I honestly don't remember the last time or if I even ever done along, just sit down and let me tell you how to do something type of video because, honestly, I would not consider myself an expert in practically anything in this world.

But one thing that I do have a decent amount of experience with is the thrift ing and reselling business.

And a lot of you guys have requested that I talk about it.

So he rose.

Nothing.

I guess for those of you don't really know what I'm talking about.

Basically, what I do is I've been running this side business for a couple years.

I like to think of it basically as online boutique slash vintage store.

I go to thrift stores and estate sales and pick out clothing that I think is really cool.

And then I model it, take photos and put it online, sell it for a profit and then ship it out and hopefully people enjoying their clothing that they bought for me.

Obviously, I'm not the first person to do this at all.

There are a ton of girls guys who run instagram shop stops on deep pop and posh Mark.

And I think it's actually a fairly popular business model, especially in cities like L.

A.

Where I live or New York.

I will say I am by no means a pro at this, and there are a ton of people who do what I'm doing a lot better, but I do make like a decent amount of money a couple $100 to maybe like $500 a month, depending on how much effort I put in based off my little reselling business situation.

So and also personally, I think it's a really cool way to be part of the sustainable fashion movement.

I think the statistic is somewhere around 90% of clothes that's donated to thrift stores never gets old.

So by buying clothes from goodwill or Salvation Army, whether it's for yourself or for a business, you're not only supporting a charitable college, but you're also buying clothing that would likely go into a landfill and hopefully giving some new life to something did pieces At least that's how I like to think about it.

I started reselling clothing online a little over four years ago.

I actually didn't start by selling drifted clothing, but I had just realized that I had way too much crap that I didn't like to wear in my closet, and my New Year's resolution was to clear it out and kind of refresh my closet.

So I bought a posh mark, which was definitely the biggest reselling app back in, what, 2014.

So I sold my old clothes online kind of casually for a couple of years.

But when I really started getting into, it was actually last summer.

Basically, I've told the story before, but I had never really been into thrift ing before.

But last summer I got my wisdom teeth taken out, and for around two weeks afterwards, I was just a miserable chipmunk asked Human being, my cheeks were so puffy and I was in so much pain, so out of boredom, I was like, Why don't I distract myself from my suffering and go to the thrift store?

And when I noticed while I was there, because apparently I'm always in hustling mode, even when I'm a chipmunk is that there were a lot of cool pieces that I could pick up that weren't necessarily like, perfect for my style or perfect for my body type, but I could probably sell them to other people.

Also on that summer, I happened to be on a kick of reading books of written by celebrities.

Because I'm a piece of pop culture trash like that.

They're very easy to read and very amusing.

Okay, so after I went on my little thrifty convincer, I picked up Girl Boss by Sofia Amoroso.

She's the founder of Nasty Gal, which I guess is now kind of defunct.

But how she started out her business was actually reselling drifted and vintage clothing on eBay.

And that's really what made me realize that I wasn't crazy and a lot of other people were doing this, and it could be a legitimate business if I wanted to go with it a little bit of a plug before we jump into the facts and figures of the business.

This video is brought to you by audibles, and I don't want to say if you guys are interested in getting into the whole reselling thing or starting any type of business this summer.

But if you're all so busy, like working or interning for, if you're not like a pale, workaholic hermit like me and you're actually enjoying the great outdoors, a great way to multitask you do.

That is to listen to audio books.

Audible has grow balls on audiobook.

They also have a bunch of other of my like favorite celebrity female empowerment books.

They have White on Me, by Mindy Kaling, and they have bossy Pants by Tina Fey.

So if you guys are interested in Audible, I do have a link below that gives you a free audiobook and a 30 day trial.

It's audible dot com slash best dress, and then also, if you're on your phone and it's more convenient for you, you can also text Best dress to 505 100 it'll like automatically guide you through the process.

Okay, now let's jump into the details of the business.

Obviously, the first step is actually obtaining the thrift ID product.

Thrift stores are obviously main option.

That's still where I do probably like 90% off my shopping for socks for my store, and that's definitely the easiest way to start out.

