EBay buying and reselling

misskaty

Hi,

I'm a student and I was thinking of starting to buy job lots of clothes on eBay and selling them individually. I was wondering what the rules would be regarding this. Would I have to register as a business? I wouldn't be going over the tax bracket but would I still need to fill out a tax form? If anyone can give me any advice, that would be really helpful!

Thanks,
Katy

soolin

misskaty wrote: »

Hi,

I'm a student and I was thinking of starting to buy job lots of clothes on eBay and selling them individually. I was wondering what the rules would be regarding this. Would I have to register as a business? I wouldn't be going over the tax bracket but would I still need to fill out a tax form? If anyone can give me any advice, that would be really helpful!

Thanks,
Katy

Firstly yes you would need to register as a business and submit yearly accounts, if your profit was less than the tax allowances ( and assuming no other taxable income) you would not be liable to pay any tax though. You would also need a business account on eBay and abide by all the business rules, these include a change of mind free return and displaying your geographic address on the account.

From an eBay point of view unless you are looking at some sort of niche clothes, vintage or plus size for instance, I would seriously reconsider. Clothes are notoriously difficult to sell, especially second hand ones- that is why people sell them in lots. By the time you have bought your items, paid for shipping etc , paid to list them all individually and charged postage on everything it is going to be almost impossible to turn a profit.

Look at clothing generally, loads going unsold for really low start prices. Even if you managed to sell say a dress for £3 (just something I happened to be looking at as an example) and charged the actual postage of £2.80 RM 2nd class (or £2.78 MyHermes) you are going to make pennies. eBay will have charged you for the listing, you then have just over 60p FVFs to pay and the same again for PayPal.

From the small profit that is left you still have to ay for packing materials, plus account for the listing fees for all the other unsold items.

That assumes buyer is happy to pay £5.80 for a second hand item of clothing in the first place.

asajj

I agree with soolin. I have been selling on Ebay for years (my own items, no buy and resell). I have sold a lot of clothes, pc equipment, mobile phone, books etc.

90% of the time, you will get very little money for your effort. Unless you have a good designer item or anything branded, it is indeed difficult.

You might try Vinted to sell some of your stuff - it is big among students.

However it is for you to sell your own stuff as far as I know

luverlyjuberly

The problem is that most of the vintage clothing being sold in lots is being sold by sellers that sell vintage clothes themselves. Why are they selling job lots? Because often they are selling the rubbish that they can't sell themselves. What you need to do is find a vintage wholesale firm near you and visit and choose your own stuff. And that's just the easy part. Knowing what sells quickly and at good prices is the difficulty.

luverlyjuberly

If you are going to buy clothes on ebay buy off normal auctions ie people who are obviously selling job lots of their clothes that don't fit anymore. My other advice would be to research what sells by looking at BIN on eBay and scour the charity shops and car boot sales and don't just sell clothes sell anything and everything. It's a slow process but you will learn what sells on eBay.
I used to go to charity shops and make notes of items in the shop. I would then research on eBay to see if the items on my list sold and for how much.
One thing I have learned is that if i list an item of clothing as an auction it hardly makes any money but if i list it as a BIN it will sell for the price asked - eventually. I write a good description with measurements and add plenty of good quality photographs.