A university student who started selling unwanted clothes from his bedroom to earn some extra money ended up making £250k.
All university students can agree that earning extra cash aside from receiving termly student finance is extremely important. Callum Massey, 24, from Wolverhampton, was in his second year of an English Literature degree at the University of Wolverhampton when he started selling keyrings and patches on Depop in 2018.
He soon turned to selling vintage clothing he found at car boot sales and charity shops. With monthly profits of £1,000, he decided to take the business full-time when he graduated in 2019.
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Callum has now sold more than 12,500 items from his two shops on the app - ‘Callum’s Cupboard’ and ‘Knitted Treasures’. Despite Depop’s fee-free rival Vinted increasing competition in the resale market, Callum’s 54% profit margin meant a whopping £30k of his £56k revenue in 2022 was profit.
Callum, who now makes £56k-a-year in revenue, said: “It started out when I was in the second year of my English Literature degree. I drop-shipped keyrings and patches but I was only making £1 profit at a time.
“When I was waiting between lectures, I would go to charity shops and look for sportswear to sell. I’d also go to car boot sales to find vintage clothing and sell my own stuff too.
“When I graduated in 2019 I took it full-time and that summer I made £1,000 profit in one month for the first time. I lived with my parents and kept all my stock in the garage so I hardly had any overheads.
“Then Covid started and I just kept saving and my TikTok account blew up and took me to £12k sales in just one month. That was definitely a one-off and demand has decreased since Covid.
Callum has thought about employing someone to double the number of items he can find, photograph, list and send out items. Callum is now preparing to invest his profits in a new monthly sock subscription service to run alongside his two Depop shops – but has no plans to move out of his parents’ house anytime soon.
He explained: “I’ve been focusing on getting everything ready for my new Sock Box business – I’m just waiting for custom boxes to send out to my customers.
“I’m going to carry on my Depop shop but Sock Box will be entirely separate from it. I want it to exist on its own on my own website rather than on Depop.”
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