Overview
This week Liz and Doug bring you the story of The Clothing Vault, the first episode in a two-part series. Learn how List Perfectly Co-Founders and Co-CEOs Amanda Morse and Clara Albornoz scaled a small eBay business into a half-million-dollar multi-platform business.
The Seller Community Podcast from List Perfectly is the ecommerce resource for the seller community across all platforms and hub for information on growing your business. Find out more at thesellercommunitypodcast.com, leave a message or ask a question at anchor.fm/sellercommunitypodcast, or email us at podcast@listperfectly.com.
List Perfectly is the ecommerce resource for selling across multiple e-commerce platforms including eBay, Poshmark, Etsy, Mercari, Kidizen, Grailed, Depop, Tradesy, Facebook Marketplace, Instagram and Shopify.
Listen on Apple Podcasts
Listen on Anchor
Listen on Spotify
Listen on Pocket Casts
Listen on Google Podcasts
Listen on Breaker
Listen on RadioPublic
Links
thesellercommunitypodcast.com
Listperfectly.com
Seller Community Podcast on Anchor
Listperfectly Facebook Group
coloradoreworn Instagram
coloradoreworn linktree
snoop.dougie Instagram
snoop.dougie linktree
listperfectly Instagram
Episode Links
theclothingvault.com
The Clothing Vault Facebook
The Clothing Vault Instagram
The Clothing Vault Pinterest
The Clothing Vault eBay
The Clothing Vault Etsy
Transcript
Liz:
Welcome to The Seller Community Podcast from List Perfectly. This is season two, episode nine. Nine already Doug!
Doug:
Nine, nine wonderful episodes.
Liz:
I was hoping you would catch onto that.
Doug:
Yes. The Count!
Liz:
The Count.
Doug:
The count continues. It’s been a wacky week, Liz. It’s like a LivaPalooza.
Liz:
Yes. I feel like our last week’s news episode dropped and the day before it dropped all the news took place.
Doug:
Yeah. That’s oh, that’s true too. It’s like, yeah…
Liz:
Oh my gosh!
Doug:
We dropped the news episode and then eBay dropped some news. The Winter Seller Update was dropped after we had dropped our news episode, basically.
Liz:
Yeah. And then all the Poshmark drama with the search and the Posh ambassador 2.
Doug:
But what worked out well was that night we had our monthly livecast. So, we were able to touch base on the Poshmark stuff and the eBay Winter Seller Update high level.
Liz:
Yes. But you know what was the most fun? It was just interacting with our community that was joining us live.
Doug:
Yeah. It’s really fun. And I love that we have regulars now and we got new people, saw some new names in there and it was good. It was fun. I really always enjoy the lives.
Liz:
I do too. And I’m sitting here thinking we went live a lot, not just our live, but List Perfectly going live.
Doug:
Yeah. Clara went live, you and Clara went live. You sat in on Theresa’s Office Hours this week. It was Office Hours with Liz Is this week.
Liz:
Yes, it was. That was so much fun too.
Doug:
It was good. You did a great job.
Liz:
Thank you.
New Speaker:
I was happy to be there. And then we did a meetup for the Raleigh North Carolina e-commerce sellers run by Paul Apollonia, a friend of mine, a friend of ours from North Carolina. Big eBayer, new List Perfectly user.
Liz:
We got to talk to a wide variety of sellers in that meetup. Some that use List Perfectly some that don’t use List Perfectly. And a lot of great questions were asked, really not just about List Perfectly but about selling in general and SKUs and you know, learning how to sell.
Doug:
Yeah. And expanding to different platforms. And like, like you said, there was an interesting mix of sellers there. Like, Paul parts out stuff, like parts out, like washing machines, parts out like laptops, and that’s what he does. And then there was a media seller on there and a couple of the sellers on there do their own, like in person/online courses about side hustles and things like that. So, it was a good group.
Liz:
They teach college courses.
Doug:
That’s right.
Liz:
You know and have online courses too. Paula Bailey was there too, and she’s a collectible seller. So, I’m pretty sure I was the only clothing seller in that entire group, which was refreshing.
Doug:
There you go.
Liz:
Facebook Marketplace sellers, and Amazon sellers wanting to cross post their stuff onto other platforms.
Doug:
Yep. It was interesting. It was a good mix. And then we also talked a little bit about Mercari and Mercari Local.
Liz:
Yes. Well, yeah, because I, gosh, the name escapes me, but he sells paintings and he does Facebook Marketplace pickup, but he was getting tired of that.
Doug:
And then Rich, one of the eCommChicago organizers came on and he’s got a meet up. He’s gonna have us in eCommChicago…
Liz:
I’m so sorry. Here comes the bad news, Doug.
Doug:
Oh, I didn’t even see this…
Liz:
It was posted on the eCommChicago Facebook page. They’ve canceled. eCommChicago, 2022 out of caution. You know, these events are not easy to put together. I just can’t like, I haven’t put one together, but I can only imagine what it takes. And I can only imagine what it takes, you know, when restrictions and whatnot are up in the air.
Doug:
Yeah. And then it makes me wonder about eBay Open. We’ve been hinted at that. They’re gonna do something, you know, potentially a hybrid, but we don’t know yet. And I mean, at some point they’ve gotta pull the trigger too, because that takes a lot of planning and logistics.
