{Momentrepreneur} Meet Kristen: Seller of Second Hand Clothes: "Don't be afraid to experiment!"

This week we meet a mom who decided to make use of second hand clothes plus link up with a charity. She shares with us how she has tried different approaches to build her business.

Tell us about yourself, a bit of background.

I was born in Texas, but met my husband while in Cape Town on holiday, and moved to South Africa over 10 years ago. Now, I’m Mommy to two beautiful girls, Maddie and Chloe, who certainly keep me on my toes! I’ve been running this business with the support of my husband for about five months now.

The idea of our business came when I was clearing out my girls’ cupboards and realised, like many other parents, we had (too many!) clothes our young children had barely worn and had now grown out of. These were just sitting in the back of the cupboard collecting dust! We began our business to enable parents to clear space and make money by selling their no longer used kids clothing.

Parents with young kids have no spare time, unless you count the minimal hours we spend sleeping! Knowing that sorting through and selling clothes through the likes of Gumtree and Facebook is time consuming, we tried to make it as simple as possible to sell through with us. Pack the clothes into a box, drop it off at a convenient location (nationwide), and we do the rest. We photograph and list the saleable items on our e-commerce store, www.oncemore.co.za, sell, deliver to the buyer, and pay the sale proceeds to the consignors. In addition, we sell lower priced items through our entrepreneurial network and also donate to our partnered charity, Mhani Gingi.

What I’m proud about is that we’re creating is a growing network of mothers selling and buying each other’s quality kids clothing. When you’re buying something from Once More, you’re buying from another mother, very similar to you. These days clothing is so expensive, so we are trying to change the way consumers view second hand clothing. Quality clothing withstands more than you would think, and the nearly new items you get from us are a true testament to that!

What were you doing before you started this business?

I worked in corporate administration when my husband Stuart and I had a stint in London. Since being back in Cape Town from 2013 and having our girls, I started working again with a half day job for a family business. My kids are now getting to the age where I am able to apply some of my time elsewhere, which allowed me to begin this business. But I’ve always enjoyed being a busy person, and I’m excited to see where this road takes us!

Is your business full time or part time and why?

Well, I still have a half day job, but our business is full time in itself. My evenings and weekends are extremely full and busy, but my husband has been a great supporter and contributor to the business, and I couldn’t do it without him.

How do you juggle the responsibilities of being a mom with your work?

It’s really hard! I’m very fortunate that both my husband and I are able to be flexible with our time, so we share the parental workload as much as possible. This and supportive family means we’re able to juggles all our responsibilities. Only just!

Do you have a business plan? If so, can you share a bit about your strategy to make it successful?

Yes, I believe a plan and vision is crucial for every business. It doesn’t necessarily have to be 100% correct, but if you’re on the right track and you’re able to execute well, you can course correct and find your way to the right strategy. I’ve found that it needs to be flexible and change as needed. Don’t be afraid to experiment and try things. If something doesn’t work out quite the way you hoped, then stop it, learn from it, and try something else. If you’re determined enough, you’ll get it right! I’ve been pleasantly surprised that my critical thinking hubby, paired with my softer, customer service oriented and creative side has made for a really good balance.

How do you get clients/ market yourself?

Right now, Facebook is our largest driver of new customers. We are very active on it, and have joined many groups, do loads of posts and advertise to enable us to reach and engage many potential new customers. Word of mouth is probably our next best acquirer of customers. We also use the Google Ad network, and have recently printed flyers to distribute. My recommendation to all businesses is try lots of different channels to advertise, but always assess to see how effective each is and do the ones that work best.

What’s your biggest challenge right now?

There aren’t enough hours in the day! Our business is really ramping up, and it’s quickly turning from a start up into a fully fledged “grown up” business which requires more of our time and effort. We’ve noticed a network effect with our consignors wanting to sell their items with us (awesome!), which is keeping us ever busy. Another challenge is deciding when is the best time to scale our business into other items such as baby equipment, toys and books.

Did you need a lot of money to start off? And how long was it before you made a profit?

We haven’t invested a significant amount of money in this business to get it going. Our approach from the get go has been to start small and iterate. We’ve experimented and tried lots of different things, and have chosen the ones which work best. We’re a consignment business so we’ve not needed to buy stock which would have been expensive. This, with very lean spending, means we are a profitable business just a few months in. But what we have invested a huge amount of, is time. We work to all hours of the morning, and over weekends to make sure we end up with a successful business.

What makes your business unique from other brands?

At its core, we’re an online kids clothing consignment store, but what sets us aside is that we’re building a network of both buying and selling mothers. The more sellers we have, the more buyers we get, and the more buyers we have, the more sellers we get. And by building a brand and reputation that gives our customers the confidence to purchase second hand clothes online, we believe we have a business that can really succeed.

What is also unique is that not everything we sell goes through our website. We have built an entrepreneurial network where women in townships sell lower value consigned items in markets and to their own contacts. This has been a very empowering part of our business.

We also donate on behalf of our consignors. We have a partner charity, Mhani Gingi, where all items donated go to principals of early learning centres in townships. They then sell the clothes to parents of their pupils which builds parental responsibility and avoids handouts. All proceed from the sale of these clothes are invested into the schools.

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