This week, Liz and Doug continue their conversation with List Perfectly Co-Founders and Co-CEOs Amanda Morse and Clara Albornoz in part two of The Clothing Vault story. Learn more about Amanda and Clara scaling 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.
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Episode Links
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Transcript
Transcript
Liz:
Welcome to The Seller Community Podcast from List Perfectly. This is season two, episode ten. This week is part two of our recent conversation with Clara and Amanda talking about the story of The Clothing Vault.
Doug:
Yes, this is part two. Part one was awesome. But we’ll talk about that…So what’s up Liz, what’s up with you? We’ve had a busy week.
Liz:
Yeah, the last couple of weeks, we’ve been pretty busy.
Doug:
I like to call it the List Perfectly Liveapalooza.
Liz:
Yes. Um, uh, you keep showing up on my Instagram, like five minutes with Doug. So #fiveminuteswithdoug.
Doug:
Thank you, Liz. I appreciate your support. I’m not like you though. Miss Reels, miss TikToks. You’re gonna be floating in Kendall Jenner’s pool one of these days.
Liz:
No, she’ll have to come float in my pool, you know.
Doug:
You’ll be at the Hype House. You’ll have your own Netflix show.
Liz:
I’ve been having a lot of fun. Just kinda interacting on TikTok with other resellers. It’s you know, just another social platform that we’ve talked about a lot. I thought I was in it a lot, but now I’m learning kind of how to put out a little bit of content there and not being so afraid of it.
Doug:
And there are a ton of resellers on there now, and there’s a ton of reseller content. Just get on there, look for some resellers and TikTok’s fun and you can grow really quickly on there and get some exposure. But Liz has been doing that. List Perfectly is doing a lot more TikToks, a lot more live stuff across the board, but two things Liz. There’s the Clara and Liz Ask Us Anything show on Fridays now.
Liz:
That has been a lot of fun. I was so hesitant, and you know, a couple of weeks ago I was in Arizona, we went live, and we just had so much fun.
Doug:
And it’s great. The participation and you know, people come in and ask questions. We have some regular visitors and then we always get some new people too, and it’s good to have that going. And you guys focus on a topic, but you also take other questions. So that’s a weekly thing. So, this is part two of The Clothing Vault story, but Liz, we did something super cool last week, a red-carpet premiere.
Liz:
That was fun.
Doug:
Yeah, that was cool. That was a new thing for us. So, what we did, so basically when we record this, we record video, and we get audio for the podcast. So, we talked to Clara and Amanda for more than an hour and a half about The Clothing Vault, The Clothing Vault’s story, their growth as resellers, you know, tips and tricks they had, and it was such good content that we decided to divide it into two podcast episodes. This is part two, but what we also did is we had this, you know, super great interview with them. We decided to use the video, put it up on YouTube and then utilize that YouTube Premiere feature. So basically, we would schedule it and then we would be available to chat as you’re watching. So, it’s kind of like a behind the scenes, kind of like a DVD commentary type of thing, but it was, it was fun. And we’re gonna do more of those.
Liz:
I love that we could play the interview and you got to see us interacting. I probably would’ve put some makeup on had I thought it was gonna go up on YouTube, but it is what it is, whatever I really don’t care, but I loved that you got even more than what is in these podcasts and that we got to interact and people got to ask Clara and Amanda and you and I questions while they were listening and real time reactions. So, watchers quoting exactly what was going on during the podcast at that time, it was a lot of fun.
Doug:
Yeah. And it’s almost like, you know, you’ll see, they’ll do these film premieres, and they’ll have a panel, and you can ask questions after, but this time you got to ask questions during. So that was, that was great.
Liz:
The day that it premiered…
Doug:
Yes.
Liz:
…was a very special day.
Doug:
Yes. That was. There was a lot that went on podcast related last week.
Liz:
Yes. So, The Seller Community Podcast celebrated our one-year birthday, our podcastiversary.
Doug:
Thank you everyone. Thank you very much, please. Please hold your applause, Liz is speaking. I’m sorry, Liz. They can’t control themselves.
Liz:
That pretty much sounded like me all day. I wore my little happy birthday, tiara hat in celebration. You know, we started this and who knew? I didn’t.
Doug:
And did you have the cake and the bounce house at your house on Saturday?
Liz:
Oh, I had the cake, the ice cream, the candy, the gift bags or what are they? Little what? It’s been so long since I’ve had a kid’s birthday party.
Doug:
Did you have a pinata?
Liz:
We had a pinata. All kinds of stuff. No, but it was a very fun day to just sit back and let it all sink in and think like, “wow, we went live. Yeah, we did the premiere. We interacted with guests. We celebrated a birthday.” And at the end of the day, Doug…
Doug:
Yes, we realized, we knew we were getting somewhere. We had talked about this earlier in the week, a huge milestone. And we were like, “wouldn’t it be cool if we hit this on our birthday?” And then we were like, “we’ll see,” but tell us Liz, tell us.
Liz:
So, The Seller Community Podcast hit 25,000 downloads on our one-year birthday.
Doug:
Oh, the crowd goes wild!
Liz:
No, the crowd downloaded. So, to all of our listeners, thank you.
