Selling clothes - advice please!

Arbie

Dear All,

Having recently moved in with my better half, only now has the true extent of her clothes collection become apparent - and we're talking enormous here folks! Just to get some idea of the scale of things, we're looking at getting rid of up to 100 pairs of shoes, 150 or so tops of various types, 50 pairs of trousers and 20 coats, plus all the ancillaries - scarves, pashminas, gloves - not to mention the handbags. So, our dilemma is this - how to make some decent cash out of it. A lot of the stuff is labels and decent names; probably half of it is high street; but all in immaculate condition and some hardly (if ever) worn, but without tags. Ebay, I hear you cry! - but the time and effort to photograph and write a description of each item is prohibitive, and the returns are fairly poor. We've thought about car boot sales, but again, clothes sell poorly. What we really need is a location where the more discerning buyer is looking for a bargain at £5 or £10 a pop - ideally, we'd do what one of the participants on Spendaholics did and set up a stall at Exeter uni's Freshers' Fayre, but without the might of the BBC behind us I doubt they'd let us in to make some profit off the back of their event!

We know that we're not going to make even 10% of the list prices back, but we've so much stuff that even if we get rid of half of it then we'll be able to see the carpet in the spare room again, and have a little bit of cash to put towards the mortgage. So I throw it open to the floor - any ideas?!

Thanks!

Arbie

ceebeeby

Open up a shop - sounds like you've got enough stock!!!!

Arbie

We actually did think about renting a shop for a day in Exeter, but the lack of publicity of said venue would probably mean we wouldn't break even....!

A

MoaningMyrtle

Bit of a long shot maybe, but in my small town, someone rented an empty shop for a week and sold their unwanted clothes, it was a group of 2-3 ladies, so they could share the duties.

A dress agency may be worth a try, they take the items for say a month, sell them and give you a percentage. The one near here does 60% to them and you would get 40% of the price they achieve.

cheap_charlie

I would still suggest Ebay.

There are companies out there who will do all the legwork for you. They take a cut but you will still make some money and have everything out of the house. Here is one for example, but if you Google there are others...

http://www.stuffusell.co.uk/works.htm

Returns on clothing on Ebay can be hit and miss but if the stuff is as good as you say, you will probably do quite well.

caroline0106

we have a shop near us that you take old clothes to and they sell them and take their percentage and give you rest - there are afew around but i cant think what they are called maybe someone else knows - personally i would list 10 a day on ebay though