Liz:
Yeah. So, I can’t wait to hear about that. Yeah. It was a busy week
Doug:
Busy week, also announcement time Liz. So, we have actually talked about it, but this morning, our new, thesellercommunitypodcast.com website launched. So that’s gonna be the new website for The Seller Community Podcast from List Perfectly. And you will find the show notes there. All show notes are transferred over. And from here you will find new show notes there. I think at some point we’ll be expanding and expanding what we do over there. And you can also purchase merch if you’re interested in Seller Community Podcast merchandise.
Liz:
Yes.
Doug:
But the main thing there is the episode section, the seller notes, where we put the transcripts for Vikki. Vikki, you’re gonna have to go to a different spot now.
Liz:
Yeah. New bookmark for you.
Doug:
That’s right. New bookmark. And then obviously links, supplemental materials and all of that stuff. But again, thesellercommunitypodcast.com, It’s gonna be your site for all things Seller Community Podcast related.
Liz:
Yes. And something else will happen this week before the next podcast.
Doug:
And what’s that?
Liz:
Happy birthday Seller Community Podcast!
Doug:
Oh yeah. Geez.
Liz:
Yes.
Doug:
You know, that’s also my mother’s birthday…
Liz:
Which is…
Doug:
February 19th.
Liz:
19th.
Doug:
That’s how I’ll remember my mom’s birthday from now on cuz I’ll never forget the birthday of The Seller Community Podcast.
Liz:
Sure. Okay.
Doug:
All grown up!
Liz:
I love it. I love it. Yeah. So, we are one! We’re having a birthday party this weekend. Not really. I’ll just eat some cake. I’ll just eat some cake and order a hoodie, a blue hoodie instead of a gray hoodie.
Doug:
We’re getting a Seller Community Podcast, jumpy.
Liz:
Jumpy. Right. I, what are they a, what are the a, Snuggie a fleece Snuggie.
Doug:
One of those blanky things. Yeah. Take your shoes off in the jumpy kids.
Liz:
Okay.
Doug:
I don’t wanna have to pay a repair fee, and kids get off the roof!
Liz:
Oh, my goodness.
Doug:
But Liz, we have an exciting couple of episodes coming up. This episode’s exciting. The next episode’s exciting. They’re all exciting. But the next two episodes tie together. It’s like a Seller Community Podcast miniseries Liz. Tell us about it.
Liz:
Ooh. So very special episodes coming up, Clara and Amanda are going back to their roots. So, you know, we’ve heard the story of List Perfectly and I’m so grateful for that. And that was such an interesting conversation, right? How Clara and Amanda came together and built and grew List Perfectly that we all enjoy today, but we can’t forget that they are resellers too.
Doug:
Exactly.
Liz:
So, we are going to learn how they started and scaled The Clothing Vault into a half a million dollar business. We’ll learn how they met, how they sourced, how they learned, how they grew. We’ll also hear how Clara and Amanda each got into reselling.
Doug:
You know, we hear from Clara a lot, but it’s interesting to hear the details of Amanda’s story too and how it all fits together. And there’s a ton to the List Perfectly story. But there’s the prequel, these are the prequel episodes, The Clothing Vault, and there’s even more in between. So…
Liz:
But what was amazing is we got to talk to Clara and Amanda about The Clothing Vault, and we had so much to ask, and they had so much to talk about that. We’re going to do this in two episodes.
Doug:
It’s gonna be magical, Liz. Two exciting episodes!
Doug:
And so, this is part one this week part two next week. So, all right. Let’s listen then to part one of The Clothing Vault story with Clara and Amanda.
Liz:
Last year, we talked to Amanda and Clara Co-Founders and Co-CEOs of List Perfectly. And we briefly discussed their selling journey and we talked about List Perfectly.
Doug:
And last month, Amanda and Clara came back, and we did a deeper dive into List Perfectly, their successes and what’s coming with List Perfectly. So today we wanna learn about Amanda and Clara as resellers. How they started out The Clothing Vault and how they scaled to a half a million dollar business. So first welcome back, Clara and Amanda. I think you’re joining the four timer club, so we gotta get you, we’ll get you velvet jackets or something.
Clara:
Yes. I want my smoking jacket. I want it. I want, I want my smoking robe.
Doug:
That’s right.
Liz:
Welcome back. It’s so great to see you again.
Clara:
Thank you, Liz. Thank you for having us again. We’re so honored, with Amanda, to be back and to share our reseller journey.
Amanda:
Actually, this is, first of all, thank you. This is our favorite topic to talk about. We love reseller life and, we had a blast, so we can’t wait to share.
Doug:
Amanda let’s start with you. So, Amanda, how did you get into reselling?
Amanda:
So, a lot of people have already heard the story. I sold stuff that I already had, and I was hooked but… <laugh>.