Doug:
And it wasn’t just my mom, just so you know. That’s pretty amazing. You know, we’re very excited that the podcast is doing well and I’m gonna make Liz uncomfortable. Thank you, Liz. I mean, for going with this crazy concept that we talked about for a bit, but we threw it together. And so, thank you, I’m serious, I wouldn’t do it with anybody else. You were always the first choice. And I knew we had a rapport, and we would be, we would be great. And you know, and I don’t even wanna listen to me on those first early episodes cuz I know I’m like total, “Hey listen to K JAZZ.” But the growth has been amazing. Your growth has been amazing. And then the guests we’ve had are amazing. List Perfectly support and special, thanks to, you know, Clara and Amanda for jumping on this with us, this crazy idea. And you know, we were, we were hoping we would make 20 episodes.
Liz:
Right. Who knew?
Doug:
Yeah. Who knew?
Liz:
So, but, and I was gonna say exactly the same, Doug, thank you for pulling me into this crazy ride. I think you had a plan. It took me about a year to say, “okay, I guess I’ll talk into a microphone.” I’m a pretty shy person. So, I don’t know….
Doug:
Liz, I knew it would work. It’s kind of taking for me, it was taking, you know, the stuff I learned at eBay on the eBay for Business Podcast, which I still love, but eBay focused. And I was like, what if there was something that was, you know, geared towards the wider seller community? And that was before I was super aware of what a great community the List Perfectly community is and how they are a resource for the wider seller community. So exactly what we were wanting to do, and we wanted to be something that would be that resource, but tell seller stories, offer seller tips, you know, get those connections. I mean, we’ve had tons of sellers. We’ve had CEOs, we’ve had execs, we’ve had people come in, you know, to talk about stuff that they don’t get a chance to talk about in other spots to really clear up stuff. So, like the eBay VERO chat was a good example and I don’t want this to be like a year in review cuz we’ve already done that. But I apologize, ladies and gentlemen, we’re very excited.
Liz:
Yes, we are. And you know what else I’m excited for? What’s that on top of all of that, that we now get to break the suspense. Yes. And our listeners get to listen to part two of The Clothing Vault Story.
Doug:
Yes. Everybody is very excited. We’ll get to that in a moment. But so, part one, they really went into super detail about how The Clothing Vault came about, the growth, you know, their learning lessons and how they grew together. But what I really like about part two is they really go deeper into like reselling and their reselling journey. And you know, they talk about inventory, they talk about sourcing, they talk, you know, all that stuff. How Clara used to drive back and forth to LA and just…
Liz:
SHHH! No spoiler alerts Doug!
Doug:
…and developing those relationships. And I worked on a Liz story again. That’s my new hashtag #lizstories.
Liz:
And next week we will be bringing you the news, maybe, a #zizrant. We will see how that goes.
Doug:
It could be, could be “really Poshmark? Really eBay?”
Liz:
Ohhhh…
Doug:
We’ll see.
Liz:
I mean, yeah, let’s see what comes about this week. Maybe that’ll be swept under the rug,
Doug:
But we’ll save that for next week.
Liz:
Yes, we will. And for now, let’s get on part two of The Clothing Vault story with Clara and Amanda.
Clara:
I read the other day. I wanna say, you know, and this applies to everything. The worst errors in humankind where whose actions were justified by fear, fear to defend their values, fear to lose something, maybe a status, a job, or whatever it is. So, fear. I would say something if you’re a reseller, because you’re a seller, you gotta sell. It’s not like other jobs where you can have, you know, like you can be down, you know, and you can still go and perform. For example, a loan processor. Let’s say. It doesn’t matter if you have a positive attitude, you’re not gonna get process more loans. Right? But as a reseller, as a reseller it’s crucial because it shows on your listings, it shows on your communications with your buyers, which there are daily. Like I always say a silly question, like, “Will this fit me?” Yeah. It’s a silly question. But it’s a question that tells, that tells you sell. Tell me more and to that you could say, “Great question.” Of course, you don’t wanna say, you know, great question, but you wanna engage, you wanna build a little relationship and see where it goes.
Doug:
And so, how’d you scale from there? Was it more listings? Was it crossposting? What helped you grow?
Amanda:
Every little thing that we did, like for example, creating an inventory system that worked for us, you know, which is key because as soon as you have somebody shipping for you, they need to know where to find the item. I mean, I can’t tell you how many times we’d be like sourcing somewhere or doing something fun. “I Can’t find it. It’s not where you said it is.”
Clara:
And I would be like “Ooo dry cleaner!” Oh, I left it in the I dunno, in the, I call it the prep room where we have a room where before we go and take the pictures. We had different rooms for everything.
