Diving Into Thrifting and Reselling
Heyo! What's up y'all - it's your boy Khang coming at'cha with another video on Thrifting and Reselling.
That would be the intro I'd have for my YouTube channel if I had one. I don't know... maybe some day in the future, Camilla and I will. Anyhow, did you know there's an entire community out there dedicated to thrifting and reselling items online? Camilla and I are a part of it! We watch a lot of YouTube videos to learn from these resellers and we've had a lot of fun doing our own thing. Hopefully one day, we'll post our own videos about reselling and our blog!
Since September just passed us by, I figured I'd break down some of the figures for you to show you how we've been progressing! We had a very exciting month for reselling and we hope it'll inspire you to do something similar. The world is your oyster and there is so many possibilities out there.
As you may already know, we've been working on our side hustle for a few months now, but have recently set some goals for ourselves. Last month, we reached our goal of $1,500 profit! For being part-time, it's a pretty big deal! We're set up pretty well for our future together if/when Camilla decides she wants to be a stay-at-home mom and we hope to stick to the plan. We've talked about this before, but it's important for us to stress the fact that we've got back-up plans in case we need to make ends meet. We can use this side hustle as a means to make extra money, and there's the possibility of pivoting to do this full-time. FULL TIME?! Yes - there are many people who are doing it! This is just a glimpse into that possible future.
Within this side hustle, Camilla has her Instagram where she sells vintage clothing and other fun items so she can donate the profits to Catholic Charities of Galveston-Houston, we also sell other clothing on Poshmark, and use eBay to sell clothing + hard goods. It's quite a bit of work, but we have a lot of fun, so sometimes it doesn't even feel like work.
Our Method
Here's how we do it: We go to the thrift store and we spend a few hours searching for treasures (also known as "sourcing" our items). We come home and take inventory to put into our spreadsheet, we calculate how much we paid for each item (usually no more than $2.50 per item), and we sort them to get them ready for a good washing. After washing, we steam the clothes to get rid of the wrinkles as well as sanitize the items we can't wash. Once that is done, we will take pictures of the items, edit those pictures, and post them to Poshmark and eBay! When an item is sold, we pack it up, print the shipping label and secure it to the package, and drop it off at the post office. That's pretty much it!
Our Preferred Thrift Stores
We go to thrift stores about every other week. Our main choice for thrift stores is the Goodwill Outlet Centers (also known as "The Bins" to many because everything is put into pins for people to pick through). Here, you pay for items by the pound. At the ones in Houston, they price their clothing at $2.19/lb (under 50 lbs) and at 51 lbs and more, customers pay $1.79/lb. The trick is to try to get to 51 lbs if you can! It takes a lot of work, but it's worth it to get that discount.
We also go to a place here in Houston called Family Thrift Center Outlet where they do things a little differently. Every Thursday, the store has been refreshed with stock and they sell each item at $2.00. Each day after that, they reduce the price by 25 cents until the next Thursday, where it all gets reset and the pricing starts over. As you might expect, the best stuff can be found on Thursday mornings when they open, but Camilla and I have only ever gone once. However, we have gone on many Friday evenings and Saturday mornings and have had some luck picking through what is left over (it's a really big store).
Nerd-Out On Numbers
We did the math on the Goodwill Outlet Centers and there is a tie point when comparing the price points, and that's 42 lbs. Here's what I mean:
$2.19 * 42 = $91.98
$1.79 * 51 = $91.29
So if we find ourselves at about 40 lbs of clothes, we go ahead and try to get to that 51 lb goal because we want to get to the next price tier and get that discount. Even at $2.19/lb, we find that we usually don't pay more than $2.00 per item because many of the items (shirts, skirts, etc.) don't weigh more than one lb anyway.
Here are some of our September numbers that helped us reach our goal of $1,500 in profit!
We sold 106 items
We grossed $2,320.04 in sales
We netted (total profit after fees and shipping costs) $1,538.43
That means we paid almost $800 in fees and shipping!
On average, each item cost us $1.44
On average, we profited $14.51 per item (that's about a 10x return!)
Overall, we've been very happy with what we've been doing. It's been a great adventure so far and we've still got a lot to learn! This will certainly help us on our journey to Financial Independence. If you've got any questions about what we're doing, please feel free to contact us at faithandfi@gmail.com. We'd love to help you any way we can.
Cheers!
Khang