There is something very familiar about this story.
You start by selling a few bits online for extra money.
Then a few more.
Then suddenly there are clothes everywhere, parcels by the door and somebody in the house asking whether the dining room is actually a stock room now.
For 25-year-old Chloe Lovett from Sheerness, Kent, that side hustle has gone considerably further.
According to LADbible, Chloe has gone from working a minimum-wage job at a local spa to running her own pre-loved clothing business, with online sales reportedly reaching as much as £400 a day.
And for anyone spending their Friday listing clothes, sourcing stock or wondering whether reselling could ever become something more serious, her story is a good reminder that plenty of businesses begin in a very ordinary way.
It started as extra money
Chloe had been using Vinted on and off for a few years.
There was no dramatic business launch or grand masterplan. She was simply selling clothes to bring in a bit of extra cash alongside her job.
Then, last September, she decided to take it more seriously.
Chloe told LADbible:
“In September I just decided to give it my all and see where it takes me.”
That decision appears to have changed things quickly.
Less than a year later, she says her online sales can reach around £400 in a day.
Naturally, that has led to headlines suggesting she could be on course for a £100,000 year.
There is an important reseller footnote here, though.
Turnover is not the same as profit.
Stock costs, postage, packaging, premises, fees, tax and all the other glamorous little expenses of running a business still have to come out of that money.
Even so, the growth itself is impressive.
Then came the problem every reseller eventually understands
Space.
At first, Chloe was running everything from home.
Her partner, Jake, was helping by driving around collecting bags of clothing from people.
Which probably worked perfectly well at the beginning.
Until, presumably, there were bags everywhere.
Anyone who has ever had stock creeping out of the spare room and slowly colonising the hallway will understand this stage of the journey.
Eventually, Chloe needed somewhere people could bring clothes directly to her.
So in May she opened her own physical shop, Lovett Or List It, near her home.
Customers can now bring in unwanted clothing, which Chloe buys by weight before selling individual pieces either in the shop or online.
And that is where her story becomes particularly interesting from a sourcing point of view.
Instead of spending all her time hunting for stock, she has created a system where stock can increasingly come to her.
For a reseller, that is quite a shift.
The appeal of pre-loved fashion is the unpredictability
Part of what Chloe enjoys about the business is never really knowing what is going to come through the door.
She told LADbible:
“Because it is pre-loved it is all one off pieces.”
That is one of the things that makes second-hand fashion such an unusual category.
You are not necessarily ordering 500 identical units from a wholesaler.
One bag might be fairly ordinary.
The next could contain exactly the brand, style, size or vintage piece somebody has been searching for.
And buyers enjoy that unpredictability too.
It is the reason people can spend far longer than intended scrolling through Vinted, wandering around charity shops or sitting through a live sale thinking:
“I'll just see what comes up next.”
Opening a shop didn't mean abandoning online selling
This might be the most useful part of Chloe's story for resellers.
The physical shop has apparently become extremely busy, but online sales still account for most of her revenue.
She has also launched her own website.
So rather than moving from online selling to a shop, she has gradually added more selling channels.
Her journey looks something like this:
Sell a few clothes online → build up stock → take reselling seriously → open a shop → launch a website → keep selling online.
That matters because growth in reselling does not always mean leaving the marketplaces that helped you start.
Sometimes it means adding new channels around them.
A marketplace can bring customers.
A physical location can bring stock and local buyers.
A website can give you another place to sell and build your own brand.
Each piece starts doing a slightly different job.
And now she has a new problem: being too busy
Chloe says the shop is fully booked six days a week.
She is currently running the business largely by herself and hopes to move into a larger commercial or industrial unit and begin hiring staff.
That is another fairly classic business milestone.
At the beginning, the problem is:
How do I get enough sales?
Later, the problem becomes:
How on earth do I do all of this myself?
For now, Chloe seems happy doing most of it alone.
Although she does technically have one colleague.
Her Jagdterrier, Dolly.
Apparently customers notice immediately when Dolly isn't in the shop.
Chloe told LADbible:
“Everyone comes for her. She gets paid in treats.”
Which, depending on your staffing budget, is worth considering.
So what can other resellers take from this?
Stories like this can easily be turned into the usual internet formula:
Woman sells clothes on Vinted. Quits job. Makes £100k.
That is probably the least interesting part of it.
What is more useful is seeing how the business evolved.
Chloe did not simply list more clothes.
She gradually changed the way the whole operation worked.
She created a way of sourcing stock locally.
She added a physical shop.
She kept online selling at the centre of the business.
She built her own website.
And now she is thinking about premises and staff.
That is the difference between simply selling things and gradually building a resale business around the selling.
Of course, not everybody wants a shop, a warehouse or employees.
Plenty of people are perfectly happy making a few hundred pounds extra each month.
That is one of the nice things about reselling.
It can remain a side hustle.
It can become a full-time income.
Or, occasionally, it can turn into something much bigger than you expected.
And most of the time it begins with something surprisingly simple.
A few unwanted clothes.
A phone.
A marketplace account.
And the thought:
“I'll give this a proper go and see what happens.”
For Chloe, that appears to be working out rather well.
Source: LADbible. This article has been independently rewritten and adapted by Reseller Vault UK for our reseller community.