How Alex Mahl increased sales on Poshmark by 500% with Photoroom

Life before Photoroom

• Tried multiple backgrounds (rugs, doors, sheets) but nothing looked clean

• Listings hardly showed up in Google search results

• Struggled to stand out while selling saturated products 

• Used manual process for creating product and promotional visuals

Life with Photoroom

• Sales increased by 500%

• Listings appear at top of Google search within 15 minutes

• Batch-edits 10 listings in 3 minutes/20-30 listings in a day using Batch

• Manages visuals for nearly 8,000 active listings while working full-time

• Professional photos build buyer trust and confidence

Alex Mahl didn't set out to become a reseller when she started selling her own clothes 10 years ago. At 18, she was simply helping her parents move and needed to clear out her closet. But what began as a closet clean-out quickly evolved into a side business.

"I started helping other people local to me sell their own clothing as well," Alex recalls. During the COVID-19 pandemic period, she’d go to clients' homes and help them list their items on Poshmark for an hourly fee.

But Alex, who works full-time as an office manager and at a law firm’s finance department, knew she needed a more sustainable business model. "It was getting very overwhelming, and I wasn't really able to focus on my own closet anymore,” shares Alex. “I was like, okay, I'm helping all these people make all this money. Yes, I'm making an hourly fee, but what can I do to make it better for myself as well?"

From personal decluttering to a consignment business

At first, Alex stopped her one-to-one listing offer. She then hired people across New York to thrift clothing items for her business, managed the listing process on her shop, and hosted livestream sales shows on Poshmark to build her brand presence.

But the real turning point came after her New York Times feature story caught the attention of a celebrity with 1.2 million followers, who contacted Alex to sell her items on consignment. Two weeks later, Alex picked up 14 garbage bags of designer clothing, and her business model changed fully to consignment.

As a consignee, she now receives items from individuals and only pays them after the item sells. This advantage wasn’t possible in the previous model, which required her to pay thrifters upfront even if shoppers didn’t end up buying the item.

“Working with thrifters wasn't terrible, but I wasn't seeing as much profit as I wanted to because I was constantly paying off my credit card.”

— Alexandra Mahl, Founder, APM FINDS, LLC.

Today, Alex runs a successful Poshmark shop, where she has nearly 8,000 active listings. She’s been featured in Business Insider, appeared in a Poshmark TV commercial, and even spoke on a Photoroom panel at PoshFest.

With this growth and a steady stream of consignment clients, she began exploring ways to improve her products’ presentation online. But she faced a product image problem that limited her strategy.

The photography problem that was limiting growth

As a Poshmark ambassador and savvy e-commerce entrepreneur, Alex knew that product visuals with clean backgrounds help boost online sales. And yet she couldn't find the perfect backdrops.

“Think of Poshmark store profiles like dating apps. If your first photo isn’t aesthetically pleasing, no one's going to click on it. So, I tried different scenes in my house to capture products in the best backdrops. But no matter what I did, whether it was a rug, the back of my door, all my sheets, the image background just didn't look clean.”

— Alexandra Mahl, Founder, APM FINDS, LLC.

Nothing gave her the professional, polished look she needed. And Alex needed every advantage she could get in the competitive resale market, especially when reselling items from popular brands like Lululemon. "I thought, well, Lululemon is a saturated market. How am I going to make my item sell over someone else's?" shares Alex.

Between her full-time job and listing 20-30 items per day, plus packing 10-20 packages every night, Alex needed a solution that could transform her basic iPhone photos into professional-looking product images without adding hours to her already packed workload.

And so she went searching.

Alex found her visual partner in Photoroom

She explored Google for a solution, looking for a platform that could remove backgrounds and replace them with cleaner ones, like white backgrounds or marble flooring. That's how she discovered Photoroom.

“I’m serious about my business. So, once I found Photoroom, I knew it was the right solution for me and paid for it instantly. I didn't even do a free trial because I was already sold.”

— Alexandra Mahl, Founder, APM FINDS, LLC.

