In addition to our normal sourcing, this month we decided to see if we could make $1,000 from online arbitrage. While we (barely) failed, we did branch out a lot more that we normally do in our sourcing. We have a pretty solid routine and get the majority of our inventory from 4 thrift stores and 3-4 websites. We headed back to some of our old haunts at Ross and Nordstrom Rack as well as trying our hand at Mercari-to-eBay flips. Check out how we did!
While Athleta identifies as a sportswear company, we’ve had the most luck with their non-sportswear items, namely dresses. Dresses and knit items that you can find the style name for have the potential to sell for $30+ if you find them in a good size!
Maybe it means I’m uncultured, but I had no idea what the Ryder Cup was until I found this shirt. I always keep an eye out for golf shirts from specific competitions, so it’s no surprise that this caught my eye. After that, all I had to do was look it up and find out that it was worth picking up!
This is the first of our non-thrift store items that we sold during the month. I follow the search “Disney Leather Jacket” on Mercari and had seen this one a month or so before. The pictures and description were so terrible that I was certain it wouldn’t sell, so I let it sit for awhile before sending an offer. I ended up getting it for $37 (including shipping). We typically shoot for making 4x our money, but anytime I can use my Mercari balance to make $60, I’m on board! This jacket (like many of our high-end Disney items) ended up going overseas.
This jacket is another non-thrift-store find. Down jackets are completely out of season at the moment, but for some reason, people are still putting them on auction! We won this one for $23+$9 in shipping. We expected it to sit until fall, but it ended up selling just a week after we listed it!
While it wasn’t an online find, this didn’t come from a thrift store either. We picked up two of these jackets at Ross for $30 apiece. I wasn’t sure how much they’d go for, but judging by the $1295 price tag, we figured we’d make a profit. This one sold in about 2 months and the other one is still up for sale. Total profit to be determined!
Another retail find…but this one from last year…and one that bit us in the butt. We found this jacket for $28 last year at a Clear The Rack sale at Nordstrom Rack. I expected to get $100 or so for it, but it seriously would not sell. It made it through multiple price drops and sales in our store before we finally decided we’d rather get our money back to put elsewhere, and dropped the price to get it gone!
The majority of Wilson’s leather jackets at thrift stores are worthless 90’s examples. If you find an unusual one (fringed, unusual color, huge size, etc.), you can price it high! This one took about 3 months to sell.
I’m sure everyone has their favorite area at the Goodwill Outlet, but ours is special. We have a magical row that no one else seems to look through and these pants came out of the bottom of one of those bins. They were a bit stained and beat up, but they sold the night after we listed them and paid for that entire day’s sourcing!
We posted about these before, but they just keep selling! We’ve sold almost 100 of these in various sizes and colors and still have 50 or so to go!