A Packed Closet Leads to Secondhand Subscription Boxes

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

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In today's story, a professional organizer finds a way to stitch her passion for thrift shopping into profits. Her first attempt is only somewhat successful, so she tries again, and then she tries a third time. Now listen, my friends, please understand, it often requires multiple ideas and attempts to create your first successful side hustle. And those who are successful are often willing to try, try again, and not just in the same way, because you know that quote, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, "but expecting different results." So it's not just doing the same thing, but by tweaking or even wholesale changing the model. That's your best plan of attack.

Others will abandon ship, they're gonna give up, they're gonna think, "Oh, this is never gonna work." But if you keep applying what you learn, something will eventually work. I know this is true, I see it over and over, and the person in this story also makes an intentional decision about what kind of business she wants and how it will fit into her overall lifestyle. So that's right, it's not just about making money, it's about finding harmony with all of your needs and many of your wants. Welcome to Side Hustle School, this is your host, Chris Guillebeau. The story is coming up after this 30-second shout-out to our sponsor.

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Liz Funk spent her college years picking through the tiny vintage shops tucked away in little corners of New York City. She loved combing through the racks in search of hidden treasures. And to this day, she lovingly looks back on her major scores, like the time she found a beautiful black dress in the East Village for just $2, or a pair of Aldo yellow heels for $5. But Liz lived in a small Brooklyn apartment, and that meant when it came to her closet space, the struggle was real. One day she was staring into that closet and realized that she had a lot of clothes she just didn't wear anymore.

I mean, of course she wanted to buy more. This got her thinking, she knew she wasn't the only woman struggling with this problem. There were piles of clothes just laying dormant in closets across the country, and Liz wished there was a better way to get them from woman A to woman B. Although she loved sifting through consignment shops, she knew that a lot of other people didn't. Plus, these days, so many vintage shops were becoming selective about the clothes they would take.

Even Goodwill, a place known for taking just about anything, only sells about 20% of the textiles they receive. The other 80% goes to recycling companies, which then turn the garments into carpet padding or house insulation. So for a while, Liz shoved her big ideas for secondhand clothing into the back of that closet. But she still loved shopping, so that's what she kept doing. Soon she had a huge inventory full of amazing vintage pieces, even in sizes that didn't fit.

She began giving her treasures away to friends. As Liz says, it became her own unusual love language. The frequent gifting led her to start working on an online store, where she could upload pictures of the pieces she found and then sell them for a higher rate than she paid. She called that store and we evolve. To her delight, she started making a small amount of money each month from reselling.

But Liz wasn't ready to hang up her hat or list it for sale just yet. She knew she could make it bigger and better. Now that she realized there was an audience for her service, she set out to drum up some excitement before relaunching on April 1st, 2018. She even decided to invest some money into placing ads in newsletters. She also placed ads on Pinterest, where she had a significant following and sent samples out to influencers in the hopes that they would recommend her store.

That relaunch came and went and didn't end up moving the needle on sales at all. Liz was stumped. How is she gonna make this more profitable? Two weeks later, she set aside a Saturday afternoon for a brainstorming session. With a glass of kombucha in one hand, a Sharpie marker in the other, she thought hard about what the future of her hustle could be.

And that's when the idea of a subscription box service came to her. She would have customers fill out a style survey. They would explain their fashion preferences and sizing information. Then Liz would create a box full of beautiful secondhand pieces and send it right to their door. About a month later, Liz was officially offering subscription boxes on her website.

And the sales quickly surpassed her online store. Her profits instantly climbed to $700 a month. Soon after, Liz closed down the online store and totally committed to only selling those subscriptions. After experimenting with all kinds of ideas about how to turn her passion into profits, she finally found the one that fit the concept of upscale secondhand fashion the best. Her profits remained steady for a few months and then the holiday season hit.

She had a huge influx of orders and ended up enlisting her friends for help. Even the mailman was in on the operation. Whenever she needed boxes shipped, she would text him and he would be on the way over to pick them up. That's a very friendly, helpful mailman, by the way. I don't think I could do that myself with mine.

Liz was thrilled, at least at first. Her hustle was beginning to grow. She could see its potential to be a bustling business. As Liz put it, she was ready to become the titan of secondhand pants. But after the holiday season ended, she realized that once she paid all of her helpers, she had hardly any money left over and it was an insane amount of work.

So she had to adjust once more. Liz realized if she wanted to make her hustle into a revolutionary brand, it would require a nonstop operation. And it all sounded exhausting. Rather than turn "And We Evolve" into the face of secondhand fashion, she decided that running a small home-based operation was more her style. Her hustle was birthed from a love for thrifting and some of her favorite evenings were spent sifting through the style surveys her clients filled out and finding the perfect combination of clothes and accessories while binge listening to a podcast.

Sometimes side hustles aren't always about making the business bigger. In Liz's case, "And We Evolve" provided a way to make a little extra money each month from something that she cares about. Each month, she keeps around $500 to use for whatever she wants and reinvest another $500 to $1,000 back into the business. This extra income provides added support to her day-to-day life, all while having the added bonus of being something that contributes to a cause she's passionate about. That causes reducing the negative effects of textile production.

In the future, Liz hopes to continue ironing out the project so she can provide the most interesting and affordable secondhand fashion business she can. And all without running herself ragged. [Music]

So if it's not working, iterate. Change it up, tweak it up, do something different, change your model. I'm often encouraging our listeners to do this and I love stories that kind of illustrate that point of how the first direction doesn't quite work.

And the second direction works a little bit better but still has some issues and you try something new and maybe it actually increases the sales but it increases your frustration or your stress level, whatever else it is as well. So then you have to decide what is most important to me at this time in my life. And it could have been just as good a decision for Liz to say, I really actually want to grow this. So how can I do that? How can I go all in, even if it's exhausting?

But in her case, she was like, you know what? I just want this to be the simple home-based brand because I like the other things I do and I want this to compliment my life, to bring harmony into my life without taking it over. So lots of ways to do this. And also, by the way, be sure to celebrate your successes. Liz has what she calls a happy policy for herself, which I love, I think this is so fun.

After she gets a new order or subscriber, she stops what she's doing and jumps up and down to celebrate. Isn't that cool, happy policy? Maybe you need to have a happy policy in your hustle or just otherwise in your life somehow. So I'll leave you with that today. I hope you enjoyed the story.

Inspiration is good, inspiration with action is better. Today's show notes, all right, sidehustleschool.com/913. That is for episode 913. We'll be back again tomorrow, 914 is coming up. My name is Chris Guillebeau and this is "Side Hustle School." [Music]

From the Onward Project.