keep up with your new listings. If the customer likes to do unboxing videos of their clothing, showing these branded materials creates an opportunity for word-of-mouth marketing. As a result, you may get new customers.