Clara:
So, there was no internet. <laugh>
Amanda:
Yeah, well, seriously, you know, in 2003 there were no smartphones, you know, we were still getting money, like, well, concealed money and envelopes in the mail and, you know, cash and money orders to fulfill orders. Going to the post office because there was no online label printing. But yeah, I got started back in 2003 and I actually had a vegetarian food business in Los Angeles and , you know, I had like no money. I mean, I’ve just, I’ve always been kind of thrifty and do the best I could with what I had. I was setting up in farmers markets around LA. It was a success. I mean actually, you know, the veggie food business, I had regular repeat customers. It was great. But by the time the day ended, I had to calculate the cost of my help, the cost of the product, the time that I put in. And when I looked at the receipts at the end of the day, I was like, wow. This is hard. It’s hard to earn money in a restaurant. Like, I started looking at, okay, I need to scale and maybe I need investors. And this is like, this is gonna be hard. So, I made a difficult decision to shut it down. You know, it was hard because I had a lot of repeat customers that were pretty upset, but, you know, I mean you, sometimes you just have to make those decisions. And luckily, I was very thrifty and wise when I bought the equipment. So, when I sold it on eBay, I actually made a profit and , that’s, that’s pretty difficult to do with used restaurant equipment. But , I did, and I was hooked. I mean, I was like, wow, it was the first time I had ever used eBay. I’d never bought anything off of eBay. I set up my seller account solely with the intent to sell the restaurant equipment and move on with my life. And , and then I was like, whoa, this is really cool. So, then I thought, well, I don’t have anything else to sell. I mean, I can sell everything I have in the house, but then what do I sell? And as luck would have it, where I was living was an artist loft community in downtown Los Angeles. And I saw a posting on a bulletin board for help listing things on eBay. I was like, ah, okay. Yeah, I could, I could do that. Maybe I could learn a thing or two. So, I helped another person in the community put their stuff on eBay and then soon I learned all about the vintage clothing niche. I had no idea that it was even a thing in 2003 that, you know, vintage was so hot. I mean, it’s been hot since forever. Right? But really, it took off in the nineties when the Levi’s craze started happening, especially in Japan. Japan really like kind of kickstarted the whole vintage thing. You know, I started, I started learning more and more and more about valuations, about what things could really sell for. And I started learning about the items that would sell in the thousands. And I mean, I absolutely hoped, and I was like, h, okay. I think I can do this. I think I can go out and source. And plus, I’m a historian. I went to school to study history. And so, I started thinking about the history of everything that I was selling. All of those clothing items have a story. Someone wore them. They meant something to that person. A lot of times the clothing would be personalized for that person. Especially some of those custom made coats, you know, you’d find the inner tag, you know, custom tailored for JFP. <laugh> You start wondering. JFP? What kinda life did they have? What were they, you know, when they were wearing these things, what did they do? So, I got a kick out of it and that’s when, it all started for me.
Liz:
So, learning about the vintage, were you listing vintage stuff for this other person and that’s how you learned or was that just part of the historian in you wanting to learn about that?
Amanda:
I was listing vintage for that person. They would actually train me on, you know, pricing, how to you know, look for flaws, how to look and identify for, the authenticity of vintage items. And so, yeah, I learned, I learned a lot working for this person and I’m really grateful for everything they did for me.
Liz:
You started selling vintage, obviously, clearly you loved it. I think that a lot of us resellers just start doing it and kind of fall in love with it, whether it be the lifestyle or what we’re selling. One thing that we always have is a why, and everybody’s why is different? I can assume that you shut down a business and you learned out of necessity to eat, but you continued. What was your why for continuing?
Amanda:
So, if we rewind before the food business, I had worked a very grueling corporate job for eight years. And, you know, it was one of those jobs where I was always responsive. And I think that in the corporate world, the more you give, the more they take and the more they want to take. And my personality is, you know, a giver. And so it was, it was hard for me. Corporate life was not easy. So, I got burned out and that’s when I went to the food business. And then, you know, when I discovered resale, I realized I can work for myself. I can work out of the house. I can go out and source and travel when I can, I can blend a lot of things that I really like together and earn an income. For me it wasn’t about getting rich quick or anything like that. It was really about having a happy life, a contented life, you know, when, when I would go and I’d travel, I would always make a point to do something fun. You know, just something unique. If I was sourcing around a beach, I would go to the beach and maybe get a coffee and take a walk. And just, it was a lot of therapeutic activity along with resale. And that’s what, what really was my, why. That’s what became my why. And still is if I think about reseller life.
Doug:
And so, Clara, how did you get into reselling? Was it Amanda’s famous quote, “There’s room in ecommerce for everybody.”? And we’ve heard her, but we love the sweater story. So, if you could tell that too, we’d love it.
