2017

I first became intrigued by thrift shopping while living in Berlin because there were so many accessible flea markets and it was just a natural part of everyone’s sustainable lifestyle. But I was living on a tight budget and had only so much space in my return-trip suitcase that I didn’t start thrifting until….

2018

I got back to Berkeley because there are more thrift stores than there are retail chains, so I perused the racks at Goodwill and Crossroads during my class breaks. I was also commuting from SF back then so I would spend the time on the bus discovering used gems on the Depop app as we crossed the Bay Bridge.

2019

Part of living sustainably also means preventing clothes and textiles from entering the landfills. I had already been collecting and donating no-longer-needed clothes from my closet and family to donate/recycle for years, but I discovered that there was a thriving market for swapping clothes. Donating seems sustainable but in reality, it only further fuels your desire to consume again.

1st pop-up Oct 2019

chaotic good. the first thing on the rack is a Sailor Saturn outfit

The clothes I brought to swap meets would get swooped up quickly and people even started suggesting they’d pay to shop my “closet.” So a group of friends and I decided to experiment with hosting a pop-up shop, where we’d sell items leftover from swap meets along with other second-hand knick knacks.

Given the first pop-up was co-hosted by 5 people, turnout was amazing. But to be honest, there were too many cooks in the kitchen and the artistic direction was all over the place. People came and marveled at how we managed to transform the space but very few actually purchased anything. Though it was a fulfilling experience, in the end, the time, money, and energy spent on putting it together outweighed any outcomes.

2020

2nd pop-up Mar 2020

My biggest takeaway from the first event was that intentionality and thoughtfulness are important. So this time, I narrowed down my co-host to just 1 friend and she and I put aside ample time ahead of the pop-up to comb through and curate our inventory. We weren’t going to sell other people’s sloppy seconds and we weren’t going to spend more than we could make, on sourcing our merchandise.

Despite it being the beginnings of the Coronavirus pandemic, attendance was high and profits were over $500. I was worried about doing a 2nd pop-up because I loathe doing the same work twice i.e. I need to do a better and different job second time around, and given the limitations of the space, I thought there wasn’t much else I could do to make it a unique experience for returning customers. But this time, we kept it simple and focused on showcasing the clothes, and it gave off the impression of being a legitimate retail store.

depop may 2020

At first I couldn’t understand why some of the clothes didn’t sell at the 2nd pop-up, especially when I knew that they’d be listed and sold for a much higher price on a platform like Depop. What I realized from the 2nd experience was that understanding the demographics of your audience is the key to unlocking the next level of your business. Different clothes work better for different people via different channels. Since then, whenever I thrift shopped, I kept these two clientele in mind and started building separate inventory for each.

With the Coronavirus quashing any prospects of doing a 3rd pop-up in the near future, reinvesting my time and energy to online channels made the most sense. And miraculously (most likely just opportunistic), Depop was taking applications for participation in a free workshop on successfully launching your online store. The incentive was, if you reached all 3 milestones by the time the workshop was over, you could be selected as the winner of a cash prize of $150 and a feature on the explore page (which boosts sales and follows).

When I started the workshop, I had 0 listings and only around 100 followers. I was lucky because despite thrift stores being closed due to COVID, I already had a highly-curated inventory of clothes at home. By the time I reached the final milestone, I already had one feature on the explore page (the explore page team and community onboarding teams seem to work autonomously), subsequently saw my list of followers grow, and sold about 1/3 of my listings.

I won the prize (and another feature on the explore page) and since then have gone on to sell 60+ items, receive only ★★★★★ reviews from 90+ people, be on the “featured sellers” list, and grow my followers to 2500+. I used the prize money the purchase a thermal printer and nicer packaging, to make the fulfillment process easier.

The inspiration for the name came from the fact that, whether I liked it or not, I had achieved quasi-influencer status. My inbox is full of friends and strangers letting me know they bought something I had mentioned or asking me for creative advice and inspiration. I’m a bad influencer because I’m really just a lay person. I’m a bad influence because influencer culture is consumerism at its peak and the opposite of why I started this journey.

3rd pop-up oct 2020

Adjusting to the new normal hasn’t been easy. Supply chains have been disrupted and people don’t feel safe gathering with others yet. But I recently moved to Sonoma, where the thrift stores aren’t picked over and had found a lot of cool items that I wanted to share with my friends. So we hosted a much smaller, invite-only pop-up (masks required of course) with no intentions of breaking even or turning it into a “scene.” The new space we found has a lot more space and flexibility for experimentation and will be a great host for future bi-annual pop-ups (knock on wood).

4th Pop-up dec 2020

Increasingly, I’ve had friends and friends of friends come to me for advice on how to thrift or start their own online shop, and that’s exactly how the 4th pop-up came to be. A friend, and extremely talented flower arranger, asked if I’d be willing to co-host an event with them, so that they’d get a chance to try their hand at selling some of the second-hand designer pieces they’d been too intimidated to sell elsewhere. Unlike the others, for this one, we came up with a concept: a winter solstice pop-up. Coming up with a concept made the whole process, from ideation to staging, a lot easier to visualize and communicate with others and the usual fear I’ve had of thinking it’s impossible to do something new and original when it’s already been done, was gone.

Putting together this one was more of a challenge because I had little time to plan for or work on it. Because of COVID, we anticipated most of our friends would stay home but we also wanted to find a way for them to participate from the comforts of their homes. So, in addition to all of the work that had to be done for the physical experience, I also had to photograph, edit, and list all of our inventory to a new site we were launching. An online store was always on the roadmap, as we had branched into sourcing books and home decor, which is logistically more difficult to sell at a pop-up and has a much larger buyer audience online anyway.

The one other difference that made this pop-up special was the fact that we chose to host it in the evening, whereas the rest were always early in the morning. Around this time every year, I’d be planning the annual holiday party for my company. It was always stressful but at the same time, incredibly rewarding. To have 200+ guests show up to a party that I had organized. Unfortunately, this year I didn’t get that opportunity. But this pop-up was a great substitute for it.

the projected fireplace is a trick I learned from hosting our company holiday parties