Selling Vintage Online Talk

Last night we hosted our FREE Selling Vintage Online talk and networking evening (thanks to sponsorship from ASOS Marketplace) to a sell out crowd of vintage collectors.

James & Hanna(Mint Vintage) Alison(Fashion Angel) Victoria (Jarvis & Janis) Samantha (Bardot in Blue)

We were  lucky to have a fantastic panel of vintage sellers – James Wright and Hanna Mansson from Mint Vintage, Victoria Wright from Jarvis & Janis, and Samantha Bennett from Bardot in Blue. Samantha’s day job is working for ASOS Markeplace, giving her a unique perspective, and we also had Katie Oldham, Senior Marketplace Manager, on hand making a valuable contribution to the evening.

Below are our panellists top tips for building a successful online vintage business:-

• Running a business is very time consuming and costly  so it’s important to put a business plan together and decide at the beginning what you want from the business – is it a hobby/sideline or a business that you expect to earning a decent income from

• When sourcing product, be aware of trends – anything ‘on trend’ will make more money.

• It’s easier to find gems and product outside London in places that are less vintage savvy. There are great vintage wholesalers in Europe and North America however it’s important to work out the travel/shipping/insurance costs to see if you can sell the items at a high enough profit margin to cover these costs – usually this is only viable if you are buying in quantity.

• The best selling vintage items are dresses followed by bags; however sales of menswear are also steadily growing.

• Unanimously the most important tip from all the panel was to make sure you have good images – good photography means you’ll sell more, and at a higher price. If you’re serious about your business the costs of professional photography is a worthwhile investment.

• Treat each sale as a gift to a friend – beautiful packaging and a hand-made thank you card will help you build customer loyalty and your brand.

• Customer service – respond to questions quickly. There will always be difficult customers but its best to kill them with kindness rather than engage in confrontation. This way you will get positive feedback and word of mouth recommendation – by far the best (and cheapest) form of marketing.

• Your keywords should form the first three words of your description to help you come high in Google search rankings for anyone searching for your product category– the description language should be down to earth and quite formal.

• Provide as much information about the garments including measurements and detailed description – this will reduce your returns.

• Use social media sites to drive traffic and sales to your site – competitions are a good way to do this.

After the talk ended everyone stayed on to network and pick up on some of the issues discussed in the talk.

By Alison Lewy

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Fazane's first business mentoring session with Fashion Angel

Alison Lewy, Fazane Malik, Joseph Malik

Both myself and my business partner Joseph were excited and honoured to attend our much needed first session with Fashion Angel and ASOS Marketplace this week!

We both work full-time still and as a result have had very little time to concentrate on the business side of things….any time we do have we spend on the creative side as it’s much more fun!!

We have known for a while now that we needed help with the business side of things and actually had Fashion Angel down as ‘MUST’ to contact…….so we were super excited when we won the competition!!

Joseph & Fazane Malik

'fazane' womenswear was launched back in June 2011 with a small collection that we have now added to and re-launched for 2012 as we didn't have the time to really put enough effort in the first time round. 

Our aim is to provide 'exclusive classic womenswear with a fashion twist....pieces that will fit easily into any working woman's wardrobe but still stand out in a crowd. Our USP is that we only make 50 pieces of each style (with each one signed and numbered) so once that exclusive 50 pieces have gone....that's it!! We try and use luxury fabrics where possible but keep our prices affordable for all (retail £45-£249) .

We arrived at ASOS head-office for our first session this week and met Alison Lewy our mentor from Fashion Angel and Katie Oldham from ASOS Marketplace and had a look round the building…….we want to work there! So many stylish people and such a great atmosphere!! It was inspiring just looking at people…..and the clothes well it was like being in heaven!!  

Joseph & Fazane Malik ,Katie Oldham & Alison Lewy

We sat down with Alison for approx 3 hours and discussed our concerns about the business, things we needed to do, things Alison suggested we do etc and really looked over the current state of our business in detail.

It was so great to get an outside opinion and be given targets and actions to do before our next session......our stress levels reduced just from those few hours!!

We are really looking forward to the next session and are actually really enjoying completing our list of tasks! We would totally recommend these sessions to anyone else looking to do them.....

By Fazane Malik

Creative Director - Fazane Womenswear

www.fazanemalik.co.uk

For more information about how you can get help from the Fashion Angel mentors go to 

our Business Mentoring page.

Follow @FashionAngel1