Mercari Forces 20-30% Discount To Promote Items With No Notice To Sellers

UPDATE 12-5-24

Some Mercari sellers say the Promote feature has gone back to the previous 5% discount, prompting some to wonder if it was test conveniently timed to coincide with Cyber Weekend.

Let us know in the comments below if you're still seeing higher discount amount required to Promote or if it's gone back to 5% for you too!

Mercari US sellers are waking up to an unpleasant surprise ahead of Black Friday Cyber Weekend holiday shopping rush as an apparent update to Promote items feature now requires 20-30% discounts with no notice or public announcement.

The Promote feature usually requires sellers to permanently drop their price 5%, and in fact the Mercari help and policy page still states that is the minimum today.

But Reddit is buzzing with reports that the minimum to promote has now been raised to 20-30% for some sellers with no notice.

Mine are doing 20 percent too but they stopped. Someone else was dropping by 30 percent. Mine lifted. I think they are going around to different sellers at certain times to encourage quick sales for rhanksgiving and black friday.

Regardless, they didnt even warn any of us. I had to hurry and edit my price after I realized how much it dropped, so did others. They're always doing something ridiculous.

Anyone else super peeved that instead of a 5% drop on your price to Promote to Everyone, it’s now 20%? That’s wildly steep. Seems that it’s better to just delete and relist.

Example of $55 item having to go to $44, instead of $52.25 shown above.

Some sellers say they saw a note when trying to promote indicating it's a new policy to promote "quick sales" and others say they are still seeing the discount amount at 5%, indicating it could be a phased rollout or that Mercari may be targeting the higher discount requirement to certain items or sellers based on unknown criteria.

It’s a new update to encourage “quick sales” — I got a push email about it. It’s their way of trying to compensate for low sales overall I’m sure. Mercari is the worst.

Sellers are just going to price higher to make up for the larger promo... or just not promo as often. I'm just wondering why the percentage is different for people. Mine seems to be 10%. Others are seeing 30% or 20%. Is it by category or something?

Or maybe they're rolling it out in waves? Most companies do makes changes like this in batches in case something goes very wrong.

The move is just one of many sudden and unannounced changes Mercari has undertaken recently including the abrupt discontinuation of Local delivery and Smart Offers.

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Value Added ResourceLiz Morton

Mercari has been struggling since launching a new fee structure in March, removing selling fees and shifting the fee burden to the buyer side of the sale instead.

The company faced pushback from buyers who experienced massive sticker shock when seeing additional fees tacked on at checkout, with some making unflattering comparisons to airline fees or worse yet - buying tickets from Ticketmaster!

Buyers were particularly taken aback because the fees were variable and could sometimes exceed the 10% fee that had previously been applied on the seller side, raising serious concerns about transparency that have forced Mercari to test showing buyer fees on the item page before checkout to stem the tide of abandoned carts.

Unfortunately, the fee structure shakeup hasn't been working as well as Mercari had hoped, leading to a mass layoff of ~45% staff in June with US CEO John Lagerling admitting the change had increased the number of listings on the site, but had "not delivered the short-term results that we had hoped for on the buyer/ GMV side."

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Value Added ResourceLiz Morton

Mercari is facing increasing pressure from their shareholders in Japan to address the continued woeful underperformance and lack of GMV (Gross Merchandise Volume) growth of their US marketplace, leading to the announcement that Lagerling will be "resigning" at the end of the year and Founder/ Japan CEO Shintaro Yamada will lead both Japan and US operations in 2025.

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Value Added ResourceLiz Morton

While Mercari has not yet said specifically what they plan to do with fees, they have hinted at the possibility the leadership change could also lead to changes to the fee structure when speaking to investors last month.

Q6. What exactly will the change in the management structure in the US change? Moreover, are you considering returning to the original fee model?

...Regarding returning to the original fee model and other such changes, at present, we have not seen the effects that we had expected. Therefore, we will be flexibly considering options such as revising the fee model as part of our strategy in the US going forward.

Mercari has not responded to requests for comment about the Promote increase at time of publishing.

Stay tuned for updates in this developing story and let us know in the comments below if you are seeing changes to minimum percentages for Mercari Promote!