This week on The Seller Community Podcast from List Perfectly and Listing Party, Doug and Trish welcome Rachel Homberger back to the show and talk about how she’s gone full-time selling over the past year, her sourcing methods, content on YouTube and Instagram, and her speaking gig at an upcoming seller event. We also launch Seller Shoutouts and Seller News!
The Seller Community Podcast from List Perfectly is the e-commerce resource for the seller community across all platforms and a 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.
Links
Seller Community Podcast on Anchor
Doug Smith (snoop.dougie) linktree
Trish Glenn (Super Sale Trish) Instagram
Episode Links
Season 2 Episode 25: Rachel Bagnik: A Practical, Fun, Entertaining, and Accidental Reseller
Ohyeahrachie LinkTree
Helpsy Reseller + Industry Day, January 13, 2024
Intro
Doug: Welcome to season 4 of The Seller Community Podcast from List Perfectly and Listing Party! Trish and I are excited for season 4 and the new things we’ll be bringing to the podcast including a lot more seller resource content like tips, seller shoutouts, seller news, and more!
On episode one of season four, we’re excited to welcome back Rachel Homberger, ohyeahrachie. Trish and I caught up with her and talked about how she’s gone full-time selling over the past year, her sourcing methods, content on YouTube and Instagram, and her speaking gig at an upcoming seller event.
Let’s get into it!
Rachel Homberger
Trish: Rachel Homburger is a full-time mama, a reseller on eBay, Poshmark, and Mercari, who loves sharing sourcing tips, mystery boxes, and sales updates with other resellers. Thanks for being here. We’re so looking forward to this. So for those of us who do not know you, could you remind us who you are and what you sell?
Rachel: Sure. So I’m Rachel Homberger. You may know me on Instagram or YouTube as OhYeahRachie. That’s my handle. And just like you said, I sell on multiple reseller platforms. I make YouTube videos of mystery boxes. Somehow that’s what I got mostly known for, which was an accident, but really, yeah I’m a full-time mama. I had a baby this year, I quit my corporate job and I moved my reseller business to full-time. So I love sharing what I do, what’s working for me, because honestly, I feel like if I can do this and make it a full-time job, then anybody that wants to do it can do it too.
Doug: All right. And I’m trying to adjust to Homberger, but I still know you as Rachel Bagnik. So very sorry about that. But a lot of people probably still know you from that seller association as well. And you’ve been on The Seller Community Podcast before and gotten married since you’ve been on there and you’ve had a lot of change over the last year. All of these changes, have they changed the way you deal with your business at all?
Rachel: Oh my gosh, a hundred percent, and I think my business has evolved pretty much every year since I’ve been a reseller, but this year has been like the biggest of them all. Yeah. So thank you for mentioning it. It’s been a minute since I got married. It was October 2021, but I used to be rbagnik on Instagram and YouTube, and I got married and Bagnik was my maiden name so that didn’t make sense anymore. And it was a great time to rebrand and you know what, I got my name ohyeahrachie fun fact.
When I first signed up to be a List Perfectly affiliate, they were like, what do you want your code to be? And I’m like, I don’t know. How about, ohyeah? And that’s how my code was born. And so I used the code, ohyeah, for everything. And that’s how I became, ohyeahrachie. But yeah, to answer your question, the biggest evolution of my business was this past year, the biggest being that I moved from part-time to full-time time and I feel like I have spent the last maybe five or six years setting myself up to be in a good space to leave my corporate job. And this year it was finally possible. So I’m very excited to be where I am right now. So excited.
Doug: That is awesome.
Trish: That’s awesome. So what are some things you’re doing to get out there more now that you’re full-time in the seller community in 2024?
Rachel: As I mentioned before, my YouTube channel, I’ve, that started, that was like a pandemic project that started by accident and I didn’t realize that there was a need for what I was doing. So I’m just going to keep doing more of it. And I get a lot of great feedback from the community on what people want to see. I’m also trying to get out there and do more live events.
