Never Been an Entrepreneur

Steemit isn’t the first place I set out to create something. I’ve tried to create various things in my life, with varying degrees of success, but I have to say I am particularly proud of my eBay store that I once established to resell clothes I bought at thrift stores. Well, it wasn’t exactly a store. I know there is an official designation for eBay stores and mine was just a user account under which I sold things. But it felt like my store. I had my very own reviews and my own star ratings. Though I didn’t make much money off of it after my thrift store purchases and packaging and shipping costs, it was my pioneering adventure into the world of e-commerce and an exercise in buying, selling, and interacting with strangers across the country who would really do anything for that hand-knitted sweater with images of lions, zebras and tigers crouching all over it.

Never Been a Fashionista

I obtained the merchandise for what will be referred to as my eBay store for the rest of this piece (for the sake of simplicity and my ego) mostly from going thrift store shopping and finding beautiful, gently used clothes that I might be able to sell. There was one particular place that I loved that had a lot of designer clothes. I have never even been into designer clothes myself, but throughout my reselling adventure I grew a certain respect for them. They are usually not only beautiful but incredibly well-made, with the potential to cut down on the waste produced by the cheap mass sales and quick discarding of less well-made, “fast food” clothing brands that I myself had been guilty of purchasing, only to have them fall apart or fade out after only a couple of times wearing them. Unfortunately, the really well-made items are often prohibitively expensive for most of us, which is the basis for the glory of thrift stores.

This is My Bag, Baby

The adventure that was thrift shopping could be a whole ‘nother story, especially at this one place that ran under a “buy the bag” model. Basically, everyone who enters the store pays a certain amount for a large plastic bag, which we were free to stuff with as much merchandise as we could. The merchandise was casually dumped into several enormous bins, in a giant, dank, garage-like room.

I came to realize that most of my fellow shoppers were expert resellers. They would sit along the sides of the room in front of large black leaf bags, chatting and sorting through the bags slowly, putting what they wanted into their official store bag and discarding the remainder back into the bins.

Let the Games Begin

I happened to be there one time when the staff was putting new merchandise in the bins. They kicked everyone out into a separate room, covered the window of the thrift store room and set about making mysterious bin shuffling sounds for around 20 minutes. My fellow shoppers and I stood in a line outside the door in anxious anticipation. Finally, the door was opened, the staff member who opened it jumped aside and my fellow shoppers unceremoniously barreled into the room. I tried to barrel in with dignity, but I’m sure I looked in much the same frenzy as the others.

I soon realized what the leaf bags were for as people began blindly tossing huge piles of clothes from the new bins into their leaf bags. Ah, the leaf bags were intended to sequester a large chunk of the merchandise for slow, private perusal with the hope of a couple of gold nuggets caught in their net. Of course, I briefly seethed inside at the injustice of not having my own leaf bag, but I reasoned that it was The Way of the Thrift Store, and I only a visitor in this strange land.

Anything, Anything At All

The best part about shopping with the purpose of reselling was that I could find anything, in any size, that I thought was glorious and take it home. I only have one body and it tends to be pretty static in size, and that limits my options when searching for thrift store gold on a personal level. I loved finding an amazing pair of shorts 84 sizes too small or large and thinking about how beautiful it would look in my advertising pictures, and hoping someone on the internet would fall in love with it.

Unfortunately I don’t have a car, so after my shopping adventure I would find myself emerging from the store with a giant bag of clothes laden in my arms. I once actually biked home through the city streets with it resting precariously on my handlebars. That was not a good idea. But I would persevere- I was an eBay pioneer.

To Be Continued

To be continued with the actual eBay part of this saga.