February 3rd, 2010
Paying for private school & more the eBay way…
So I have this friend and she’s a single mother. Let’s call her Karen. She has a regular job that keeps her busy 5 days a week but the salary doesn’t come close to covering the cost of her daughter’s $25,000 private school tuition in Manhattan. Looking around for a way to make extra cash, Karen turned to eBay a few years ago.
Today, she makes enough to pay her daughter’s private school tuition, and has enough left over to help with payments on her Manhattan rental, her Southampton house, and her brand new BMW X5. All that, thanks to an extra $50,000 courtesy of eBay.
How does she do it? Karen has an eye for fashion, a tremendous work ethic, and a burning desire that she and her daughter live a good life.
The key is buying clothes low and selling (relatively) high. Karen scours thrift stores to find good quality items to sell online. But she needs volume and so once a week, Karen attends a thrift store warehouse sale where she can fill up a bag of clothing for $20. Better quality items — items even the thrift store people recognize as designer duds — go for $10 each.
At a recent haul, Karen told me she grabbed shirts and other clothing from Gucci, Hermes, Burberry, Marc Jacobs, and Chloe. She also found two Dale of Norway sweaters on the floor that she bought for a dollar each. Nearly all these clothes are brand new. On this particular day, she wound up spending $600 at the warehouse for some 20 shopping bags full of clothing. (Pictured is a Giorgio Armani black label suede bomber jacket.)
But that’s really only the beginning of her work. Then she has to clean some of the clothes — that includes hand-washing some items — photographing them, and listing them on line. Finally, if they do sell, she has to package them — she uses a distinctive wrapping tissue — and takes them to the local post office where they know her well.
Aside from finding tons of adult designer clothing, she also finds a lot of duds for her daughter. “She looks like she’s stepped out of the pages of Vogue,” Karen says. “She never wears the same thing twice.” The same could be said of Karen who cuts a stylish figure whenever I run into her.
All this is in addition to her regular job. It’s hard work, and not for the faint of heart or someone doing this as a lark. “You should see what my apartment looks like,” she says. “There’s clothing everywhere.”
But it does pay and pay well. Karen is hoping for a banner year. In December, she took in $7,000 and in January, she had her best month ever — $8,700.