Forget Gucci, Chanel or Louis Vuitton. It’s Starbucks that’s emerged as a hot brand for bargain hunters.
Shoppers in the past several weeks have flocked to popular resale marketplaces like Poshmark and OfferUp to score mugs, tumblers and cups bearing the Seattle-based chain’s brand.
Poshmark CEO Manish Chandra said a pandemic-triggered nostalgia for Starbucks (SBUX) drinks and the Starbucks (SBUX) experience has made it the number one trending brand on the site.
While people can get their Starbucks coffee to go at drive-thru windows or through delivery services like Uber Eats, consumers haven’t been able to partake in the daily in-store experience of waiting in line, interacting with their favorite barista and perusing the latest display of seasonal tumblers for sale since March. Starbucks shut its online store in 2017 and sells its merchandise only through its retail locations.
“People have been making their coffee at home and pouring it into their favorite Starbucks cups, or taking their Starbucks mugs to their Zoom meetings or now, virtual coffee meets,” Chandra said.
Sellers are pitching everything from official Starbucks merchandise to items like mini Starbucks coffee cup earrings or even a Starbucks pumpkin spice latte hair scrunchie.
The demand for all things Starbucks didn’t erupt overnight. Poshmark said that it’s been building since the mid-March shutdown.
The resale site said orders of all kinds of Starbucks mugs and tumblers, new and vintage, have increased by more than 100% since the pandemic was declared in early March.
A Starbucks spokesperson said the company is aware of its mugs and cups selling well on resale platforms but declined to comment further.
Not all the Starbucks items are bargain priced. Several recent listings by Poshmark sellers are of the new seasonal tumblers like the recently launched iridescent collection or the Confetti cold drink tumbler, featuring a color-changing pattern. Such items are priced at a significant markup – between $15 to $65 or higher.
Searches for Starbucks mugs, cups and tumblers have been actively popping up on OfferUp, too.
The company said the color-changing cups have “rapidly climbed OfferUp’s trending search lists and have frequently been among our top 10 fastest growing search terms during the past week.”