Clara:
Well, I would say ecommerce found me through Amanda. , I was, at that time back in 2008, I did banking for 10 years. I found myself very empty on an industry that was very cold, not doing the right thing. I was rewarded for what I did ethically. And they gave me a beautiful severance package. So, here I am literally getting paid a lot of money just to be at home. I’m happy, you know, and I’m just seeing my opportunities. Right? I meet Amanda socially. Right? And you know, me, I can make the walls talk, right? You know, I’m like, “Hi, I’m Clara. What’s your name?” You know? And typical, you know, typically I still have that. I don’t know, maybe banker, you know, or whatever personality I’m like, what do you do for a living? And then she tells me eBay seller and out of ignorance, I’m like, “Ohhh.” You know and I’m like, “Oh poor thing. Here I’ll buy you a beer.” You know, so it was like, when I met her, you know, it was just, I thought, okay, she was thrifty, but by choice. , and then she tells me something that changed my life. “Yeah. You know, I just came back from Europe, from traveling with my mom for two months. And, that was incredible. So, I’m barely gonna start again, reselling online and it’s gonna be hard. So, I gotta start sourcing again.” And she starts telling me all these things and I’m like, what? So, at that time, the only business that I didn’t analyze careful was ecommerce. Back in the day when I was doing banking, there was no commercial lending. Commercial lending divisions were just for big corporations. They were not even thought, not even 1% for small businesses. So, I would do the loans out of home equity lines of credit or refinances. I have to go and convince underwriters, okay, let’s say ColoradoReWorn. Okay. It would be the right product, you know, to, give, an infusion of liquid cash, you know, and this is what you’re gonna be doing with it, blah, blah, blah. Right? So, I remember I never had a chance to see an eBay. I saw a lot of people with their websites. Okay. I was, it was too early for me. Right? But then she comes with eBay where eBay is taking all the responsibility of returns, checkouts, everything, everything. So, I was like, this is ideal. I had no idea. I never even bought anything on eBay. And then she tells me, you know, she’s smiling. And I did a barbecue and she’s starting to, she came with her laptop to my house at that time was 13 years ago. Okay. 13. She comes to the house with her laptop and I’m like intrigued. And she’s like, “Can I have your wifi?” I’m like, okay. If I give you my Wi-Fi, you tell me what you’re doing. Right? So, she shows me, flips the laptop and there she goes with her eBay store. And she’s like, I just sold a vintage nineties, Ralph Lauren, vest with a downhill skier pattern for $200. And I look at the listing and all I can focus on is the hole, okay. That’s all I can focus on. And I’m like, is that even legal? It has a hole. It’s big. She’s like full disclosure. Here it is. She put the, she had a measuring tape to describe the diameter of the hole. And, it was legit. Fast forward. Two weeks later, I get to see her again, socially and I’m like, “Hey, how did it go with that buyer?” And then she shows me the five star review. , he messages her saying that that was the vest he used when he met his wife that now they’re renewing vows. So, that touched my heart. And I was like, she’s doing something meaningful. What?! You can make money and have purpose and be meaningful. And this is a low risk entry. So I was, “Hey, can I do that entry for you?” And, I immediately was like, okay. I just, at that time I was coming from banking. I was really fast in typing. So, I knew that was in my advantage to compensate for the lack of knowledge that I have on the industry. So, she was willing to coach me. So, I started doing shipping for her. I remember she would go to Rhode Island. I have to do shipping for her, feed her cats, you know, pick up packages and returns, let her know because I did haven’t have access to eBay yet. Okay. I was listing in TurboLister, right?
Liz:
Oh yeah.
Clara:
Yeah. I was listing in Turbo Lister, Turkey Lister. Right? <laugh? And , so I was doing that. And then , I was doing shipping and then I was doing listings, but my listings were not so good because vintage vocabulary, especially if you’re a foreigner, I had no idea. I was like, what? …waist, exaggerated shoulders , smoking jacket, all those terms bespoke. I was like, oh my God, I was overwhelmed. She was so passionate about vintage clothing. And she’s a good narrator. Amanda’s a good historian. She can tell you the story of anything. And then one day I went sourcing with her and I was like, okay, that’s it. I love this. And banks were calling me left and right. I would go to the interviews. I would go to the interviews and sit down and just throw them whatever salary. Right? And they’re like, come back. And I’m like, and I would go back. Amanda was like, come on, let’s start something together. And I was like, and I knew that if I, the second that I go back to banking, they were going to transfer me to the east coast. Where there is the other additional training when you’re going for mid-management. So, I was like, mmm, no, I don’t see it. I can’t see myself uprooting, changing everything. I gotta follow what is in my heart this time. And that’s how it started. And then she told me, Clara, don’t worry. When she started to show me eBay, her eBay store managed her eBay store. Then of course, I go like, someone else has this product. You know, what do we do? And she’s like, don’t worry. Don’t worry. ecommerce is big enough for all of us. And that changed my life.
Liz:
Wow. Two things that came out of that for me. Another one that I love is, “oh, poor eBay seller.” So, you said that’s 2006, right?
Clara:
2009.
Liz:
So, that was 2009. And that still exists today, right? Like that still happens because there are still people out there that just don’t understand, you know, at the time it was eBay, but really ecommerce as a whole, that there are some heavy hitters in ecommerce. , just like Clara saw your $200 vest with a big hole in it that somebody loved. There’s a buyer for nearly everything out there. So, the two of you partnered up, Amanda sold, you sold by yourself and got to travel and learn and do all of this for how many years before the two of you decided to say, “Hey, let’s team up and grow your business.”?
Amanda:
I was on my own for about six years. So, I was running, managing my eBay store. It was a lot of mistakes.
Liz:
Yeah. <laugh>
Amanda:
I learned in those early years, I think that that’s natural and no matter what you do, right. Even in careers, like we, we could go to college to become a specialized career and still get out and make mistakes. I mean, it’s just, that is the nature of learning something new. , especially in an industry that’s always changing, but yeah, I would buy, sometimes I would, you know, take a risk on things and it didn’t work out. Or sometimes I would switch my shipping labels and things would wind up in the wrong customer’s house. And , you know , those six years, I really had to decide what kind of, what kind of business I wanted to run. And , and there’s no one business model that’s gonna work for everyone, especially in resale, right? Everybody has their own way of doing things and that is perfectly fine. But I think you could kind of sit up to you either, you are okay with selling fewer items that maybe make a higher profit than selling vole, where you’ll probably still make a really good profit, but it means a lot more inventory. It means a lot more storage. It means possibly hiring employees. It means a lot of customer contacts, higher expenses and a lot of order management. It’s just, you know, I boiled it down to what’s gonna work best for me. It’s gonna be either of those choices. And I was really looking for a more stressful freeway, to travel and enjoy my life. So, I realized that, okay, I’ve got to learn as much as I can and sell my items. Sell really unique items for the highest profit that I possibly can. And so, I focused on that and just that. And so, because I was on my own and I really wasn’t interested in having a big, you know, infrastructure around me. I really hyper focused on what am I selling? How do I maximize the value out of it? And how do I source better? How do I find what my knowledge at that, at that point became the most critical thing for me to be able to run my business on my own?