Every year there are all these events. There’s eBay Open and PoshFest and I never have been able to do any of them. And this year I’m trying to get out there and be more involved in person in the reseller community. I’m doing my first event of 2024 next week on January 13th, I will be up in New Jersey. I am in the Atlanta area. I’m headed up to New Jersey to participate in their reseller industry day. So if anybody isn’t local to the New Jersey area and you want to come visit the HELPSY source warehouse, HELPSY is one of the main places I buy my mystery boxes from. They’re opening their warehouse to other resellers local to the area to just see their operation, shop their floor and just talk to other resellers. And they’ve invited me up to just talk about my business and how I’ve been able to scale my business using mystery boxes. So that’s January 13th. It’s free. They just have to RSVP because they have a capacity limit, but it is free if you can put it in the comment section. So they, anybody that wants to come can join.
List Perfectly will be there with me. I heard that Clara is sending me some great help to just talk about List Perfectly and how your product can help the community with our product. It’s my product. I love my List Perfectly, but we’ll be out there talking about it and I’ll be sharing, of course, how List Perfectly has helped me move my business from part-time to full-time. And I will say that this tool has been a big piece of that being possible for me. Honestly.
Doug: Awesome. And that’s so cool that you’ve gone full-time and gotten out of the corporate world.
Rachel: Yeah.
Doug: But let’s move back to your YouTube channel. It’s super cool. You’re very active there, with over 3000 subscribers, which is not easy. I think I have three. But congratulations.
Rachel: Thank you.
Doug: Your YouTube channel, the growth of it. Why did you start it? And was it you saw and said this is there was a need that wasn’t being filled? So you thought you would fill that need.
Rachel: Yeah, I started, again, it was a pandemic project. I couldn’t go out sourcing because of obvious reasons. And so I started ordering mystery boxes. I think at the time it just was from thredUP, right? And I was going on Instagram live to do the unboxings and somebody was like, why don’t you start a YouTube channel? I was like, I don’t even watch YouTube. I don’t even know what to do. At that point, I had just found Instagram too. So I was very new to the reseller community in general, but I wanted to connect with people. And if people are saying like, Hey, this is something we would watch. Let me try it, which in the beginning, like you said, Doug, it’s not easy. I think my first video got 19 views.
But I’m like, you know what, if I’m going to buy these boxes, I’m going to show people anyway, because, some people like to see before they buy and it’s a mystery box. So what if I can show people what they could potentially get in these boxes unbiased, good, bad, indifferent? I’m just here to show you.
That’s what I started doing. And then As time went on, I started buying more mystery boxes just for the sake of YouTube because I needed more content because that’s what I was doing. And then within the past year, as I moved my business to full-time and along the lines of, having a baby, I don’t have time to go thrifting.
And the mystery boxes have been such a lifesaver and those have been very detrimental to my business too because the argument can be made that, the mystery boxes… you’re spending money and not knowing what you’re getting. But the time it saved me and the money that it saved me, then going out to a thrift store and spending potential hours and buying nothing or not getting the amount of product I need to sustain my business.
And that’s very hard to do with a little baby. If you’ve tried it, it’s not recommended. And so now it’s evolved into showing people how they can make their business work by having inventory delivered to them instead of going out thrifting, and it’s a great option for some people, but it’s not a great option for a lot of people.
That’s what it’s evolved into and me just still showing, hey, this box is available from this company. Here’s what came in mine. You can expect something similar if you order the same one, hoping it helps people make those decisions for their business.
Trish: I just have a couple of business things to ask about. So I buy blind. That’s what I call it. I buy blind a lot. I do it in much larger quantities than your mystery box size. So can I ask, do you ever worry about the cost per item? If you’re going to be able to, and then I would also, I cull, that’s what we, I don’t know if that’s a word you would use, it’s a lumber thing.
Doug: It’s like a Boston whaling term or something.
