Trade-Up! Fashionable Flipped Threads Lead to Fabulous Profits

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

[Music]

Welcome to a new week and a good reselling story. My name is Chris Guillebeau and this is Side Hustle School. I just wrapped up a bunch of filming for a couple of upcoming LinkedIn courses. And as part of that, I told some stories about my reselling days. Long ago, I used to buy and resell all kinds of stuff.

It was my entry point into entrepreneurship, my entry point into finding a new way of life for myself, actually, 'cause it led to me traveling the world and being an aid worker and doing all kinds of other stuff that came later. And as part of this course, I also did a comparison where we looked at different business models based on ease and accessibility. Reselling pretty much came out ahead of everything else on those criteria. Then I did some pros and cons of each business model. And here's the funny thing, I had a hard time thinking about the cons or the disadvantages of reselling.

In the end, for me many years ago, I just moved on to other things. Like there were other things that I wanted to do. Maybe the only downside was I felt I wasn't really changing the world. I felt I really wasn't making an impact in some way. So that's why I wanted to move on.

But in terms of a business model, there's really not anything wrong with it at all. That's why I still believe it's a great entry point and maybe even a final destination for a lot of people who want to enter this world of earning money apart from their job. So we'll hear a bit about that today. In this story, a British fashionista turns 20 pounds into 2,000 pounds a month, flipping her vintage threads online. Stay tuned, that story is coming up in just about 30 seconds.

[Music]

From a young age, Rachel Sadler of Birmingham, England has had a love affair with fashion. While many of her peers headed to popular box stores to spend their hard earned allowance, Rachel set her sights on something a bit more old school. It wasn't just the thrill of the hunt that had her hopping from thrift store to vintage hideaway. It was a desire to find something that was uniquely hers. She had a personality that stood out and she wanted her wardrobe to reflect that.

When she went off to university, she studied fashion design naturally. After she graduated, Rachel opted to take a year off to travel the world with her boyfriend. When they found their way back home after months of camping, they were broke. She knew she should be looking for a full-time job, but Rachel first took her last 20 pounds and indulged in a little retail therapy. That's where our story begins with at 20 pounds and a pastel covered zebra print jacket, which Rachel assures us was much cooler than it sounds.

When she got home, she asked her mom to take a photo of her wearing her funky new find. And then she recalled something her sister had said to her in passing about an online platform called ASOS Marketplace. It was a fashion website that provided a chance for small boutiques to sell their own label or vintage collections without the need of opening a brick and mortar establishment. Since the steep overheads were pretty much the only thing keeping her from opening her own vintage storefront, she jumped with the opportunity to sign up as a seller. She named her new shop Aida's Attic Vintage.

She wasn't relying on that shop to pay the bills just yet because this was a side hustle after all. She worked a few waitressing gigs before finally landing a job designing window displays for a large clothing brand. And whenever she wasn't artistically posing mannequins, she was scouring her local thrift shops in pursuit of more promising items to flip. Her very first sale, you guessed it, that pastel colored zebra print jacket. Apparently it wasn't so bad after all.

With that sale, she earned her first 25 pounds or about $30. She got a taste for the reselling lifestyle and she wanted more. Rachel knew that the best way to get her threads in front of her target audience was by using an established platform like ASOS Marketplace. But after spending roughly a year selling there, she also noticed a few pain points. They charged a hefty 20% commission on all sales and that was on top of a monthly fee for rent.

She also found that customers sometimes got confused with ASOS the brand and their marketplace sellers. And she had a few issues with returns being lost and sent back to ASOS. But the straw that broke the well-dressed camel's back happened two years in. A customer ordered one of Rachel's favorite items, an expensive sheepskin suede coat. She was pleased when she felt that it had found a good home but then all hell broke loose.

The customer broke the zipper and stained it and then proceeded to complain to ASOS that the product was damaged to begin with. Unfortunately, ASOS sided with the customer. That was just too much for Rachel's fashion-loving heart to forgive. She called it quits and moved her shop to Etsy, a platform with a much lower commission and some fantastic seller tools. A few years later, a lot has changed for both Rachel and Eva's attic vintage.

She launched her own website using Shopify in addition to her Etsy shop. And she's expanded her offerings to include personal and group shopping tours in Birmingham, London, and Nottingham using Eventbrite and Airbnb. That's right, starting around $60, you can scour the racks with Rachel and even get some expert advice on your look. She also waved goodbye to her position as a window display designer. Although she'd enjoyed it, she started to feel like a square peg in a round hole.

So after three years, she cut her hours back and then quit entirely to focus more of her attention on Eva's attic vintage. These days, Rachel brings in anywhere from 2,000 to 3,000 pounds a month. That's about $2,500 to $3,700. For those looking to embrace their love of vintage clothing and perhaps sell it like Rachel, you're in luck. She's got a few recommendations for you.

Mainly, listen to the right advice. Rachel says that there were a lot of naysayers in the beginning who told her that she couldn't make a living doing something she loved. So don't let people who don't work for themselves or haven't sold anything online tell you what's possible. Next, focus on specific keywords to help you rank highly in Google. Since vintage fashion trends keep popping up, find ways to narrow in on specific markets like 50s and 60s housewife trends or 70s flower child trends so that potential customers know exactly what they can expect from your clothing options.

And last, don't dwell on mistakes or wish that you could have done something differently. Mistakes lead to change in progress. Don't be afraid of failure. You can always try something else. Moving forward, Rachel is looking to grow her vintage shop.

She's also eager to expand her shopping tours and begin designing her own pieces to make available for purchase. No matter what she ends up doing next, we're pretty sure she'll do it with style. [Music]

So reselling is still very much a viable option, as I said, in terms of ease and accessibility. There's not really any other business model that is as simple as this. You can do it right now.

You can do it from lots of places in the world. You can also start with a single item, just like Rachel did, just like I did more than 20 years ago. And Rachel's story, she had that one jacket that she sold. And she was like, "Hmm, I wonder if I could keep doing this." And then from there, presumably she went on to build inventory, sell more frequently, et cetera. But it all started with that first jacket.

Over time as you do this, if you're selling vintage clothing or something else, you'll probably get a sense for what sells. You might not know right away, but as you do it more and more, you're gonna be able to spot something and say, "Oh, I'm pretty sure that's gonna be very desirable." Or perhaps maybe not. And you'll find that a lot of your sales fit into one of three categories. You're gonna have stuff that sells consistently, and for a decent profit, you're gonna have stuff that sells right away, highly desirable, and/or at a high profit. And then you're gonna have stuff that doesn't sell that well at all.

So naturally, over time, you want to avoid that third category, wherever possible. Then you can either focus on selling a bunch of stuff consistently, earning a small profit, but earning it over and over, or take a bit more of a risk and try to only sell more desirable items, more exclusive or more unusual items that you can earn a higher profit on. Or you can, of course, do a mix of those two things. And sometimes you don't really know until you get going. Sometimes as you go along, you tend to specialize.

You learn what people like, you learn what you have access to, what you're good at, what you're interested in, and so on. But again, a viable option, you can start from wherever you are in the world, or at least lots of places in the world, and you can start with a single item. If you'd like to learn more about Ava's Attic Vintage, just come check out the show notes, sidehustleschool.com/947. We'll be back again tomorrow and the whole week. We've got all kinds of stuff coming up.

Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. Thank you so much for listening. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]

From the Onward Project.