A 29-year-old thrifter who replaced her 9-to-5 income reselling clothes on eBay shares the strategies she uses to find profitable items

• Kendall VanGilder turned thrifting into a full-time reselling business in 2024.
• She began thrifting with her husband in 2021 and started selling on eBay in 2022.
• VanGilder sources from Goodwill and other stores, focusing on quality and unique items.

Kendall VanGilder and her husband started thrifting as a way to spend time together in 2021.

It wasn't her idea.

"I did not like thrifting at all," the 29-year-old told Business Insider. "It was like pulling teeth to get me to go with him."

The hobby grew on her with time, and one particular trip to Goodwill "changed my viewpoint on thrifting," she recalled. "A rack rolled out, and there were like 25 Lululmeon sports bras. I was like, 'Oh my gosh, this is crazy. I've never seen so many in one place.'"

VanGilder was working at Lululemon as a store manager at the time and knew the product well. They retailed for $48 to $58. However, the secondhand ones were priced at $2.99, she said, "so I got a bunch of them for the price of one bra."

That's when she started to think about thrifting as a business.

She listed her first item — a pair of Urban Outfitters shorts — on eBay in December 2022 and said it sold for about $13. She says she wouldn't consider it a good sale today but, at the time, "it was so exciting."

VanGilder continued listing secondhand items on eBay throughout 2023.

"I was the most part-time that you could be," she said of the early days of her side hustle. "I was maybe listing five things a week. I was not consistent and lacked a little bit of motivation, just because I was working a full-time job and needed those two days off to actually recharge my battery."

She was making money, though, and enjoying "the thrill of the Goodwill hunt" more and more with time.

Eventually, "it was all I was thinking about," she said. "It got to the point where I didn't want to go to work because I wanted to stay home and do my listings or photos."

In May 2024, VanGilder quit Lululemon to do just that.

As expected, her reselling revenue spiked as soon as she had full work days to dedicate to thrifting and listing.

"I have had months where I've exceeded what I've made from my previous job," said VanGilder. The majority of her income comes from her eBay store, Style Secondhand. BI confirmed her five-figure eBay sales by looking at her seller dashboard. She also sells on Poshmark and earns income from social media platforms, including TikTok, where she's amassed more than 15,000 followers and creates content around her thrifted finds and reselling tips.

"And, I definitely have had months where it's a little bit slower. It ebbs and flows. That's just the roller coaster of being a reseller. But it's all the other things, like the flexibility and being able to be my own boss, that makes those months that aren't as good worth it."

Where she shops and what she's looking for

VanGilder says Goodwill is her "preferred place" to find deals, but she also thrifts at The Salvation Army, Plato's Closet, Uptown Cheapskate, and Style Encore.

It helps that she's spent years working in retail and can identify the quality of an item "just by the fabric or feel of it," she said. If you're interested in reselling, she recommends picking a category that you already know and enjoy. It'll make everything easier, from sourcing inventory to coming up with product descriptions when listing items.

When it comes to apparel, she's looking for a few specific qualities.

"I will pull things off of a rack if the label looks interesting or high quality; if the material of the item is linen or silk or wool or cashmere," she said, adding that another green flag is if the item is made in Italy. "There are times when I can just feel an item and kind of know, so I use my senses to determine, and then I will put everything in the cart. If I'm on the fence, it's going in the cart."

VanGilder can sift through clothes for hours, she added: "It's difficult to leave when new racks roll out with good stuff on them." When she's done, she pulls out her phone to research any new brands she has in her cart to "see if the stuff I picked up is actually good or not. Sometimes it's not, but a lot of times the combination of those things I look for make it a really good item."

Sometimes, she's looking for specific brands based on research she's done ahead of time. She'll search a broad apparel category on eBay, like "women's pants," and filter by items that have already sold for $50 and above. Browsing the results helps her discover higher-end brands that she'll then try to hunt down the next time she's shopping.

"There have been so many times when I've done research on a brand that I'd never heard of, and then I will go to a thrift store and find it," she said. "It was probably there all along, but now that I'm bringing it into focus in my mind, I'm seeing it."

She estimates that she adds between 50 and 70 pieces to her inventory a week, which she stores in bins in her garage.

As for her best finds, she cited two instances: A Tom Ford hoodie that she said she paid $4.99 for at Goodwill and sold for $400; and two leather jackets from Uptown Cheapskate that cost her $30 and $50 and sold for $290 and $300.

"Those are out there and waiting to be found at a thrift store or a buy-sell-trade store," she said. "Just do a little research and investigate the items a little bit — especially the really unique and kind of weird items tend to be ones you want to put in your cart and look up because they end up being those couple-hundred-dollar sales."