Today, Alex uses Photoroom to edit images for 20-30 items daily. Her workflow takes just three minutes for 10 listings:

1. She starts by snapping 10 products and listing them on Poshmark.

2. Next, she opens the Photoroom app, selects the Batch feature, uploads all first images of the items she listed, waits a few seconds for the tool to automatically remove the image backgrounds and add white backgrounds, and saves the edited photos in her camera roll.

3. Finally, she returns to her Poshmark app and changes the first picture of each listing, replacing the old images with the newly edited ones.

She now has multiple solutions for standing out on Poshmark

Her strategy combines Photoroom's professional imagery with smart marketing through social media, live shows, and audience engagement to stand out from the competition. But the foundation is always the same: a clean first photo that compels people to click.

While Alex primarily edits backgrounds with Photoroom, she also uses the platform to:

Showcase clothing on virtual models

She uses the AI virtual models for apparel, allowing her to show how items look when worn, without needing to style them on a person. "I love how I can just post a black t-shirt and press the button and boom, it's on a model," she says. "And if I don't like the model that it's on, I could change it."

Resize images to fit any e-commerce platform

She also relies on Photoroom's platform-specific optimization, most notably through the image resizer.

"I like how you're able to pick the image layout for each resale platform in Photoroom. If you click the feature, it will show sizes for Poshmark, eBay, Mercari, and Depop. Photoroom already knows the exact square footage that your image needs for the platform. That's a big deal in e-commerce."

— Alexandra Mahl, Founder, APM FINDS, LLC.

Create marketing materials

Alex has found creative ways to extend Photoroom's value beyond her daily listings. When she was hosting live selling shows three times a week, she used Photoroom to create eye-catching promotional flyers. "I would grab things out of pictures, remove all the white backgrounds, and then create my flyer," she shares. "Those were huge for me because it drew everyone to my shows."

Today, cleaner photos help her shop appear on Google Search, boosting sales by 500%

"My biggest win is that my listings show up on Google, and it's because I now have that white crisp background from Photoroom.”

— Alexandra Mahl, Founder, APM FINDS, LLC.

This matters because Poshmark's internal search function is notoriously unreliable. "The search on Poshmark is not great if you're looking for something specific," Alex explains. "Nine times out of ten, what you’re searching for won’t come up. So Google is a better channel for searching."

By optimizing her product photos for Google's algorithms, Alex essentially created a second storefront, one that captures buyers who would never have found her through Poshmark's platform alone and has skyrocketed her sales as a result.

“I've actually tested this out with my own listings. I'll give it like 15 minutes after I list it, then I'll Google it, and my product will show up right at the top. That's a big deal. Just adding white backgrounds using Photoroom has made my sales jump by 500%.”

— Alexandra Mahl, Founder, APM FINDS, LLC.

Beyond visibility and sales, Alex continues to rely on Photoroom as her product visual partner that helps her:

• Build buyers’ trust: For Alex, professional photos do more than drive clicks; they build buyer confidence in an industry where trust is everything. "The resale market can be scary. I've ordered things that didn’t look as described,” she says. “So I'm always making sure my items are accurately displayed and described."

• Save time for what matters most: Alex has scaled her business without sacrificing her sanity or full-time job. She's able to manage nearly 8,000 active listings, work with high-profile consignment clients, and maintain a sustainable business model that's funding major life milestones, including buying her first car and planning her wedding.

Alex is looking ahead with confidence

Alex continues to expand her consignment client roster while maintaining her full-time career, confident that Photoroom will scale with her ambitions. She's “excited to see what Photoroom has in store for the future” and to explore more Photoroom features, including the AI Product Staging and Product Beautifier tools she hasn't tried yet.

When asked what she'd tell someone considering Photoroom today, Alex doesn't mince words:

“If you're considering downloading Photoroom, do it. You’ll be very silly if you don’t, because it's only going to boost your business. Try the free trial if you want, but you'll like it so much, you’ll just end up paying for it.”

— Alexandra Mahl, Founder, APM FINDS, LLC.

For Alex, that boost has meant more than just sales numbers. It's given her the freedom to build a life she's proud of, one professionally photographed listing at a time.