Liz:
I love that. You did that by yourself. Met Clara said, “Okay. Yeah, come list for me.” You were able to teach her because of your knowledge. So, The Clothing Vault, that was your company that you created together. Tell us how that came about and The Clothing Vault story.
Clara:
Oh, I love it. So, Amanda had a store called Studio 217. You gotta understand. She’s a native eBayer. Okay. Amanda had zero branding. Okay. She had, I’ll never forget, she had a website that wasn’t even complete. Okay. That would just reroute you to eBay. Okay. But everything was incomplete. Typical, you know, like most of us eBayers, we don’t do much branding. Right? So, I believe versus other audiences, you know, from other marketplaces and for me, it was like, okay, we gotta have a new name. You know, “Hey, I don’t wanna hurt your feelings.” You know, she was like, okay, flexible, no problem. You know, here, I come structure, you know, typical, you know, I was a lawyer, as well. So, you know, I wanted to do the trademarks, you know, of the names and so forth. And domains. Amanda does the domains and I do the trademarks, you know, and we make sure we’re protected. So, before we spend all that effort, you know, let’s make sure we love the name. And, we understood that clothing was our niche. Okay. We sold everything from cars to laptops, to you name it, we sold it. Okay. But it must have been her passion. Always a storyteller, Amanda. She would always tell me the stories of, and she knows a lot of, because she’s a Marine, she also knows a lot about, collectible militaria. That was incredible to learn from her and I got hooked up on that. It was just something that I really enjoyed. And she knew all the places where to go and, get sourcing done and, was just finding a name that was related to clothing. And then at the same time, at that time, everybody told us . we should have a niche, like socks or t-shirts or something. And we’re like, no, no, we’re gonna do it just clothes. Okay. Because we were doing men’s and women’s, we didn’t even go by gender. We wanted to be just because our audience was so, so diverse. And I noticed that my audience buying vintage seventies was like anybody from young or woman. And, they were buying international. So, for me it was to find something that implied safety. I wanted something that was safe, that we’re having, whatever we’re having, it’s safe here. And we just, just for you, we’re holding it for you. And I don’t know. And then we found this name, but literally we must have been like three months debating with names.
Amanda:
Oh no, it was a good nine months. I mean, it took a long time to find the name that we both agreed on.
Clara:
In the meantime, we were buying. In the meantime, imagine, this is 13 years ago. That’s when they opened to buy websites. So, in the meantime, the ones that we didn’t like, we still buy, and we bought so many websites. I don’t even know how many dot coms we own, okay. The Clothing Built, I don’t know the, the, the, I don’t know, The Hat Bolt, The Winter Vintage. You name it. We own it. Okay. So, it was an incredible journey. , we really felt that we had no money to hire a designer. We had it, but we were always very thrifty. Amanda’s thrifty at living. I’m thrifty with the business. Every cent has to, I want it accountable. Every cent has to give me 10 cents or 20 cents back. That’s how I’m always thinking. And then she’s like, okay, I’m gonna make this happen. So, she made some photocopy, she made some designs, some more or whatever, and then she makes, she prints it out. Okay. And then we’re overlapping. I know. No. And that’s how we made this. This is it. We made it ourselves, no designer. We didn’t change it. We still have the website, the logo is the same. We have social media channels. We have Instagram, we have Pinterest. We have a Facebook, a business page.
Amanda:
But, you know, we also wanted it to look a little homey because that’s the demographic we appeal to. Right? If you, if you come, if you’re a vintage seller and you come across too slick, it’s like, ooh, are you selling, you know, what are you selling? So, we actually wanted a little bit of a homey image, and we were totally fine with a homemade logo. And it was good, but we made it really big. I mean, we would actually go thrifting with these, with these t-shirts. And then people, wait, wait, do that again. Okay. There you go. TheClothingVault.com. People would always ask us what’s The Clothing Vault. And we would just turn around and then they would come, and they would actually go and buy from us. And they’d say, “Hey, I saw you, you know, at this place and I’m your buyer now.” We were always blasting everything everywhere.
Liz:
I love it. I love the story behind the name too. Like, and it shows, I, I look at the logo and I look at the font and I look at, you know, what’s bolded and it really sticks out. Right? And it’s gonna be timeless.
Clara:
Thank you. Yes. That’s what we wanted. You know, that’s what, and generic enough, for any age, race, location, which was important to be all inclusive.
Doug:
And I love the term homey, and I love that you said all-inclusive, and I love the stripped down nature. Almost minimalist. Part of the idea was you had a, and Clara you’ve said this many times, a stripped down website but beautiful listings. So, talk about that.