Amanda:
Yeah. So, we, we really, we put so much thought into everything we did. We had a complex inventory system where somethings would be, most of our items would be hanging on a rack and everything had a unique ID. Every item. Nothing was the same SKU. Alpha numeric code. So, it was short, nothing was beyond four characters, letters and numbers, because if it gets too long, you’re dizzy reading all, all those digits. So, we had four alpha numeric combinations, which gave us, I think I calculated, it gave us like 60,000 listings capable in one group. And so, I was like, yeah, we can do millions with this system. We’re gonna be fine. Most of the items were hanging, but then some sensitive items that you don’t wanna put on hanger and leave there, we would wrap up and we would put in bins. So, we would append every four character thing with bin or shelf or long, if the item was like really long and wouldn’t fit on our regular rack. Then we had a system even in the bins. Because everything was a unique ID. We would do inventory on a regular basis. And so, we would be able to tell the oldest items in the oldest bins. And we, we kept it that way because we wanted to see, okay, this band is really old. These are some dated listings. And, you know, as we would inventory, we would rejuvenate and that’s when we would do some de-listing and re-listing. Only at that time, only during inventory. We would find things that fell out of inventory and the listings were just gone and we’d have to redo them. It happens. So, you know, just being consistent, thinking about your process, thinking about what type of inventory system, you know, works for you. For us, that’s what our inventory system looked like. It was very effective. We had, you know, once we really got a handle on our inventory, it was just a lot easier to manage, finding things, doing inventory, managing other people that were going in and doing shipping for us. So yeah. Little things like that, that made a difference. And every day I would try to do a little research and learn something new so that I would be more prepared for my sourcing the next day. Because how many times have, we gone sourcing, and we just leave money on the rack cuz we didn’t know about it? And that I was very, I was always very acutely aware of that. The difference is gonna be my knowledge. And so always, always constantly improving knowledge, keeping up with marketplace policies, things change, you know, one day you can sell something and then the next you can’t and suddenly you’re violating policy. You know, keeping up with these things, keeping current, never staying stagnant, never doing things the same way all the time and just keeping everything fresh.
Liz:
I love that. So, I saw our listeners cannot see Doug’s face, but I can see a little bubble over his head going, I need to change my inventory system to alpha numeric. Number 1234. Number 1234. <laugh>
Doug:
I’m gonna call it the Mandy Decimal System.
Clara:
I love it.
Liz:
I love it.
Doug:
What I like is I’m watching the two of you and I watch when one speaking the other is thinking back and like remembering it. It’s very interesting to see.
Clara:
I was the one that I was so upset at her. Cause I, I love reselling life so much, but she was always up to something bigger. Like can’t you just be happy? We’re doing so good. We’re doing so good. Let’s just keep it, you know? And then we’re like, but then we’re like, okay, no, we can’t keep this for our ourselves. You know, the, the advantage was just the system that we created, everything that we had, like this is really working. And then I decided to grow the credit capacity of The Clothing Vault. So, then I go with The Clothing Vault, you know, to the banks and banks are like, what? Then they go and see my website. Right? And they gave me, they gave me I remember just because I’m a former employee. They gave me a credit card for $2,000. Of course, I knew how to grow the credit. Right? But that was like an insult. Okay. For a business line of credit. That’s an insult. Okay. Like literally, and then nowadays it’s like, I don’t know, it has like a hundred thousand dollars on credit capacity, but we just start growing The Clothing Vault in so many different aspects that it could always on the big picture, looking at the big picture and looking at the future. And looking at it as an umbrella for all the platforms that we would be listing and selling in. Right?
Amanda:
Yeah. Absolutely. Always growing, improving knowledge, you know? And, and I think that you just improve your systems over time. Like when we would source, we started incorporating multiple sources of sources. You know, we would, we would not only do thrift shopping, we would go to wholesalers. We would go all over the place. And when we did thrift shopping, we had our system down. So, so perfectly that we could get in and out of a thrift store in under 15 minutes, get what we need, get, get to the next one. And we would do 15 or 20 stores in one day. So, we’d get it all done. And then, you know, then we had more time to do other things, but you know, in our heyday, we were pulling like thousands and thousands of merchandise just from that one day.
Clara:
Yeah. So, I was traveling when I was alone with The Clothing Vault and Amanda was just dedicating herself to the other business and I have to support everything myself. I was traveling three times a month to Los Angeles. And I was doing only my wholesalers. I would leave at 3:00 AM here. I arrive around kind of like 8 or 7:30am to my wholesalers. And I make sure, you know, I always, even my wholesalers, they knew I would buy in volume, and I would have first pick on everything and then just come back. I could buy per trip, I would buy 300 to 500 items. And then I have to do it three times a month. And that was just one source. Wholesalers. Okay. Then I have the sellers in Phoenix, and I have my network in Phoenix and I have to make sure I have my dry cleaner, ready. I have my lady to do the alterations. I had the pile of stuff that had flaws and then we had to make a decision, whether it was going to be listed as is, or we were going to do a bundle or which channel we’re gonna forecast it. And one thing that I wanna brag about, we were the first ones to do social marketing as a reseller, you can go and see it on Instagram. Okay. When I started to list also on Instagram, because I saw the possibility, it was incredible. I started to find wholesalers on there. At that time, I was like, wait, wow. And no, at that time, there was no way that you could buy stuff on Instagram. But you would be like, wait. And I decided to find, you know, and I was like, I could call them and just start tracking. So, then I was like, okay, let me see, I’m gonna start listing here on Instagram. And I would get questions. So that helped my website. So that changed my life forever. Like Pinterest changed forever the way I did Etsy. For me, Instagram and Facebook business pages changed forever the way I promoted organically The Clothing Vault website.
Doug:
Yeah. And I think Pinterest is still an underrated resource for sellers. And that was a real game changer when it came around, you know, with the fact that you could click through links from posts early on. So that probably, you know, helped you too. And I love that you mentioned you building, building these relationships, you’re sourcing relationships, you know, going in and having these relationships where you get the first, first choice. But you know, that’s a key to scaling, too.
