Live Selling for Reuse

And my new podcast!

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Live Seller Caitlin Foster

I had a fun surprise this week: Caitlin Foster connected with me on LinkedIn, and like any good LinkedIn explorer, I checked out her profile. She is an 18 year old live seller doing an incredible business on WhatNot.

We had a short, old-school phone chat and she told me all about her business. 

Catie does a live sale on WhatNot every night at 8pm EST. She sells mostly clothes, shoes and accessories- all of which her and her team source. They buy items similar to what jobbers buy- dead stock, damaged returns, things a company can't sell and just wants to offload. In my experience, these items usually sell for about $5/piece (for higher end brands). Caitlin has a network of sellers who offer her pallets and bundles of items. 

She told me about an amazing buy last week of hundreds of designer items from a fancy department store. She sold them in her live sale for 7x what she paid for them. 

Caitlin’s grandmother taught her to negotiate when she was little by taking her to garage sales and giving her 4 quarters to spend. In middle school she started asking her mom to take her to the thrift store so she could buy and resell items. Recently, she decided she didn't want to go to college and was able to finish high school a year early at 17 so she could start her business in Nov 2022. 

Her four-person team includes her fiancé, her mother in law and her grandmother, and they are on track to sell $1.3 million in 2023. (!!!)

I logged onto WhatNot for the first time to watch Caitie’s live sale last night. WhatNot is basically a live version of eBay or Poshmark and how a lot of people are now selling pre-and post-consumer goods. Caitlin does 90 minutes of selling every night, and she gives each item 10 seconds for bidding. All items start at $1 and most end up selling around $25-$35. (At 3-4 items/minute, 60 minutes in an hour and $30/item we're looking at about $5k+ of sales per night.)  Caitlin keeps her energy up the entire time and is almost out of breath. She's working hard! She's also reading and responding to comments as they roll in the entire time.  She's a modern, rapid auctioneer. 

Caitlin loves seeing the value in things that other people don't, and it makes her feel great knowing she's selling items that otherwise may have gone to the garbage. The hardest part of her job is securing inventory to sell; it's a constant search and, just like resale, everyone wants the good inventory. 

At the end of our conversation, I asked Caitlin if there was anything I could do for her and she replied "Do you know anyone who could sell me their stuff?" Such an impressive business woman at 18!

To bring it back to circularity, the inventory Caitlin is selling is the same inventory that many resale business models are trying to capitalize on and what many brands are looking to monetize. Vendors in the resale business see the low hanging fruit that is sitting in brands’ warehouses and want to capitalize on it. Brands are excited for this as well because they have the opportunity to make some money on these items instead of selling them for $5/piece to jobbers (or Caitlin). That being said, I anticipate that Caitlin will have no trouble finding good product for many years as there are tens of thousands of fashion brands in the US, and many of them are slow to change their ways; they'll continue to accrue more warehouse damages and unsellable items for a while yet. 

Also, as relates to post-consumer textiles, there are many super sellers like Caitlin out there making their living by selling thousands of items live and otherwise. The financial opportunity on an individual level is there for those who are good at curating resellable items and can stay organized!

My New Podcast

Lastly- WAHOO- I’m proud to announce the Untangling Circularity Podcast! Laura Novich and I are co-creating this podcast to untangle all of our circular economy questions and mysteries. The first episode is 13 minutes and is an intro to both of us and what we hope to create with this podcast. Please have a listen!

Take care,

Cynthia
cynthia@moltevolte.com
www.moltevolte.com