Clara:
So, we had, our first channel was eBay. , we did eBay, I think exclusively just for a couple of years and like any other seller after any list I get on. Okay. Or Turbo Lister crashing after you’ve been working on the listing for 20 minutes. Right? Because we’re doing like a three piece vintage , men’s suit. Imagine. Okay. And I’m taking all the measurements, the suit, the pants, everything. And, crashes. Okay. So after enough, you know, and, trying to grow on eBay, we noticed that we were capped, no matter how much. And I was waking up at 3:00 AM and I’m typing fast, and we noticed that we’re capped. So, she comes with the first version of List Perfectly. She came with like 700 templates. We know the templating was the, was the way to do it. She made me a way to access work templates, very easy, very well indexed. So, that was the first step to move towards an idea of, we need to expand, and we need to get another channel. So, what shall we do? Okay. Ooh, that’s it. And we started to dream right then and there, we should move next to Etsy because we’re vintage sellers. Right? And then I was like, well, since we’re gonna be doing Etsy, I would love to have Instagram. Instagram is the future, and I’m gonna connect my Etsy. I connected right away with Pinterest. Right away. I saw that one coming. You can see my boards on Pinterest. I had so much traction on Pinterest. It was free, free, and as your listing on Etsy all you have to do is, that’s it, that’s a little slider, you know, it goes there. And then that’s how we realized, you know, she already had a website for Studio 217. So, all we have to do, she was trying, she learned to do a different website. We started with something homey, but we did our website because we knew that would be the future. Sorry, go ahead.
Amanda:
Well, I was just gonna make one small correction. The very first channel that we did outside of eBay was our own website. We always wanted to get to Etsy, but you know, it was, I mean, we’re, we’re two people and, you know, managing a lot of listings and we wanted our own website because here we are, we’re wearing our t-shirts everywhere and we want to drive people to our site, but at that time we had TheClothingVault.com that would redirect you to eBay. That’s all it did. So, you would go to TheClothingVault.com and you would click on the link, it would send you to eBay. So, then we said, okay, no, like we went through a few, like she said, listaggedons, and you know, honestly this comes from experience, like when someone says, just, “Hey, focus on one channel.” Well, you know, when we did that, we did that for many years, and we got burned several times because we did that. , we didn’t have listing backups. Things would crash. It was just, and then rebuilding. I mean, especially the listings that we did, we put a lot of quality and time and effort into our listings. Because again, we’re trying to get the most value out of every listing. And, you know, to even lose one listing is devastating. We didn’t even wanna lose one. Not one listing. So, we just said, okay, you know, what, if we have our own website, everything’s gonna be backed up there. The first channel that we worked on was our own website and our branding. And , so, you know, we started, we really did a lot of research on SEO and we kind of did some experiments with that. We said, you know, the conventional wisdom at the time that we did this said you don’t, you shouldn’t do descriptions. No, just images, no description. You just need images with a really short title. And, you know, just need to keyword optimize your, and we were like…
Clara:
And then do digital. Oh yeah, you gotta do, you know, digital marketing. Go, you know, on Google ads, you know, you have to do it. And then we’re like, no. You know, I was like with Amanda, “We were like, no, actually let’s keep sending traffic to eBay from our website so people can see how legit we are and let’s give them the choice to see where they wanna, they wanna go.” And I think that was, and at that time was like, oh, you girls don’t know what you’re doing. Let me explain. No, no, no. What you wanna do is steal traffic out of eBay. And we’re like, no, that’s not what you wanna do. No, no, no, no, no. There is a smarter way to do it.
Amanda:
Yeah. So, what we, what we would do is we actually put a lot more emphasis on the description, more so than any of the advisors would ever tell us to do. We went against conventional wisdom. And so, what we, what we saw was the direct benefit was our, visits on our website started popping. Pop, pop, pop. And we would, we would start looking at our stats and it was incredible how much we were able to drive traffic organically because we had great listings. We did, we put a lot of effort into our listings, but we got to a point where our average sell price was about $200, $150 to $200 average per listing. And so, it warranted putting that extra time, you know, and I totally get, it doesn’t work for every business model. Like if you’re doing vole, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Clara:
But we wanted to prove that you can have an ugly website, okay. With a homemade logo with pristine listings, incredible images, still supporting, but incredible narrative with a very clean and professional format. You can still go and see what I’m using on The Clothing Vault. www.TheClothingVault.com. The listings that you see is the Pro plan of List Perfectly right now, back then was List Clothing. Or as I called it, the first version, the Mandy Lister. So that’s how we started, you know, creating just a lister for the website. And then Amanda built the integrations for other channels.
Liz:
What I’m hearing a lot is, you know, your listings, you did the research, you, this was years ago, you did the research on your own and you proved exactly what you set out to prove because you did a rich detailed item description doesn’t mean that you threw a bunch of words together to meet some quota. You made sure that those words mattered. You were describing your listings because those listings needed that detail. Buyers deserved to learn what they were buying at 200 plus a pop.
Amanda:
Absolutely. We were big international sellers. Buying something overseas, especially back then, was a whole thing. You know, you had to go through customs, and it would take months sometimes. And so, they really wanted confidence. If they’re gonna pay this money and wait and go through customs and do all that, then they need to know that what they’re getting is the real deal. That angle alone warranted us, putting a lot more effort in our description. And at one point we were about 40% of all sales international.
Clara:
Well, when you left, it was 60. After you left completely, and you were on List Perfectly, we went up to 60% when I had my two other employees, and it was just me and two other employees.