Clara:
Crucial. Crucial. You have to, the relationship that you build, whether it is a Goodwill, whether it is a, any thrift store. The relationships that you build with the people you’re sourcing with you, can’t be fake. Don’t be fake. You gotta be super natural. Don’t be flaunting your money. If you have a lot of money, let’s say you have $10,000 to invest. Don’t be flaunting it. Okay. Because you, you know, you gotta get the best deal. Okay. My budget, for example, was literally, I was going with $10,000. That was it. You know, so, but I would never let them know and, and always, you know, gotta add value. You know, if they’re proposing you a bundle, you know, for certain things, okay. You have always the right to counter offer. Okay. And that’s important. Never just, and they like it. Obviously, thrift stores are different. Okay. I’m talking about wholesalers or people when you’re in a flea market. Okay. That you have to negotiate or maybe, I don’t know dealers or whatever, you’re getting maybe a bundle deal. And that’s, that’s something that would be very good with Amanda.
Amanda:
Yeah. She was, she was very good. But I do wanna point out how good you were with also respecting the people that we were buying from. Because you never wanna be that, that person that just wants to nickel and dime everyone and, you know, honestly, she would make it a pleasure for, for the, the seller of the item as well as for us. It was always a win-win for both parties. And I think that’s important to keep in mind.
Clara:
Yep. And I would ask them, “Hey, are you happy?” And, and even though I got a good deal, right? I would be like, you know, and I would, make sure, you know, I just touching respectfully on the shoulder, you know, “Hey, are you, you happy?” You know, are you sure? You know, I, I wanna make sure you always are happy when I come back. I wanna make sure your employees, I always treated even the janitor of the building okay. You treat them like the CEO of your wholesaler. Because they’re watching you, they have cameras all over. Go figure that the person that was the janitor, I’ll never forget was the cousin of the owner of the wholesaler. And that’s why they love me. They love me. And, and I was alone because at the end I was alone. There was no, Amanda, when I was supporting everything, I was alone with two college kids and just trying to support three businesses. It was intense.
Doug:
I’ve gone sourcing with Liz, and I’ve seen this. It’s like, well, she’ll walk in a place. And it’s like, I dunno if you remember the show, Cheers? Where the guy walked in the bar. “Norm!” But Liz will walk into a place, and everybody knows who she is. And she’s like, “How’s your mom? Tell your friends hello.”
Clara:
Yes, yes, yes.
Liz:
That’s has been one of my most valuable assets. And I think that it helps because that is just my personality. And I feel that Clara, that’s just your personality, too. And, and I love that the two of you just took your strong suits. You knew that Clara was really good at that. So, she would drive the five hours to go sourcing. And Amanda was holding the fort. I mean, not saying that you’re not good at that. Please don’t put words into my mouth. But you know, you, you find your strengths. And you put them first. Right?
Amanda:
That’s right. And you let that person shine…
Clara:
And you know, there are weaknesses, so you’ve got their back. You’ve got their back. You know, like for example, I’m an extremely early morning person. At that time, Amanda wasn’t a morning person. So, for me, waking up at 3:00 AM. Okay. And going to sourcing to Los Angeles. The most dangerous part was the driving. The rest was just, oh my God, adrenaline, you know how it is? And we’re sourcing, it’s adrenaline. Oh my God, your, your hands are sweating. Right? And you’re, you’re looking for that. Come on. You know, we all love that. And then for Amanda, I can’t imagine because she had to wake up, like at 5:00 AM, start taking classes of coding classes. So, for me, it was like, that’s the least I could do for what she’s doing. So, we complement each other, and she knew that I was exhausted when I was coming. So, she would wait for me. I would come the same day at midnight, I would arrive. And then she would bring in all the clothing. Because at that time the garage was full of clothing. We had no garage. Our home holds the clothing. When people tell you, “Can I come and visit you?” You’re like, “Noooo!” <laugh>.
Amanda:
Not that I’m a hoarder. No. <laugh>
Liz:
So, you’ve been there. You feel that when you’re like, you just get done with a huge sourcing trip and you’re like, I have a pile of clothes on my counter. And I have knick knacks on the couch and I have books stacked by the door, whatever you sell. Yeah. You know, you feel that. But what I love is, you know, you, as business partners, you found the strengths in each other, you were able to make the business decisions like, hey, what’s the next step is hiring people. What’s the next step. You go, now we’re gonna have to split. We were sourcing. You go source. I’ll do this. I have to imagine that there had to have been a couple of challenges, along the way, would you share? <Laugh> Are you laughing at me? Cause no or because yes. You can just share one if you don’t mind. We’ll have time for three.
Clara:
When I shipped like $3,000 of merchandise to Malaysia. That one hurt. That one hurt. I shipped it express USPS. Of course, you know, they open it, charge back. And I was like, my merchandise.
Liz:
Oh noooo.
Clara:
Having your website, you know, you’re your boss. There is no eBay to protect you. Nobody’s gonna come and do a fraud protection against you. Nobody’s, you know, reviewing the credentials of the buyer. And at that time, we were like I said, by the time Amanda left the business. She’s there, but she’s busy with other stuff. So, it was 60% of my products going international. So, I didn’t, it just slipped. It just slipped from me. And, it, you know, it was my employees, I forgot to tell them do not ship to Malaysia. I should have checked what they were shipping that day. I was busy sourcing. I got excited. And you know, it’s learning the balance as you have new hires or employees. You gotta nurture them with, the knowledge, you know, because we were hiring people that don’t have the reselling experience. When you have the right software, you don’t have to train them. And that was important. I’m not interested in teaching you eCommerce and the whole thing, that’s it. Your job is to take measurements give a basic description of what you’re listing weigh the product, right. And then mark with tape if you find any flaws. That was important for me to have to make sure that overhead, okay. The people, the young people that I have on my reselling business are working effectively with the right tools. So, we can maximize their time. Their time is very valuable. It’s very expensive.
