I created a reselling ecommerce business called Thriftly Finds Company on July 31, 2018. This was an event that was a long time coming, through an unfortunate event. Thriftly is my job when I’m not doing hair. It is something that I have much larger dreams for as well.
My mother passed away in the summer of 2015, and my brother and I inherited everything and it was to be split equally between us. Well, being the daughter, it was obvious that I would be in charge of deciding what to do with mom’s clothes. And it would seem like an easy task because we were similar in size and stature, so just try on the clothes, keep what you want out of what fits, and get rid of the rest. That seems pretty straight forward, right? Nope. My mom was a collector. She collected everything she loved. And she lived in her house (which my husband and I bought) for 40ish years. So her collection of clothing, shoes, and costume jewelry had items all the way back from the 70s.
I couldn’t make any serious decisions about anything for a while. And everything just got pushed about of the way. I have major anxiety and depression, that was coupled with mild ocd and my grief. It was a hard time in my life, if not the hardest thing I’ve ever lived through. So after putting things out of sight and out of mind, as best as I could, I was able to make it to a point where I was able to make a decision. So for a couple of months I turned things over and over in my head. My first thought was let’s just have a yard sale. So we did, and in the first yard sale we realized that this collection was far too large for just a yard sale, so over the course of that summer we held several. And after all this we were still left with so many clothes. And I started getting this gut feeling that I should use my background in fashion merchandising and use my knowledge of staging and sales to sell this stuff. I’m an over thinker and an over planner, so I talked my way through my ideas with my husband and a couple friends. And I started in on research on selling things online and this is how I discovered the world of reselling. I’m not sure how I found out about Poshmark, but this is how I started my journey.
I started listing bundles of prestyled outfits on Poshmark. And I had quite a few sales immediately but quickly realized that more often buyers like to pick out and create their own bundles, so I started listing items individually. I researched almost everything I could get my hands on and flew by the seat of my pants. And it is still a learning situation. I still research, but I have my routine down, tweaking when needed. I’m sure you can tell that by now I’ve caught the bug. I then started sourcing for different, trending, collectible items at different yard sales and thrift stores.
It’s 2020, and literally everything is online, and especially on social media. So obviously I post almost my entire life online. This is the only way I can get any exposure and advertisement for my store. This is because I have no brick and mortar store. I sell everything online. I use my social media accounts (and this blog) as a way for my community of potential buyers to not only see my inventory, but as a way for them to get to know me as a person. Because creating community and creating a feeling of “knowing” is so important. I want more than shoppers/buyers, I want Thriftly to be a community or even better a family.
This is how the worst event of my entire life, turned into one of my greatest sources of joy. This is how the monumental task of deciding what to do with my mom’s gargantuan collection of new and vintage clothing, shoes, and costume jewelry, turned into a great source of monetary value. This is how losing one of the most important people in my life turned into how my mother continued to push me not to close off into myself and shut people out. This is how I took this whole situation and pivot into something great!
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