Pretty much every single town has, like a goodwill or Salvation Army.

The quality of food clothing definitely depends on where you live.

You guys in the comments are like I don't know how you find this stuff because of my thrift store.

It sucks.

Some places the thrift store is or just less popping than others objectively.

But if I have any advice, I'd say first, try some off brand thrift stores.

I feel like naturally, when we go looking for a thrift store, we're gonna type in Goodwill or Salvation Army or one of the big chains, but actually in my hometown in Maryland, which is this random asked suburb, where you wouldn't think that there's a lot of high fashion or like really cool pieces and thrift stores.

Some of the best and most unique stuff that I found has just been from really local stores that aren't huge nationwide chains.

Another tip is to basically thrift in the richest area that you confined.

You can actually get on Zillow dot com like the real estate website and look up the housing prices and where the housing is most expensive is probably the richest area, and they might have some higher quality brands at the thrift store is sorry.

That sounds like a really elitist.

But that's just the truth and everything to consider, though, and cross reference with that is how many people are going to these thrift stores and how many of them are also reselling or like, kind of looking for the same time of pieces of you.

I run into this problem in L.

A.

For a lot of this thrift stores in more central L.

A.

There are a lot of like 20 year old hipster pieces of shit like me, you're looking for really similar clothing, so sometimes that can make it hard, because the threat stores are so picked over and there's so much competition in order to get those really good pieces.

Even though I live in the city, sometimes I have found it helpful to go further out into the suburbs, where there's less competition in the customer base that makes sense.

Other than that it is really hit or miss.

You really just have to explore the thrift stores in your area and go over multiple weeks because stock does change so much.

Some of my favorite thrift stores have had super shitty weeks, and some have had randomly, really good weeks, so it's important to just keep going back and keep trying.

Also, if you could go on the off days or find when your thrift store does a big restocking, that can be so helpful because you get to be the first person to pick through the clothing.

Another option for where to find clothing is a state sales.

Now this is a little bit more effort and like a little bit more extra.

Basically, these are how sales where somebody has died or they're like moving into a retirement home.

And they're selling off all of the stuff in their house, which is kind of fucked up in depressing if you think about it too much.

But let's ignore that and talk about how you get some fashion finds there in order to find a state sales in your area, literally just Google estate sales and then your city or your ZIP code.

And there are tons of Web sites where people list this stuff.

A lot of them will also post a description of the main things that they have, and some of them even have photos of the types of items you can find at the estate sale.

Definitely look at those carefully and don't just go to any random estate sale because a lot of them, in my personal experience, have been really focused around furniture and like guitars and cameras and rare items like that and not as much around clothing.

But if they do mention in the description that there's a lot of vintage or designer clothing, it's definitely worth checking it out.

My last set of options are all things that I haven't really explored, but I think a lot of more professional D pop and Instagram sellers, you sleaze and those are vintage wholesale places.

I'm not very familiar with them, but you can google it.

And then a lot of major cities will have these warehouses with just piles and piles of clothing from like 19 thirties to 19 eighties or whatever, and you can buy them by the pound and then other options are like events or flea markets or yard sales.

Basically, I don't know anywhere you can find cheap clothing definitely works, although thrift stores are a great place to start next up.

A lot of you guys asked me what I thrift or how do I know what to buy and what's gonna sell?

I think first and foremost is just a matter of personal taste.

The best strategy is to just buy stuff that you would genuinely wear yourself and you would pay good money for yourself that way.

And make sure that you're picking high quality pieces and then added bonus is that if you happen to not sell something online, you can just keep them for yourself.

And it's like not a total loss.

Beyond that, though, another way to think about it is that each item should have a selling point, especially when you're starting out.

It can really help to either have a good brand name attached, the piece of clothing you're trying to sell, like Tommy Hilfiger.

Everybody shits themselves for including me, Campion, Ralph Lauren, Nautica, basically shit that you see at Urban Outfitters or just high quality contemporary brands or designer brands that generally sell for a much higher price point or another selling point that I look for is a really good fabric that adds objective value to the peace.