Amanda:
And gosh knows, I would get sometimes way too excited about buying, you know, a lot of something only to get home and just find, oh, this has been altered. Oh, this is, I see, oh, this is so wrong. This is counterfeit. This is, this is not authentic. You know, those, those are buying mistakes. You just have to donate it. I mean, you know, I, we don’t, we didn’t, we never dealt in anything. If we knew something was, you know, altered or misrepresented or inauthentic, we would just donate. When in doubt, eat the loss and move on.
Clara:
When in doubt, don’t list it. Don’t list it. In Spanish, “We say, don’t look for the fifth paw of the cat.” You know, it’s like, yes, you might be able to find it. But you know, you might be able to find the cat with five legs, you know, but no, you know, just don’t risk it. It’s not worth it. Especially when you’re making over six digits per channel. Imagine losing one channel. Weigh the risk versus, you know, the reward. Very important.
Amanda:
Also, you know, it affects your reputation. We always wanted to be the authority on what we sold. That was our mission. I would take it very personally, if something made it in our shop that we didn’t realize was inauthentic. I mean, no, that, that was just a no go.
Doug:
What were some of the early on successes that really stand out for you?
Clara:
Oh my God. I’ll tell you. Oh, I gotta go on this one. So, we have the website, right? For me, the early, early, early, early success for me was to realize that from the website that we could send traffic. It blew my mind that we’re sending traffic to eBay. We’re doing the opposite. Okay. We’re sending traffic to eBay and these people come back to the website and they buy from the website. That, that blew my mind. For me that was a big success because I realized we’re up to something. We can go and break the traditional business growth. If you see secret recipe of success that they had at that time. For me, that was mind blowing and to have a website that was doing 6 digits, you know, without SEO. Only Instagram and Pinterest, that was for me a complete success. And for you?
Amanda:
I just remember those times when we would go sourcing and it just felt like we’re just, we’re finding so much gold. You know, I mean, I can remember there’s, there’s quite a few times when Clara and I would just be like, “Hey, let’s just stop by this thrift store.” And we would walk out with like 12 goat skin pilot jackets, you know, for like 10 bucks each. And we were like, can you believe it? There was one month when I was out thrifting and I found three, not one, but three Vicuna coats, which…
Clara:
Wait, wait, wait. She calls me. She calls me. And I’m like, I’m listing. Right? At that time, there was no smartphone. Right? So, I’m doing Terapeak. Terapeak was an independent company from eBay. So, I’m there and Amanda would call me and she’s like Clara what is Vi-Cu? Vi – Vi – Vi? Get it. I’m like, get it, get it. <Laugh> You know? And she’s like, I dunno. I dunno. It’s, it’s like $100. I’m like get it! We sold it. Obviously, we sold it for $8,000. It was incredible. And she found three in one month.
Amanda:
Three in one month.
New Speaker:
Wow.
Liz:
I’ve been selling for 20 years, and I’ve never found one. Just to throw that out there for those that aren’t clothing sellers that don’t understand.
Clara:
Vicuna.
Amanda:
It is the rarest and softest wool on the planet. You cannot get any softer or rarer.
Clara:
It’s only in Peru, Bolivia and Argentina. <laugh>
Amanda:
But it’s and thankfully, you know, back in the day they didn’t harvest it. Well, they would, they, they actually harvest it from little mountain Vicuna. They call them the Vicuna, it’s the animal. And they’re like a little Lama, little Lama that lives in the mountains and high altitudes. But back in the day, unfortunately, they, they didn’t know what they were doing. I have to, I have to believe they just didn’t know, because it was just cruel what they would do. They would shave them in the middle of winter and then they would die. These little animals. Cause they needed their, their coat to survive. So now the practice was I think banned thankfully. It’s regulated. So, you can’t, you can’t just go and harvest this wool. So, they, now they actually have Vicuna farms and it’s, it’s done sustainably without harming the animal. It’s still even with the farms, it is still the rarest and most expensive.
Clara:
The most expensive fabric. It’s called the Royal fabric.
Liz:
Wow. Three in a month. Oh my gosh.
Clara:
That was, yeah. That was a big success. That was, that was something. Thank you for bringing that up.
Liz:
I love that.
Clara:
I wanna share Liz. When we sold expensive stuff, you know what we would do because we, we were always traveling. We would always find an excuse, like to travel anywhere. To source anywhere. Okay. I don’t know. We go to the grocery store. Okay. We’re sourcing on the way, you know anything. Right. But we would go, let’s say we sold stuff, you know, to Spain or France or whatever, we’d go and travel and deliver it there because it’s expensive. So why am I gonna pay, at that time was $200 to do it, you know, with delivery and all that stuff. So, we would be like, let’s go to Spain. And then we go, we’d go right to Spain. Right? So, we would, we would have to buy the airplane ticket. A ride to Spain and then ship it from Spain and then provide that tracking number to eBay. And thankfully eBay at that time started to allow the manual entry of the shipping information.