Trish: It’s not, it’s from the lumber industry. And when wood comes in, there’s a certain amount that you need to cull because it’s warped or whatever. So I call it culling. So the stuff will come in and there’s a certain amount that you’ll need to get rid of. It has a stain or a hole or whatever. So I’m just wondering about that kind of stuff. I understand that some of this is for content and good for you and people love watching unboxings, so good for you. But I’m wondering on the reselling side, how much of that kind of comes into play?
Rachel: I’ve definitely gone through trial and error with that. There are a couple of companies that I stick with HELPSY being one of them. And the other big one I use is Boutique by the Box. I’ve ordered from them so many times and their boxes are consistent. Most of the time. I can’t say that every single box is profitable. No, it’s not. And I think that’s true from anywhere you buy from if you’re buying blind like you say. But I think I’ve gotten it down to knowing my sources and what sells for me. It’s still a risk, but it’s a lot more calculated than it would be if I was just buying from random places, I think.
Trish: So let me ask you a question. Do you think when you take out the component of making content, it’s a valuable or viable solution for resellers, maybe those who can’t leave the home, who have small children, or who have mobility issues for whatever reason? So you do believe that this is an actual…
Rachel: Yeah. If I stopped doing YouTube tomorrow, I would still continue the course of my sourcing. To be honest with you, I don’t unbox every single box anymore. I get so many boxes that I don’t have enough hours in the day, or sometimes I will get one that I liked and I’ll reorder another one and another one. And then I don’t necessarily make a new video every single time. So I do as much as I can. And anytime I get a new box, I’ve never seen it before. I will go on and unbox it. But yeah, I would say even if I wasn’t doing YouTube, it would be very hard for me. Just my business model in general. It’d be hard for me to get back out there and start thrifting all of a sudden because it takes up so much time…
Trish: I know a lot of people get into this business cause they love to shop, right?
Rachel: Yeah.
Trish: I love the thrill of the hunt. They love to do it. Not my cup of tea. The idea of standing at a rack and going through every single piece of clothing makes the little hairs on my neck stand up. So that is not something I enjoy. So I love getting the things. I buy blind just so you are aware I buy blind from consignment stores. So I’ll buy like 800, a thousand pieces at a time, stuff that’s already cycled through their store. It’s already out on the floor and didn’t sell. And I’ll take those items and it helps them and it helps me. And I’ve built up a very big network in my area to be able to do that. And for me, the idea of going back is just too hard.
Rachel: I love thrifting. I like the thrill of the find. I do. And every once in a while, I will pop into a Goodwill for fun, but it’s not realistic for me to do all the time. And now because I do get so much stuff coming in that I go in there and I just look at stuff and I’m like, do I need to take this home? No.
I don’t miss it as much as I did at first. But actually what you do, Trish, that’s funny you say that’s what Helps You Source does on a very, probably much larger, I mean they have a huge, I don’t know if you have a warehouse, but they have a huge warehouse and they buy from consignment stores. They actually have consignment stores in their area that they work with that will buy from customers just to sell to them.
Trish: So I used to own a brick-and-mortar consignment store. That’s how I got into this business. So I did not know that about HELPSY., I’m going to have to go research this when we’re off, because I did not know about HELPSY, and I still don’t. And I’ve seen some of your unboxings, but they’ve all been the boutique ones, Boutique by the Box.
So I’ve never even seen you do a HELPSY unboxing. So I’m going to have to go look at this, but for me, what I like about that is, when I owned the consignment store, I would have been thrilled to be able to sell to somebody like me because we used to donate it and so it would go to Salvation Army, it would go to Goodwill and we all know and other resellers know, but the general public does not understand that a lot of these clothes go right to a landfill or go right to the, buy the bins, which you know, that gets picked through and then goes to a landfill. I really like this model better because it’s their better stuff. They’ve already taken out, they’ve already culled, so I don’t have to worry about that. When I pick up from them, almost all of it is sellable. Very rarely is something not sellable. Yeah, so I’m gonna have to go check it out. So I’m glad you’re talking about it.