You has no I thrift, an insane amount of soap blouses or silk slip dresses.

They're always really popular, and they always sell really fast letters that are 100% cashmere.

Also, if you're not super into the hole like vegan life, leather and fur, and Swede can be really good selling point slow.

Another strategy is to look for items that you can add value to through modification.

This takes a little bit of a creative project runway mind, but when I see stuff in through stories, I'm always thinking about how can I transform this into something that's a little bit more modern?

Really Easy modifications include cropping things, which I do all the time.

It's a knit fabric a lot of the time you could get away with not having, ahem it either.

If you're lazy like because the fabric isn't gonna unravel anyway.

Hemming a skirt or adding darts Simple things like repairing a hole or replacing a button, moving or replacing the straps on a dress so that they make a nicer neckline, and then even something as simple as ironing.

A piece of clothing can add a lot of value to it.

A lot of people will overlook shirts that I've been hanging out in the thrift store, and they're kind of wrinkly.

But I swear to God, ironing can make the biggest difference that I could make it look a brand new again.

Overall, a really important thing to consider is What's your profit margin on item?

You think that buying stuff from the thrift store and like reselling it you can't go wrong with stuff from the store is so cheap that, unfortunately, is not always.

The case, for example, uses you find some really cute shoes at the thrift store there.

$15.

You think somebody would pay $30 for them, so you feel like you'd be able to make a profit.

But depending on the platform you use with maps and PayPal and taxes combined, that's like a 10 to 20% cut.

And then shipping can get really expensive, especially for heavy items.

And that's something important to consider for shoes you're looking at.

Shipping costs around $10.

With all that factored in.

If you sold them for $30 total, including shipping, you actually pretty much just breaking even, and you wouldn't have really made any money for all of your efforts.

So sorry, that was, like a little bit math heavy.

But that's kind of a calculation that you have to do in your head in order to determine whether something is worth buying.

So we're leading to my last feel about profit margin.

Next, we're gonna talk about pricing.

You kind of develop a feel for it after a couple months of seeing what sells for certain prices and kind of being present on these acts.

But when you're starting out, But first of all, I recommend that you keep a log of everything that you buy in the price that it sells for.

And if you want to be extra like, I am track of how long it takes you to sell that item as well, and that will help you gather data with your specific customer base.

What selling and what isn't.

Another tip, if you don't know how to price an item, is to search on whatever platform you're selling on, whether that's deep, all posh more and search for similar items.

For example, if you're selling a fur coat, search for vintage fur coats or if it's a specific brand like you found a dress from Urban Outfitters.

A Reformation search that brand and see what other people are pricing similar items for and you can even in a lot of APS, look at the sold section and see specifically, the price is that people are actually willing to pay, and it could be helpful to honestly ask yourself how much you would pay for it.

If you're the customer, I would say, just in general, it's right to put yourself in the customer's shoes and finally, some other factors to consider.

Obviously, I talked about earlier.

If it's a really good brand like Tommy Hilfiger, if it's a good fabric, if it's a designer, rand or super rare item, or if you're really popular as a seller and you have a really good reputation and a lot of followers on whatever platform you use, those can all be factors that help you price your clothing a little bit more expensive, I think, other than the actual process of you going with restore and picking out cool stuff.

The main thing that adds value to thrift ID clothing is having photos that show people how to style it, how good it looks and like giving them style inspiration.

That's basically like part of the service you're providing.

I would highly highly suggest when you're taking photos to model your clothing, a lot of people are hesitant to actually get in front of the camera and model the clothing.

But I would, as I said before, put yourself on the virus shoes when I'm shopping online.

Personally, I don't feel it's comfortable buying clothing that I haven't seen on a model.

Because then how my sister Visualize and Tom I supposed to know that I'm gonna be happy with my purchase, and especially if it's a unique or thrift it item.

It's so helpful to show people how it hangs on your body, how the fit works.

How would style it in outfit?

The easiest way to start taking photos and thing that everybody can do is to just take them on self timer on your phone.