Indy Clover Review: Is Selling Here Worth It? My Honest Opinion

A good friend of mine introduced me to this new business called Indy Clover, that had just opened up in my neck of the woods. If you’re not familiar with Indy Clover, they’re basically a pre-loved clothing & small home decor resale store where everyday sellers get a chance to sell their pre-owned items in store for a week’s time.

What is Indy Clover?

Indy Clover is a retail store and franchise that operates on a pop-up market model, allowing individuals to rent out spaces to sell their new or gently used items. It’s like a modern twist on the consignment shop, but with more flexibility and less hassle for the sellers.

You can find a wide range of products, from clothes and accessories to home decor and handmade crafts. The concept is designed to support local sellers and offer shoppers a unique and ever-changing selection of goods.

How does Indy Clover work?

Indy Clover relies on local sellers to come in and bring their clothes and accessories to sell in a week’s timeframe.

As a seller, you’ll need to first go to their website and select the nearest location to you. Right now they’re only in a few states but they’re slowly growing and branching out to other states. In fact, as I write this, there’s another Indy Clover opening up in Frisco, TX which is not too far from the location I sold at in Plano, TX.

On their website, you then select the Saturday morning you would be available to go in on their 8 AM – 10 AM timeframe to set up your booth. The cost of a booth is $35 (at least for my location, prices of booths may vary), but they did have a special for 50% off your first booth (so $17.50) and with the promise of a full refund if you do not sell anything from your booth.

So once you make your payment, you’ll need to make sure you bring your clothes and other goods you wish to sell that selected Saturday morning. Depending on how much you bring, you might be there the full 2 hours to get set up. For me, I only took an hour to set up – got there at 9 AM and was out the door by 10 AM. They’ll give you a booth number so you need to make sure to add that booth number on all of your tagged items.

They give you a box of materials you’ll use to set up your booth:

• Tagging Gun
• Tags to list price, booth, and size of items you’re selling
• Stickers for items that can’t be tagged
• strings for tags that need to be strung on (such as shoes)
• A sharpie
• a smallish poster to list your store brand (if you have one) and anything else you may want to promote. I saw that sellers would list the brands they have in their booth along with a website or an Instagram handle.

You’re given a week to have your booth up and on the following Friday of that week, you’ll need to come back between 7 PM – 9PM to “take down” your booth. In other words, you’ll need to make sure you arrive in that time slot to take down your clothes and accessories from the clothes hangers and take them back home with you.

If you can’t make it, someone from Indy Clover can take your booth down for you for a $10 fee which will be taken from your profits. You then have until Tuesday to pick up your items.

And throughout the week, you can text or email your local Indy Clover for an update on your booth. You can ask them how many items have sold already and for a picture of your booth. You can also go anytime during business hours of that week to your booth to restock. You’ll be given a “restock” sticker to place on your booth to let people know that there’s new items to browse and shop for.

And lastly, on your final two days of your booth – Thursday and Friday – you have the option of discounting your items in the hopes that they sell even faster. Your options for discounting on either of these two days are 25%, 50% or even as much as 75% off.

How my Selling Experience at Indy Clover Went

Friday: The day before setup

After I took some time to understand their process, I spent some time the night before putting together some clothes, shoes and items I wanted to take with me the next Friday morning. I put about 3 tote bags full of things and packed them up in my car so that I was ready to hit the road early morning (I am NOT a morning person, especially on weekends).

Saturday: The day of setup

When I got there at 9, it was already jam packed with people setting up their booths. A lot of the booths were already done and full of things. I actually found the booths to be larger than I had in mind and wondered if i brought enough to fill an entire booth.

I went up to one of the employees to get checked in, and they then walked me to the booth assigned to me along with a small box of essentials I’d need to set up my booth (see the list above).

There’s a bunch of hangers already at your booth, but if you needed more, there’s plenty of extras to take. This whole process took me an hour to put everything on their hangers, to tag all of my clothes and shoes, and to jot down the size, price and booth numbers of each item I was selling. I really wanted to be out of there as quickly as possible as I had brunch plans so I was out of there around 10 AM.

Tuesday: Checking in virtually

I decided to send the store an email and ask how my booth was doing in terms of sales, and asked for a photo of the booth. I got back a response within 2 hours with a picture of my booth and I was informed that 6 of my items were already sold.

I thought. great! It’s only Tuesday so not bad! My booth set up looked like it was still all intact. I was going to be in the neighborhood the next day so I wanted to check in on whether I should restock some more. With 6 items already sold, I figured it was worth stopping by to add a few more items to my booth.

Wednesday: Restocking

I walked in that evening around 6:30 PM, just a half hour before closing, and asked if I could restock. They gave me that save box of materials I would need to set up my items, along with a “just restocked” gold sticker magnet to place on my booth.