Liz:
Oh my gosh, I love it. One day, I’m gonna do an exotic sale somewhere. And I’m gonna say, I can hand deliver it. I’m gonna travel to hand deliver something.
Clara:
So much fun. And you can source… It’s a write-off guys, you have to think like that. With Amanda, everything, we, we are always thinking like write off, write off, write-offs.
Amanda:
We had a lot of fun also going to conventions. Another really fun aspect of reseller life is there were, there were some incredible conventions. Like obviously we have the, the eBay convention. I have some really great stories of, of eBay conventions back in the day. Cause I went to, I went to a couple, but we would go to for example, some of the Snow Outfitter conventions in Colorado. And at that time, I don’t think they do this anymore. But at the time we would, we would go every year, like clockwork and we would meet with, you know, wholesalers, we would talk to them. We would benefit from the swag. And part of the swag was they would give you free passes to any ski resort that you wanted to go to in Colorado for like four or five days. Oh. And they would give us, they would let us test all the latest and greatest gear. Meanwhile, so we went to, you know, Aspen Telluride, like it was just, and that was fully paid for. It was really, really nice.
Liz:
And that was a business expense because you were going to shop and source.
Clara:
Sourcing. Yep.
Liz:
Sounds like a lot of fun. So, I’m gonna maybe one day do that, too. Just drive up there. I don’t have to fly out.
Clara:
Lucky you.
Liz:
Tell me one thing. And this is a question for each of you. What is your favorite part of reselling? It can be something as simple as measurements all the way up to whatever, but what is your favorite part of reselling?
Amanda:
There are so many. My personal is being your own boss. Working for yourself. Having that freedom. I love, I love, love, love the ability to set my own schedule as a reseller. I really liked controlling my shop. I really liked setting my own prices. I don’t want anybody to tell me what I should sell my item for. And you know, and that’s that, that actually brings me into a segue. Remind me about pricing. Cause I wanna talk about that later.
Clara:
For me, the most appealing thing of reselling is that there is no roof of the potential you can make on your income. And it’s so rewarding. It’s not empty money for me. I didn’t find this joy when I was a lawyer. I didn’t find this joy when I was a banker, and I helped a lot of people make their dreams come true with their houses and businesses. But what I found in eCommerce…because I saw it. So scalable for me, it’s the future, that’s it? Yes, commerce will always exist, but eCommerce it’s, it’s just incredible. It’s just the growth and that’s what, that’s what changed my, it made it so special for me.
Doug:
So, Amanda, we hear you have some pricing insights. So, let’s talk about that.
Amanda:
Something that I learned, and this comes with experience. At that time, they had, they had a lot of research tools when it came to pricing. You know, I would never go with the average, and I think Clara could agree with me on that. We would see average prices, but we quickly learned it depends on a lot of things. You can’t just take pricing advice at face value. So especially in our category, we learned that, you know, your price depends on the size of the item, the condition of the item, especially with vintage, depends on the color. There, there are so many things that, that can change a price for the exact same item from the one that you have. We would do the research and look at pricing, but we would always go against it. And, and, and the time that we were sellers, if you researched the comps for the same item, The Clothing Vault was always the top comp. Always. We would always get our price and we would always justify it with everything we put in the listing. Why is this one different? What makes it special? What makes it unique? What makes it different from the other one? Cause sometimes we would get messages like, you know, “Hey, I did research and so and so has it for like $50 less.” So, we would always say, please, okay, go ahead and buy it from them because we knew that they were getting a lesser quality. They were getting a smaller size or whatever it was or a new seller. Yeah. I mean, there were so many things that go into pricing, so just be careful about how you price items and never feel a pressure to race to the bottom and slash your prices and keep slashing your prices. Honestly, that’s the death of sellers. It is. You know, you have to value your time. And if you’re gonna pick something to sell, if you took the time to pick that item and say, I wanna sell this online, make the most of that opportunity. That’s my, my strongest advice.
Clara:
Yeah. Because a better listing, content, a better description will bring you more sales. You can have the cutest pictures, but if you don’t have accurate content, nowadays buyers are content driven. They wanna make sure you did your work on describing the product. If you’re gonna price it high, they’re willing to pay the extra money, but give them the data. They wanna understand what they’re buying and, and specific additional details. That’s very important. Well said. Cause we never went with the average never. And what is most important if you use a pricing tool. Sometimes the pricing tool doesn’t know that maybe, I don’t know, Ariana Grande, okay. Just wore that shirt and somehow, okay. That shirt now which was a $7 shirt that you were selling, now that that shirt is like literally $3,000. Don’t even get me started because that’s the part, you know, if someone is so desperate to buy from you and they love your product, you don’t need to drop your prices so much. The product is good.
Amanda:
I’m so glad you said that because seasonality also plays upon it. You know, you could get pricing data from, let’s say March end of season, but come December and the price shoots up by four, at least four times. So, seasonality matters. So, it’s very important to just not take pricing advice at face value. It’s a complex thing. A lot goes into it and just, just be cautious with that. Manage your items.