Amanda:
Yep. A lot of things went into really developing those descriptions. So, there was that, there was also, we realized that we actually did research on this. When you look at a description, you are not reading paragraphs of information and getting information. What buyers will typically do is scan your listing. So, by putting your listing in a format that’s scannable and easy to find information like that, it led to buyers getting the information they needed faster, but also instilling confidence in them that you are a professional seller. These types of things made the difference for us. To really take us to the next level. It means a lot. When you treat your reselling business as a business, we definitely did. Every day, we would think about it as a business. We would make business decisions. We would draft our listings like a business. And so yeah, it made a difference in the bottom line for sure.
Liz:
And I learned that from List Perfectly. Seriously. You shared that information when I signed up and joined the Pro plan. And I appreciate that. It’s not just throwing words into a description. Going back to something Clara just said. She said “it was me and two listers.” So clearly at one point, The Clothing Vault grew at one time. I’m just gonna assess that you felt the need to scale the business, cuz it was the two of you. You were doing all of this research. Clara said something about listers. This is a loaded question. What process did you go through to grow The Clothing Vault? Fill us in, in between doing it between the two of you and scaling?
Clara:
Yeah, absolutely. That’s the part that I really like and enjoy. I think this is the part that we just, Amanda and I we’re very different, but this is when we see eye to eye and it just, it just flows. That’s very important. Okay. Whether you’re alone or you’re partnering up, if you guys are not on the same page to grow a business, don’t do it. You have to be on the same page. And it’s not about just saying it, it’s about doing it and executing. She wanted to grow by creating something that would make the listing process less painful. I wanted to grow the business to make it extremely profitable and prove everybody wrong. And I wanted to prove that I can do half a million dollars by reselling vintage clothing and with an ugly website. It was for me like, look here, I wanna destroy the stereotypes okay. That was painted by the current tendencies. And that was important for me. And that’s how we were able to join forces with Amanda to grow the business and think strategically. Everything was thought strategically. So, the first step when you’re growing your business is to get the process. Okay. So, they always say people process products, right? So, you wanna make sure, okay, that you know how to source your product because once you start growing, the demand grows. You gotta keep listing. That’s the number one thing to grow your business. So, you gotta understand, gotta measure yourself, okay, how much you’re capable of doing normally on an average and you measure yourself monthly, weekly, and so forth and be realistic with the like listings. And then you average on a weekly basis, how many listings you can do natively and then how many you’re cross posting. Then what you wanna think about is once you, you know, you thought about the process, you got that, that idea down of the, product, how you’re gonna be sourcing, because those are two big problems that you’ve gotta really put a lot of thought about in. Okay. You have to plan. You have to have a plan A, B, C, D, and contingency, always. Okay. Who is gonna be the number one person you’re gonna be sourcing from? Who’s gonna be the second if that person can’t see you or doesn’t have anything you have? Who’s gonna be the other option? And now then we have the contingency. It could be an estate sale or whatever it takes, you know, to find your product. Right? So, the other thing that we had to do was people, that’s the hardest part and that’s the most expensive. Okay. So, to those of you resellers that you’re hiring, or you’re thinking of hiring overhead for growing your reselling business, please make sure don’t be pinching pennies and get the right software. Overhead is very expensive. It’s the most expensive cost when you’re growing your business. That’s it. Okay. Because inventory, if you’re smart, you know, and you’re doing the right thing with the flipping and the ratios and the profits, okay. It’s not gonna be costing you a lot. It’s actually an investment having it or storing it on a shelf, maybe didn’t sell because you have a bad listing, but you still have the asset. You still have the asset. So, when you have people, that’s a whole different thing. Let’s say that they did a batch of 100 listings that they’re all having their same misspelling. The same error is just brutal for your business. So, you have to have the right tools. And we couldn’t find one with Amanda. We couldn’t find one.
Amanda:
I wanna go back to the people part. I mean, I didn’t mean to cut you off. I’m sure you were gonna say, “We couldn’t find a tool, so we built it.” I just wanna share a little bit about how, you know, we went about finding people cuz yes, eventually we did have people. And what we would do is this, this is before community, right? This is before there was an active reseller community out there with advice sharing. Like at that time there were eBay community boards, but it wasn’t a lot of real valuable information. It was much more chit chat and banter. But so, when we wanted to hire people, it wasn’t like you had a lot of experienced online sellers out there that you could just hire to be your VA. We had to put out ads. So, we put out an advertisement for data entry and we created a system. We would put items in bins. And the bin contents would range because we would pay by the bin, but we wouldn’t wanna overload you with like a hundred t-shirts in a bin and then pay the same as like 20 coats in a bin. So, we would mix up the bin, so it was equitable. We knew how much time it would take to list each item. And we would have the person come over and give them a little training session. This is how we list. This is how we take photos. And this is typically what we do when we take measurements. And we would kind of like, you know, like to get a sense of them and how they worked. So, we’d send them home. They’d come back with a bin. And most of the time, initially the listings were terrible, so we’d have to retrain. <laugh> And so, you know, keep doing this process until we found that they made consistently good listings, but it took time, you know, and that’s the investment of time and overhead. We also experimented with getting storage units. And what we found with that was that if you keep all of your inventory in a storage unit, and then somebody has a question at 10 at night, because we would, we would check in our shop at 10 at night and let’s see if there are any questions, anything that we can answer. I’m not gonna get in the car and go to the storage unit to pull the item and get that specific information. So, we realized that, okay, let’s see if we can keep the inventory closer to home. So, we had it at the ready to just go grab the item, get the information, and answer the question. So, we did a lot of modifications to our houses. <laugh>.
