How to Sell Vintage Clothing Online: The Ultimate Guide

Vintage clothes are back in trend now. Fashion buffs are completely in awe of the vintage dresses in 2021. The thrill and the joy of buying vintage clothes online have led to the rise of such websites that sell vintage clothing. If you want to set your clothing business right, we suggest selling vintage clothing online.

Being a fashionmonger, you might have noticed how the millennials are going crazy about vintage dresses. Be it the dress silhouettes from the 40s era, denim cut from the 70s, and colour palette dresses from the 80s; everything today is in vogue.

Things To Consider While Selling Vintage Clothes Online

Right from sourcing the vintage garments to maintaining, cleaning, storing, and then pricing them, selling old clothes online has its unique challenges. Here are a few things that you need to consider while doing an e-commerce business of vintage clothes:

1. Maintenance of vintage clothing

Vintage is all about used clothing or product, which means it requires high maintenance and careful handling. Your customers would expect that their products arrive in a clean and maintained condition as described on your website. That is the reason why the cleaning and repairing of vintage clothing are extremely crucial. While cleaning, check the label and follow the cleaning instructions. Even if the product is in a clean condition, good steaming or ironing can remove wrinkles and bad odour. Find a good dry cleaner service who has experience in handling vintage textiles. Get the basic repairs done by a reputable tailor.

2. Storage of your vintage clothing

As already said vintage clothing requires proper handling and care and here is where the storage and inventory of such clothing material come in. You need to come up with a plan where you can properly organise vintage clothes. Since vintage products are one of a kind, you need to come up with a storage system that has a controlled environment with natural light and air.

3. Product photography for the vintage clothes

Product Photography of your vintage clothes is yet another crucial part of your business as you will be uploading them on the website. Hire a model and start shooting for each cloth immediately after it arrives. For product photography, you would be requiring professional shots. So, ensure that you have a high-quality lens for capturing the best shots of the models with vintage clothes

Step-by-Step Guide on Selling Vintage Clothing Online

Now, after discussing the factors, let's move on to the step-by-step process of selling old clothing online:

1. Consider a niche

While you know that you will be selling vintage clothes online, start choosing a niche first. For example, you can focus on the clothing style of a specific decade. Make a collection of vintage clothing of that particular era, provide proper pricing, and then think about taking it online.

You can also pick a particular style, formal or casual, or any product like jackets, t-shirts, or accessories. Having a particular niche for your vintage store will also help you to create a strategic business plan and make informed decisions related to targeting, branding, designing, advertising, sourcing, and finally selling.

2. Source vintage clothing

The niche decade that you have selected might have limited inventory. Therefore, be sure that you are prepared beforehand and have an established connection with various reliable sources. Go looking for the manufacturers or various thrift stores from where you can grab vintage clothing in bulk and help your own e-commerce vintage clothing store in succeeding.

There are various places where you can collect vintage clothing. Some of them include auctions, craigslist, estate sales, pickers, wholesalers, outdoor market, flea market, consignments, buy and sell programs, etc.

3. Choose a platform for building your online store

Once you are completely ready with your store suppliers and you have figured out everything, now it's time to decide where you want to sell the old clothes online. You can either form your website if you have a good budget for a website or mobile app development or else you can start selling on other vintage clothes websites.

If you plan to build your website, then ensure that it has a simple user interface to navigate easily and shop well. Moreover, you must have a hassle-free payment process and a host of other features that would provide a great user experience to your customers.

4. Launch your online vintage store

Soon after you are ready with your website or mobile app, it's time to launch your dream online vintage store. Choose a domain name that would simply be the name of your website itself. In addition to a domain name, you will also be requiring an SSL certificate and hosting fee. The SSL certificate is the triggering of the secure icon in the URL or the search bar that helps to build trust. Further, the hosting fee is an annual fee that can cost accordingly depending on your website’s requirement.

5. Offer seasonal sale

Once your website is launched, start being super active. Come up with ideas that can attract more customers to your business. For example, during the summer season, you can go selling vintage swimsuits or party dresses. Apart from that, start offering discounts and promotional offers on holidays or specific seasons like Christmas.

6. Provide all the intricate details

It is very important for you as a seller to provide an all-in-all description of a particular product. For example, you need to include information about its measurement with brand material and other conditions. Further, it is even better to let the customers know about any issues or imperfections that might arise while using the item. This helps in building trust and people are more attracted to your online store. You will be getting a lot of positive and negative reviews alike. Start working on the negative reviews and see where you are lacking behind.

7. Price your vintage clothing

Set the prices for various vintage products that you are offering to your customers. Follow the basic rule for product pricing in any e-commerce business and be critically sure about the item’s actual cost and other overhead expenses that you need to bear. Price your vintage products as per their age, rarity, demand, wearability, brand, and trend. For couture and rare items, you can consider tagging a higher price.

8. Grow your online vintage store

Finally, you need to start growing your online vintage clothing store by applying the best marketing strategies. Social media is currently a buzzing platform for millennials. Moreover, this creates a quick chance for fashion entrepreneurs to leverage its benefits. To reach your potential customers, you can devise social media marketing plans and start promoting your products on various channels such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Start doing it organically first and then going for the paid ads. Showcase the best products you have with a clickbait description and price for bringing in more leads to your business.

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4) How to Start a Mobile Garage Service?

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FAQs

Q. How can I buy vintage clothing in bulk?

Ans. There are various popular vintage clothing stores online where you can purchase clothes in bulk. Apart from that, you can also go for an offline mode of purchase such as the flea market or the thrift stores.

Q. What type of vintage clothes sells the best?

Ans. Denim wear, bohemian chic dress, 60s mod dresses, jazz era dresses sell the best in the current date.

Q. How can a person identify if the cloth is vintage?

Ans. By looking for the logo at the tag of the clothing, checking the garment label, or checking the fabric composition can help one identify if clothing is a true vintage.