Clara:
I think we manage our time so effectively that we make sure that listing, images, measurements, everything that was not essential to the business growth of The Clothing Vault was not done by us. So, we were sourcing, we were keeping an eye on margins and profits. We were keeping an eye, you know on best practices, best process. So that’s how we were able to become very effective and saving time. And sometimes I see people, I don’t mind, you know, I’ll just do it manually. And I’m like, oh, it’s, it’s more time you could be using to gain knowledge. Like she said about better sourcing. You could be calling new people to, to, to see new opportunities. Or maybe you can try a new product, or maybe you can open a second store with a different name. Okay. If you’re selling clothing, why don’t you go and try selling, I don’t know, lampshades. Okay. Let’s say that, you know. We even have a List Perfectly customer that she stopped reselling on eBay I believe. And now she’s, let’s say hardwood or clothing else. She’s doing candies. And she loves doing that. And she’s selling online on her website candy and she’s so happy and she’s still using this perfectly to cross post with her candy. I love it. You know? So, make sure, you know, you are experimenting with whatever makes you happy, believing the product you’re selling. Yes. Do keep an eye on your profit, but you gotta leaving what you sell. Right?
Amanda:
Absolutely.
Liz:
I love that. That the research is not face value. Like so much pricing is complex. And one thing that I heard a long time ago that really, and when I comp my items, I just take a glance. You can’t get a hundred dollars for an item if you don’t ask a or dollars for an item.
Amanda:
Yeah.
Liz:
If you’re on the fence, price it higher and see what happens. Are you getting views? Are you getting impressions? Are you getting, you know, and especially in the market where there’s so many, one-offs?
Clara:
I know I, you know we’re, going there, let let’s do it.
Amanda:
Something that really said something to me. I’ll never forget when we, we had a philosophy that, you know, you’d see sellers, hey, my item is selling. Let me mark it down. You even had marketplaces telling you, “Hey, item will sell. If you mark it down,” and we were always like, “no.” We played a game, and we would, we would increase prices on stale items, and they would sell. Like increasing the price because there is something, and this is true. If you price your item at the medium or below your buyer’s gonna think there is something wrong with it. And they’re gonna be like, “why is this so cheap?” And we learned that lesson over a lot of experience and time and it’s true.
Clara:
Yeah. And sometimes I would be like “why didn’t you leave me feedback?” I would ask for feedback. “Why Didn’t you leave me five stars? Why did you leave me four when I did everything right?” And she was like, “well, you know, it was just priced low, you know? And I wasn’t sure it would be authentic.” And I was like,” Really? Okay. I can fix that problem.” Okay. We fixed that problem. So, we were always asking questions to your buyers. Don’t be guessing what they want, what they need in that. It’s incredible. Okay. Your customers will tell you what will help your business grow in the right direction. Be customer centric, forget about, you know, paying advertising and paid campaigns on Instagram or, you know, that’s, that’s just my perspective. We started from nothing with Amanda. We had no investors, we have to put up our own money. So, it’s a different situation that we have from someone that maybe has, you know, saved money or big investment to start volume selling. That’s a whole different business plan.
Liz:
So, is there anything that we haven’t covered yet that you would like to?
Clara:
Full transparency? I remember when I met Amanda, she was a little burned out with eBay. Okay. She was a little frustrated and I remember telling her, you know, “Hey, you’re not alone.” Okay. And in this case, you know, I was there, you know, at that time there was no community. So, if you find yourself a little burned out, you know, “Wow, I got too many returns.” You know, “If I just remove one of my listings, I’m not getting paid on this product because now whatever is happening,” Please, I beg you go to the community or lean on a partner. I was able to be like, “You know what, Amanda, let’s not focus on that then.” Okay, perfect. Okay. Done. You know, we lost that case. Whatever happened. Okay. At that time, you know, she, Amanda, wasn’t doing, let’s say it’s not her forte let’s say customer service, replying to questions. Right. So, I remember we teamed up and that’s a part that I love. Doing customer service is something that, you know, is easy. Not that, but just for me it just flows. Right. And remember we teamed up and say, I’m done. You know, that was a part of, of the past. You changed her mind set and guess what? She changed her mindset. And we started to sell more. We started to source better. We started to maximize our time. She was happier. And when you’re happier, it just shows. The way you talk to your customers. It just shows when you’re sourcing, you’re gonna source better products. That’s all I recommend, surround yourself with positive messages, get out of the, what is it? The theories, you know, that are like, maybe eBay has me, or whoever has me on a blacklist, or I don’t know, just get out of that mindset and focus on what works. Let’s say that maybe Etsy is not working for you. Well move on, move on to eBay. Let’s see where it is. Okay. Or it’s not working for you. Move on to XY. So do something right on the act. That’s all stay positive, stay positive, surround yourself with positive people. And if you don’t have a partner, go to the community and make sure you engage on the positive threads.
Amanda:
Yeah. That that’s really well said. Very positive activity makes all the difference. And I would say, you know, my advice is to whether you’re just starting out or your kind of part-time maybe you wanna get to, full-time just, don’t expect the massive changes to happen overnight. Make small incremental changes, improve upgrades to what you do and make consistent effort every day. Do something for your reseller business every day. Yes. Even if it’s just consistently listing or, you know, let’s say you can’t consistently list, bank your listings so they’re always consistent. Make some consistency with your business and consistent improvements as well. Do something every day to improve your reseller business, whether it’s your knowledge, whether it’s, you know, maybe tweaking listings that you had, don’t put pressure on yourself to do everything overnight. Because these things take time, and you will see a difference with just consistency.