Clara:
But that’s why we left. That was one of the reasons we moved out of California. Unfortunately, at that time square footage in California was extremely more expensive than Phoenix. Now, it’s pretty much the same, but at that time, eight years ago. Okay. When we start thinking of, we really have to hyper grow The Clothing Vault, we realized, no, we need a bigger garage. We had almost 5,000 listings active on all platforms. So, we needed a two car garage and a big office. And that’s how we ended up coming here to Phoenix.
Liz:
At what point did you, as business owners say, it’s time to get help? Like, what was that crunch? At what point did you say I’ve gotta grow or did you become stagnant?
Clara:
Really easy. That one is really easy. You gotta monitor. For everybody it’s different. Okay. So, there are people that I know that they’re very happy working 16 hours a day. Okay. There are people that I know that they’re very happy working four hours a day. You gotta measure what makes you happy and stress levels. If your stress levels are starting to get, you know, you’re getting frazzled and stressed out. And if you are not having the joy of shipping your products, okay? And you’re, let’s say a sole entrepreneur, then it’s time to get help. Then maybe you need to consider a partner. You need to consider a VA. You need to consider maybe a physical assistant because you need to make sure you don’t get burned out. This is very important in reselling because we’re sellers, right? So, you can’t sell from a negative perspective in which, you know, you’re dreading what you’re doing. And I think that’s very important that you start hiring. I did very well. Every neighborhood has college kids, and they always need a job. And they prefer these kinds of jobs instead of going, you know, for, traditional big corporate, I don’t know, washing cars, serving burgers, cashier. Right? So, for me, it was very easy to find, around my neighborhood, help. , and then we tested part-time and see how it goes. , obviously we tested, at least I would say until we found the perfect fit. We must have tested a year of people, but in the meantime, we’re still getting listings done.
Amanda:
Yeah. And for me, it was my why, as I mentioned earlier, was travel. It’s hard to travel when, you know, you have immediate shipping expectations and, you know, back in the day, you could say, you could, you could say, I’ll ship when I’m back from vacation. <laugh> At some point you couldn’t do that anymore. You know, that was a no go. And also, to really excel at customer service, beyond just, you know, whether or not they let you do that. It’s just a good idea to go over and above the customer’s expectations. Ship fast. But we really wanted to get out there and source a lot and travel. And so, for me, it was, well, we really need someone consistent that can ship. Shipping is really critical. It’s important. It’s something that needs to be done daily. We never had a day where we had no sales. I mean, I think maybe in the entire time that we were selling, there might have been one day, one day where we had zero sales, but I don’t even know if that is right.
Clara:
No, I would go check before the end of the day. And I was like, I got my sale! You know, I don’t think so.
Amanda:
Yeah. I mean, every single day was like, you know, I mean anywhere from five to 40 items to ship. So, it was really critical that we had someone around to ship. And that was probably the first time. And then listing, well, yeah, that was, it was definitely a natural progression.
Liz:
Were you ever afraid? Cuz, I hear this a lot in the community. If you train somebody to do your job, they’re gonna steal it. You never had that fear, right?
Amanda:
No, there’s room for all of us.
Clara:
And so, what, and so what if they’re selling, I don’t know. We had one of our listers, he put his own successful jewelry reselling store. Good for you. I went ahead and retrained. I was like, okay, just help me train someone else. That’s it. You just wanna, you did something good. As long as you keep a good relationship with this person and then tell them just don’t leave, you know, help me to train someone. Okay. And then, you know, we can, now you’re like, in a whole different relationship with this person and, and you helped them. You did that for them, and they helped you to train someone else. How rewarding is that? So don’t be afraid. Don’t even, don’t waste your time. Those are negative thoughts that will only hurt you emotionally and financially. Okay. I promise you that if you switch that mindset. Okay. To, you know, ecommerce is big enough for all of us and then you could be talking to a fellow seller peer instead of, you know, a former lister. What about that? You know and help each other. So, I strongly believe in that.
Amanda:
I love what you said, you know, and I can’t agree more. There’s a difference between making cautious decisions and fear based decisions. And I think that is definitely one of them. Never worry about the fear of what could happen. Be cautious, always be cautious in your decisions. But don’t let fear drive you.
Doug:
Tune in next week for part two of our clothing vault interview with Clara and Amanda.
Liz:
Thank you for joining us on The Seller Community Podcast from List Perfectly. You can find us at thesellercommunitypodcast.com. Leave a message or ask a question at anchor.fm/sellercommunitypodcast. Or email us at podcast@tlistperfectly.com. You can also post a question in the List Perfectly Facebook group, facebook.com/groups/listperfectly. Use the #sellercommunitypodcast and mention Liz or Doug.
Doug:
You can listen to us anywhere you listen to podcasts and be sure and subscribe, tell your friends, and if you’re on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, please leave us a review. You can also follow us on Instagram and TikTok. Liz is @coloradoreworn. I’m @snoop.dougie and of course follow @listperfectly. Also, you can use our promo code podcast, P O D C A S T for 30% off your first month of List Perfectly or 30% off your first month of upgrading your plan.
Liz:
All right Doug. I’ll see you next time.
Doug:
Next time.