Deborah Gittins loves online shopping and has been doing so for nearly 20 years.
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An early user of eBay Mrs Gittins has successfully utilised the reach of the platform to source and sell vintage fine china and other valuable collectibles.
Originally based in Blayney a move to open a store in her Millthorpe home never came to pass, so the intention was then to continue selling on Facebook Marketplace.
Mrs Gittins though believes that Facebook has got harder and harder to sell on as they deliberately limit the number of people who can see the posts, and then try to get you to pay to promote your posts.
"I have over a thousand followers for my Poppyvale Vintage Collectibles on Facebook but my posts are only seen by a few unless I promote them," she said.
"They're making it more difficult now because they want us to sell through Marketplace which is great for some things but I sell fine china, antiques and vintage clothes and jewellery so Marketplace isn't a good place for me."
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It was the inevitable fraudulent buyer on Facebook that was the last straw for Mrs Gittins who lost sales totalling nearly $2,000 to one purchaser.
It was when she saw an ad about American site Poshmark coming to Australia in February that her interest in finding another online outlet was piqued.
"At that time they were only listing clothing, shoes and handbags which I had a few pieces of in my stock but then I noticed that they had expanded into homewares which really suited me," she said.
Mrs Gittins was one of the first in Australia to sign up with the platform and her experience has been a much more positive one than Facebook Marketplace.
"Poshmark look after everything in the background," she said. "I package things up and they organise a Sendle courier to pick it up, they organise the sales transfers through PayPal so I don't have to deal with the customer at all.
"All I do is put pictures up and when they sell them they get a commission which is based on a sliding scale. It's really easy to use."
As an early adopter of the platform and having items frequently listed Mrs Gittins has become an ambassador for the site, a role that has one important benefit compared to Facebook's Marketplace.
"I now have 205,000 followers in Australia compared to the thousand I have on Facebook," she said.
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Mark Logan
Started working in newspapers in the 1990's in the darkroom of the Pastoral Times in Deniliquin before moving to Millthorpe in 2003. Soon after arriving I started as a photographer at the CWD. Now a journalist at the Blayney Chronicle.
Started working in newspapers in the 1990's in the darkroom of the Pastoral Times in Deniliquin before moving to Millthorpe in 2003. Soon after arriving I started as a photographer at the CWD. Now a journalist at the Blayney Chronicle.
