Why I quit Idee, my vintage clothing business

+ what I'm doing next.

In April 2022, I launched Idee Vintage – a vintage clothing shop online focusing on original 90s staples like Levi’s vintage jeans, leather biker jackets, and oversized blazers.

Basically, all the cool stuff 90s It Girls like Kate Moss and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy would wear.

Most items are only £15 on ideevintage.com

It was easy for me to start – most of my wardrobe is already second-hand vintage – so I’m my own best customer, and I love the thrill of finding vintage gems.

Plus, I know where to get things cheaply, which is key in any reseller business.

So I decided to give it a go.

I gave myself 1.5 years to make £5000 a month in revenue. The most I made was £1081.

Unlike other businesses, a reselling business is easy and cheap to set up. You don’t need any startup capital to begin.

Except you do.

Success is uncertain when you try something new. Unfortunately, your financial obligations (rent, mortgage, etc.) are not.

So you need a guaranteed income.

Or you need savings.

Family money (or family home to crash at while you not paying rent).

A rich partner, who can support you.

No one talks about this time-and-money-privilege you need to start any kind of venture.

I knew that if Idee didn’t work out, I’d be fine because I have 2 blogs (luckyattitude.co.uk and slashercareer.com) where I sell media space to brands.

These blogs have provided me with a semi-passive full-time income for the last 3 years (more on this here).

The formula to succeed in the vintage reseller market

You can only have a thriving vintage business if you nail this equation:

If you can’t nail all 3 criteria, you won’t have a successful business.

You may have a side hustle earning £400-£1000 but it won’t be enough to sustain and satisfy you long-term.

Let me explain:

Let’s say you figure out where to buy things cheaply (£1-5 an item), but don’t know how to get them in bulk regularly, you’ll end up wasting too much time sourcing stuff individually, so instead of working 8h to earn £150, you end up working 25h to earn £150, that’s £6 per hour.

Not worth the effort in this economy, is it?

Equally,

if you manage to get clothes in bulk regularly from wholesalers like Syed Vintage and Thrift Vintage Wholesale paying £15 for an item, you will lose on profit margins, meaning you’ll have to sell a lot to make meaningful revenue.

Also, you’ll need an upfront budget of £1000-£3000 to buy the stock (100-200 X £15), which feels punchy when you’re just starting out.

My goal was to make £5000 in revenue in the first 1.5 years, I didn’t make it

I worked backward to achieve my goal:

To make a revenue of £5000 a month, I needed to sell 100 items at around £50 each.

This means I needed to sell around 3 items a day.

To achieve this goal, I had to figure out where to buy

a) cheap clothes people already spend £50 on, in

b) big quantities, and

c) regularly.

I was thinking £1-5 per item, 100-200 items at the time, every 1-2 months.

I never managed to achieve this perfect balance between price, quantity, and regularity.

I only nailed the pricing.

5 mistakes vintage sellers don't know they're making

I got most of my stock on Vinted (roughly £7 with delivery), and in Humana Estonia, my home country.

The Humana Vintage in Tallinn, where I got most of my stock

Humana is a global charity with shops in Germany, Spain, Italy, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and more. They have monthly €1 days when every item is €1 🫠.

I travelled to Estonia to fill my huge 125 L sports bag with around 50 items and brought them back to my London studio in Peckham.

My cute studio.

I loved the travelling aspect of sourcing clothes. It was a good excuse to have a break from London and see my family, but trying to find one-off gems on Vinted became compulsive, almost addictive – ultimately taking up too much time for a little reward.

I also got sick-and-tired of relentless photographing, measuring, image file naming, writing listing descriptions, etc. All for individual items.

The real reason I quit

In November 2023, after 1.5 years of running Idee, I called it quits.

I didn’t meet my financial goal of making £5000, but it wasn’t the real reason to stop.

The truth is:

I’m not that interested in selling clothes – something I only realised in the process (somehow the idea of it felt much more fascinating in my head).

More specifically, I’m not interested in teaching people how to be stylish, because frankly - I don’t think you can teach style. Some people make unfashionable things look fresh and cool.

At the end of the day, it comes down to this question:

“How do you want to fill your days?”

I break fashion rules all the time, which makes me unsuited to teach anything, because the moment something becomes a thing, it loses appeal. To me, anyway.

Fashion is a vibe, not a rule book.

I felt icky every time I shot TikToks and IG Reels showcasing different outfits in my studio while trying to explain what it was that made them cool.

So instead of ignoring the feeling and pushing through, I listened to my gut, and decided to stop pushing myself with something that doesn’t feel right.

My job as a creative multipotentialite is to keep things interesting and enjoy the journey.

When things feel easy and satisfying, they’re meant for me.

Resistance is a sign of the wrong path.

I also looked at my balance sheet 🫣 (income and expenses) and realised that in 1.5 years, I made £1300 in profit.

Oh, well.

The decision to quit in 2024 was made then and there.

What I’m doing next

This year, I’m going back to my roots: writing.

I'll be candidly writing about entrepreneurship, finance, creativity, and personal growth on Substack.

Why Substack?

Substack is one of the few platforms that enables writers to share their finest work, unfettered by the biases of advertising, stringent guidelines, or algorithms.

Even better: we are paid for our work directly by our readers. It’s so straightforward and logical yet somehow ground-breaking concept.

This model fosters a direct and meaningful connection between writers and their audience.

Substack is what online courses were 10 years ago, but instead of paying $800 for a single course, you now pay £4.5 a month to get into the minds of your favourite people/writers.

I’m also planning to sell premium, rare Levi’s vintage jeans from the 80s and 90s in all colours and sizes.

This time, however, there will be 🙅🏻‍♀️ no inventory, studio rentals, nor photography/measuring of individual items (the most time-consuming part of this business).

More on this next time.

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