Rachel: Yeah, they essentially do exactly that. Then they sort it into 40-piece mystery boxes so that the average reseller can afford to and can have the capacity to process each box. Same idea. Instead of having anything that the consignment store went through and didn’t sell or, because the consignment store is brick and mortar, the audience is limited, right? So even though it sat on their shelf and went on unsold, I don’t know how long until you rotate on a consignment store, three months, four months, one season, right?
Now you’re sending it to an online reseller who has a much wider audience because It’s online, right?
Trish: And you can sit on it. I have 15, 000 items online. I have 15, 000 items online. I’ll sit on something. Because it’s a good item and I’m waiting for the right person to come along. That’s fine. But when I owned my store, even if I had 15, 000 items in the store, you only had a certain amount of people coming in. So they wanted new stuff all the time. So even if it was great, you’re not leaving it there. Because they’ve already seen it. So you had to get rid of it. Yeah.
Rachel: Yeah. So it’s the same idea. It’s just, that they’ve scaled it so that they can send it out to resellers that want, inventory for their businesses that like myself, maybe don’t have the time or I’m very privileged to live in the Atlanta area there are very good thrift stores here, but I know one of the pain points for resellers is not everybody has good thrift stores.
And so it’s a solution for those people too. Maybe it’s a rural area or what have you, where you can’t just walk into a thrift store and find a bunch of designer stuff, so I like what they’re doing and that’s, that’s why I When they asked me to come out and speak at their event, I was like. Cause I believe in what they’re doing. And to your point, so much of that otherwise would be going into landfills, which is so hard to think about, but it’s just one more way of keeping stuff out of landfills.
Doug: No, it sounds like a great model. Thanks for telling us more about it. And for those that wanna learn more from you more about all this, remind us where you can be found on social across the board.
Rachel: Yeah, so I’m ohyeahrachie. Oh yeah and then Rachie, R-A-C-H-I-E, which was my nickname in high school. And Instagram and YouTube are the two platforms that I am active on right now.
Doug: And that’s cool. I love, ohyeahrachie. I think it’s super cool.
Trish: We really appreciate you coming out and I really appreciate you talking about your business model. Doug and I are committed this year on the podcast to doing a lot more reselling business content. So I appreciate you and your being candid about how it works for you. So do you have anything you’d like to add? Anything else you’d like to put out there in the universe?
Rachel: Not really. I’m just so excited that you guys had me on again. I know I was on a few years ago. Gosh, it was a few years ago by now. And so much has changed with me. So I appreciate you guys talking with me again. And it’s lovely to see you again too.
Doug: Yeah. And thanks for coming on. It was great to see you at eBay Open. We worked eBay Open together in Atlanta. And where were you, Trish?
Trish: I was in Chicago.
Doug: All right. Yeah. We had people everywhere, but that was a lot of fun. Always great to talk to you and thanks for coming back on I’m sure we will have you on again. And good luck with the speaking engagement at the event coming up.
Rachel: Thank you, Doug and Trish. It was so great to see you.
Trish: Thank you so much. We really appreciate it.
Seller Shoutouts
Doug: Alright, Seller Shoutouts is a new segment where we’ll be shouting out sellers out there who are doing cool things and helping out the seller community. Maybe you’ll hear your name.
First off this week, you heard it in our interview with Rachel Homberger, she’ll be attending a reseller event in Eatontown, New Jersey, sponsored by Helpsy. List Perfectly’s own, Danna Crawford, The Power Selling Mom, will be there as well. They’ll have warehouse tours, seller presentations, panels, and more. And the link to RSVP to this event, because spots are limited, Is in this week’s show notes on TheSellerCommunityPodcast. com.
Next, a quick shout out to our friend Starr Bryson, Miss Flippin Hippos herself. I was on her YouTube show recently for a rockin’ New Year’s Eve episode. Check it out on the Flippin Hippos YouTube channel. We talked about goals, weird facts, 2024, and our shared love of horror. And Star Wars and other stuff.