I spent about 15 to 20 minutes setting up my restocked items and was out the door before 7 PM.

Before I left though, I asked if it was possible for me to take down my booth before 7 PM on Friday as I had other plans and it would have made my schedule easier if I came earlier that day. They said no and the only time slot I was allowed was between 7 to 9 PM. Or another option was to have them take it down for me for a $10 fee, and I could come pick up my items at a later time but before Tuesday evening.

Saturday: Day of pickup

Turns out I was going to be in the neighborhood again so I stopped by around 8 PM to pick up my belongings. The “tear down” process only took me 15-20 minutes. I took everything off my hangers and stuffed them into my totes and an extra bag – tags and everything.

One of the employees there checked me out and informed me that I should be getting a Venmo payout between Sunday and Tuesday once they finalize all the payments and such.

Sunday Evening: received my payout

Received a WHOPPING $36.57 payout from my sales that week (is my sarcasm showing?).

My thoughts on this entire selling experience

While phone in hand, looking at my Venmo payment of a measly $36.57 in total sales from that week, I let out a sigh and the biggest eyeroll to myself. I was disappointed in the entire process to be honest, and here’s why.

Firstly, I had clothes that I was basically going to give away or donate for free because I just didn’t want to put in the effort of listing each item up on an online platform such as Poshmark, for what I’d probably sell for $5 per item or less. It just wasn’t worth the hassle in my opinion. So when I heard about Indy Clover, I thought if I had the clothes in public eyesight for a week at really low prices (I listed 95% of my items for $5, and the rest anywhere from $10-20), that these items would sell relatively quickly.

By the way, if you are interested in selling on Poshmark, I recommend reading my post on whether it is worth selling on Poshmark

I was disappointed when I found out that I had only sold 6 to 7 items total in a weeks time, and this included a 25% booth discount on Thursday and a 50% discount off the prices on Friday. So even with the discount, I sold very little.

Secondly, I had to shift my schedule around and make sure that I was available that Saturday morning for set up and that Friday evening for take down of my booth. This place was about 25 minutes from my home so not a quick ride and back. Not to boast but my hourly work rate is a lot more than $36 dollars an hour and I think I’ve spent a total of 2-3 hours for this entire process alone.

Thirdly, if you really think about it, from that $36.57 in sales, you then subtract the booth cost (in my case $17.50 – not sure if I paid taxes on this but lets stick to $17.50 for now), and further subtract the cost of gas and all to get to and from the place. So really, my total came out to be $19.07. Yikes! A full week and only $19 bucks?

Additional Thoughts . . .

In all honestly, one would have been better off putting that money in the stock market or all on red for roulette, lol.

But I do feel as though the store does not get much foot traffic. This particular location is in commercial area with lots of other strip malls and shops but it’s in a sort of hidden spot and not really central to many of the other higher foot traffic stores. And I also feel that I made a lot of my sales that first day when other sellers were setting up shop and browsing through other seller’s booths.

I can’t speak for all days but on the Wednesday that I did stop by, there was no one there besides another seller restocking and an employee. So my suspicion is that the store doesn’t get much foot traffic.

I also think that perhaps my style of clothes I was selling that week was probably not for the right audience. I had a lot of clothing from Revolve, Club Monaco, Banana Republic, Zara, Self Portrait, Kate Spade and many of the more expensive brands. But I was competing against booths that sold brands like SheIn or Fashion Nova, and to a buyer that probably wants something indie like what you’d find on Depop. To be fair though, I did list most items at $5 simply because I wanted to get rid of them, but even my expensive, well made clothing did not sell for what I thought was a steal.

There’s also the concern for your items being misplaced, lost or even stolen. I don’t believe they have great surveillance and I’ve heard plenty of stories of items from sellers being lost or stolen or even being swapped out! Imagine selling an expensive pair of shoes only to come back at the end of the week to find the box still there but those shoes swapped out for another used pair that weren’t yours!

Who knows, perhaps I just had a bad week but my gut tells me that sellers simply don’t make much, or at least enough to be a repeat seller. There may be an occasional seller that sells $100 – $200 or more worth of stuff but even for me, this is simply not worth my time and effort.

All in all, if you feel you have inventory that is appealing and for the right audience (think high school and college aged female buyers), this might work for you, but for me this was a total miss and I won’t be trying out Indy Clover again. I think with the wrong target audience and the low foot traffic in addition to the possibility for theft of misplacement of things along with your time and effort, selling at Indy Clover just isn’t for me.

Personally I’ve had much better luck listing items on Poshmark and keeping those items stowed away in a box in my garage and only sifting through it when an item sells. This has been the better (and much cheaper and less time consuming) option for me and I’m sticking with that.

If you are considering or have tried out selling at Indy Clover, I’d love to hear your thoughts and comments below!

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