A woman who makes thousands every month from selling second-hand clothes she buys at low prices has shared her top tips.
Becky Chorlton, 24, from the village of Lymm in Cheshire, now bargain hunts as her full-time job after she started visiting car boot sales as a student in a bid to make some extra money.
Since starting her own small shop named Becky’s Bazaar, she has seen her business boom. She now makes a living by reselling high-value items on online marketplaces like eBay, Depop and Vinted.
She recently shared her top tips with others in a bid to help the nation earn a little money on the side.
Her biggest piece of advice before heading out to a car boot sale is to plan before you go.
She told money-saving site LatestDeals.co.uk that it is vital to check certain information about your chosen event, such as when it opens, and to join the Facebook group in case it is called off for reasons such as bad weather.
It is also important to take cash with you as well as lots of bags, as you will need to be able to carry all the clothes you pick up.
Once you're there, Becky said it was important to keep an open mind as to what you will buy, as the "joy of shopping second-hand is finding unique pieces you love", so it is important to learn how to "look for the potential in items you may not like at first glance".
“Rummage high and low when you’re looking around", she said, as "all the treasures are usually hidden in boxes and places where everybody else is too lazy to look in, so get digging."
Out-of-season clothing is also usually cheaper, meaning you can buy low and hold on to it before selling at a higher value a few months later.
It is important, however, to check the items are in good, sellable condition before you pick anything up, as there's "nothing worse than finding a hole or stain in an item after you’ve bought it” - something which she said also applies when you're in charity shops.
In one of her best bargains last year, Becky found a Red Bull biker jacket for £50 which was eventually worth over £250.
Understanding the principle of supply and demand is the key to such good turnaround on items, she said, and it is crucial to find rare items - of which there are few in circulation.
When she searched online for the Red Bull jacket, she found there were none like it on eBay or any other second-hand online marketplace.
“This means demand, and therefore the price, for that item will be high,” Becky said.
Customer service is also a key ingredient on the selling side and she maintains a strong profile on Depop, with her business now one of the top profiles on the marketplace.
In order to hit the target sales of £2,500 each month required to reach that status, Becky said she listed new stock daily and gained a loyal customer base through fast shipping, quick replies, and by including free gifts with every order.
That means being honest, she said, as she admits: "If you make a mistake, face it head-on and fix it in the most professional way you possibly can for that customer. For example, I accidentally shipped an item to the wrong address when I first started.
"More often than not, people will appreciate honesty and transparency as everyone is human and makes mistakes."
Getting the customers to find you in the first place is also an obvious requirement, and for that she recommended finding a niche you like – hers, for example, is vintage racing pieces.
Utilising the power of social media is also a huge key to success in today's world of buying and selling, and Becky has seen results by giving her fans and potential customers a little peek into her life on TikTok.
She said: “I make money from my TikTok account @beckysbazaar, where I show the behind-the-scenes of sourcing my stock from car boots.
“A year ago, I had 7,000 followers but now I’ve got over 82,000. I upload on my TikTok three times a day, every day of the week, so I think the sheer amount of content I’m producing means lots of people are discovering my page daily.
“I also think my generation is particularly interested in saving the planet and shopping second-hand, which may be why my videos are successful.”
Becky said the key to standing out from the crowd is to "be creative" and to "try to think outside the box with content, as many things have been done before".
Posting regularly up two to three times a day can also help raise your profile, and recycling content and videos as much as you can will help make this easier, reports the Manchester Evening News.
“True followers and supporters won't mind seeing a clip again in a different context,” she said.
Becky also suggested putting yourself in a viewer’s shoes while watching your videos, as what may be interesting to you may not resonate with someone else - and most importantly to keep it short
“Unfortunately, people’s attention spans nowadays aren’t super long,” she said. “So you have to capture people’s attention in the first one or two seconds of a video.
“Once I edit my videos, I watch them back before posting to try to shave off as much as I can to keep the retention rate up.”