And speaking of Starr Bryson, she’ll be on The Snoop Dougie Show on Listing Party. Wednesday, January 10th at 12 PST, every Wednesday at 12 PST, only on listingparty.com.
There’s a great new podcast out there called The Seller Club Podcast. My old buddies Ken, The Hustlebee, and Glenn Hustler Hacks started this podcast with my new buddy, Anna Packer, Anesthetic Miscellany. Anna was recently on the Seller Community Podcast and will be on The Snoop Dougie Show on ListingParty. com very soon.
Seller Club Podcast covers everything from sourcing hidden gems to maximizing profits and building a loyal customer base. And they want to help create a supportive community where resellers can learn, grow, and thrive together.
So give them a listen wherever you like to listen. You know, when you’re not listening to the Seller Community Podcast from List Perfectly.
Our friends, Paul and Faith over at My Reseller Genie at MyResellerGenie.com is really hitting the ground running in 2024. They’ve recently launched consignment and Poshmark integrations and promise much more in this coming year.
They’re great supporters of the seller community and have a great service that’s getting more and more popular with sellers. They also do a ton of events as well. So check them out and see if they’d be a good fit for you again at MyResellerGenie. com.
Alright, that’s all the seller shoutouts that fit this week.
Seller News
Doug: This week in seller news…
Mercari recently launched the ability to buy bundles and make bundle offers. So in addition to being able to purchase bundles and make bundle offers on the app, you can also buy bundles on the Mercari website as well. So all you need to do is add two or more items from the same seller to your cart and you can purchase them for the combined listing price. Or you can send the seller an offer for the bundle. You’ll save on bundled shipping since all the items will ship in a single box.
Now, from our eBay correspondent, Theresa Cox.
eBay has launched a custom label feature. So eBay rolled out this feature recently and they’re including a SKU on the top of the listing page with other info that only sellers can see.
Theresa says this is huge because it means sellers will no longer have to click to edit a listing to see this info to respond to a question or offer. We’ve been asking for this for so long.
Thank you, Teresa, for that breaking news.
In super exciting IRS news, this is something we’ve all been keeping our eye on. And this is good news. The IRS is delaying the $600 reporting threshold for 2023. Reporting is going to revert to 20K in sales and 200 transactions. So definitely keep an eye on this, but this is good news for this year.
Over on Poshmark, they are now offering webinars to teach sellers how to host Posh shows, which were huge in 2023 and look like they’re going to continue to grow. In case you’re wondering, by the way, ladies and gentlemen, I have been on two Posh shows with my buddies, It’sBoink and TiffyPie, who were the first Posh sellers invited to do Posh shows.
Poshmark says Intro to Posh Shows is a beginner-friendly class where you’ll learn how to go live for the first time and how to utilize the different features to maximize your show. So, if you do this, you can bypass the waiting list to get into Posh Shows.
The first Posh Show webinar of 24 was hosted on January 3rd, and there will be events coming up in January, and then from there on out. So, take a look at poshmark.com.
I did see a report that online holiday spending was up in 2023. This holiday seemed more holidayish to me than the last couple of years. This report said that online spending during the holiday season shot up nearly 5 percent to $222.1 billion in November and December, according to Adobe Analytics.
Over in TikTok news, TikTok is planning to boost its in-stream commerce spending 10 times in 2024. So investing a lot more into things like TikTok shops. I am excited about TikTok’s e-commerce efforts. I think it’s really interesting what they’re doing. I do think they’ve got a ways to go. They need to work towards getting more resellers in this program, but something to keep an eye on. And it’s an interesting combination of content selling and community all in one platform.
Alright, that’s all the reseller news that fits this week. Tune in for more reseller news next week. And if you’ve got something you want us to drop, you can hit us up at thesellercommunitypodcast.com and hit that contact link or, tag Trish or me, Doug, in the List Perfectly Facebook group.
Outro
Trish: Thank you for joining us on The Seller Community Podcast from List Perfectly. You can find us at thesellercommunitypodcast.com.
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