SECOND-HANDY
I quit my job in a pub to sell clothes on Depop full time and made £50k in three months – my six top tips to make profit
A whopping 30% of Katie Rowe's customers are repeat buyers thanks to one of her tips
A DEPOP seller who quit her job in a pub to focus on flogging clothes online has shared her top tips for becoming a second-hand success.
Katie Rowe has sold over 7,000 items in just two years on the app and now even employs her mum to help with packaging and posting.
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The 22-year-old was working in a pub near her home in Chalfont St Giles, Bucks for a few years while selling old clothes online.
But Katie soon realised she had a knack for bringing in cash online.
Being a top seller meant she once billed £50,000 over a three month period.
Among her tactics were posting new items everyday to “maximise exposure” and investing time into good pictures and captions for her listings.
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“If you maximise your exposure, then people are more likely to scroll through your Depop shop and look at the rest of the products on offer,” she explains.
“Also, you should really persevere with it, even if you don’t see results straight away.
“I also think that the photography and captions for your products are really important.
“The better your products look in photos, the more attention they will receive, so make sure pictures are high quality and with good backdrops.
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“Captions should also be informative and accurate, so that people can find the products they are looking for.”
Katie’s store, @, started with her selling “a few unwanted bits” to earn extra money alongside her pub gig.
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But once lockdown hit, she dedicated most of her time to growing her presence on the app.
“After Covid, I continued to work at the pub and was starting to look for an office job when I decided that I should really commit to my Depop shop,” she says.
“I was nervous to commit to it full time at first, but I realised that I had found something that I was really good at and needed to pursue it.”
According to Katie, what sells the best depends on the season - and knitwear has been a huge hit this winter.
Katie's Top Tips
- Upload new items everyday
- Take high-quality pictures with pretty backdrops
- Write informative and accurate captions
- Persevere, even when you're not selling much
- List clothes relevant to the current or upcoming season
- Be open to negotiations
When spring arrives, she reckons tops will become her biggest seller.
“I’m also happy to negotiate for repeat customers, as it means I build up a loyal customer base,” she adds.
“In fact, repeat buyers make up around 30% of my customers, so it’s lovely to build up these relationships.”
Thanks to her success, Katie now employs her mum to help with packaging and posting.
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“This is my full time job, I don’t have another source of income,” she says.
“Last year was my best year so far, as I was in the Top Sellers list for three months in a row in December, January and February, making around £50K during that time.”
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