Liz:
I love it. Thank you.
Doug:
Anything else?
Clara:
Not for today, but I can’t wait to be invited back.
Doug:
Wait, ladies, I have a very important, exciting question. We haven’t done this for a while. We call it the lightning round.
Clara:
All right.
Doug:
Do you wanna do the lightning round, five minutes?
Clara:
Let’s do it.
Doug:
What we do is we do the lightning round, answer the question as quickly as possible. And then we move on. All right. So…
Clara:
Yeah.
Doug:
Ready?
Clara:
Yes!
Doug:
Ladies and gentlemen. Let’s welcome Amanda and Clara to the show. Thank you. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, this is their point to make up time to make up extra points. Catch up if they need to. Welcome to The Seller Community Podcast Lightning Round! Please. Ladies. Gentlemen, hold your applause to the end. All right, Liz, Liz, get us started, the crowd’s obviously excited. Get us started.
Liz:
I’m excited too.
Doug:
Yes.
Liz:
Okay. All right. All right. What is your most favorite item that you’ve sold?
Clara:
Vicuna coat $8,000.
Doug:
Amanda?
Clara:
Well, you know what? That’s good, if I’m gonna pick my favorite, my second favorite is that we would, we would always have these Matt Larson’s Swedish coats. They’re really heavy. I mean, I think they weigh a hundred pounds and so they’re, but they’re made in Sweden they’re World War II. And we had a few of those gems, like all leather horse, horse hide even the canvas ones.
Clara:
Bruce Willis wore it in 12 Monkeys, Bruce Willis. So, people go see the images, Google it. Okay. If you find one of those at that time, we were selling them for $2,000, $3,000.
Doug:
That’s a good coat! Oh, the crowd likes it too. It’s an excellent choice. All right. For each of you, what’s the most memorable item you sold?
Clara:
Oh, for me it is 30 items from Ralph Lauren. I couldn’t believe that I was shipping it to New York to the headquarters of Ralph Lauren. And they bought the most exclusive vintage on that order. It just, I cannot tell you what because that changed. I Was like, it was the best thing, unforgettable for me.
Amanda:
Wow. Of course, for me it’s you know, your mom’s coat. Oh, you sold your mom’s coat, and I didn’t even know…
Clara:
Why would you go there?
Amanda:
I know, I know, but it was, I didn’t even know at the time the symbolism of it and, and what it meant to you because you were so nonchalant about it. And it was only later that that I found out how hard that was for you but doing that made all the difference in the world when there, there are moments that in our reselling journey that we definitely were struggling a little bit, trying to level up, trying to get to the next level. And that was one of those times that that helped us through a really difficult time. So, yeah, that was wonderful.
Clara:
Thank you. You got me there.
Doug:
Well, we didn’t want to make you cry. That was a nice story.
Liz:
We’re gonna push on because the two of you pushed on, right?
Clara:
Yeah.
Amanda:
Yeah.
Liz:
You did it. You overcame that struggle.
Clara:
Yep.
Liz:
What is the most expensive item you have sold?
Clara:
Yeah, it has to be again, the Vicuna coat?
Amanda:
Or a car. We sold a car.
Clara:
Yes. A car. Yes. A car. Yes.
Doug:
All right. Good one.
Doug:
Allright! Thank you, Clara and Amanda. You did well. Maximum points. Woo. Congratulations, Clara and Amanda, our winners for the day, The Seller Community Podcast very loud lightning round.
Liz:
You have won a free trip back to The Seller Community Podcast! And a t-shirt.
Clara:
Love It!
Doug:
All right. Well thank you, Clara, and Amanda, this was, it’s always great to talk to you and always great to learn more of this story. There’s so much to it. And I think there’s probably more, we should have you on to talk about too.
Clara:
Oh, my goodness. Yeah. Seriously. Every topic we could probably fill a whole episode with, because boy, we’ve been there done that. You, oh my God. Your returns. Okay. What you want? She returns customer service.
Liz:
Yes. Yes. All different episodes.
Clara:
Yeah. We’d love to. It’s something that we love sharing.
Liz:
Thank you so much for sharing your selling journey. I love hearing seller stories because there are so many different ways to do things like my journey is different from yours. It’s gonna be different from Doug’s. It’s going to be different from our listeners and there are so many different ways to do this business. And I’m so happy. You got to share the clothing ball way.
Amanda:
Thank you. Thank you. And, and you’re absolutely right. There is no right or wrong way. There’s just a right for you way. And we just shared our story of what was right for us.
Liz:
Clearly. It was a right way, cuz it was its super successful.
Clara:
It’s allowed us, okay, and this is the beauty of reselling the last message that I wanna leave, reselling allowed me to fund by myself different businesses. When everybody was telling me, I’m not gonna invest in you. You have the wrong idea, and I was able to do it. So, for me, this is life changing. I wouldn’t trade nothing for being a reseller. My dreams have come true. And I hope so are yours.
Doug:
Well, that’s amazing. So, thank you very much. And we’ll, we’ll have Amanda and Clara back on again. Certainly!
Clara:
We look forward to it. Thank you, guys. Thank you.
Liz:
Clara and Amanda, thank you again.
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@listperfectly.com. You can also post a question in the List Perfectly Facebook group, facebook.com/groups/listperfectly. Use the hashtag #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 Doug. I’ll see you next time.
Doug:
Next time.