Rob & Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper interiew Melissa Jackson from Nannie Meg Resale about reselling clothing in her part-time business.
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Reseller Hangout Podcast - Interview with Melissa Jackson
Rob: What's up guys? On today's episode, we are excited to talk to Melissa Jackson with Nannie Meg Resale, who's going to give us a little look into her business and learn more about flipping some clothes.
Melissa J: Hi guys. I'm so excited to be talking with you. I follow you and listen, every chance I get.
Melissa: Ah, thank you so much. We're so excited that you're here so that we can chat with you. Cause I'm like, I'm pretty sure we'll dive into this in a little bit. I know you do more clothes. And that's not something that we really mess with. So it's always fun to talk to so many different people doing so many different niches and niches, however you say that. Whichever one.
There's so many ways to do this business. So it's a lot of fun.
Rob: Let us know a little bit about your background, how you got started in this business and yeah, let's take it from there.
Melissa J: Well, my name is Melissa Jackson and my business name is Nannie Meg Resale. It is named after my two teenage daughters, Natalie, and Megan, and I mostly, like you said, I mostly do clothes, but you know, I do other things as well.
I'm on Poshmark, eBay, and Mercari. I live in Chesterfield, Michigan, which is about 25 miles north of Detroit. And I presently, oh gosh, I presently work for a large health system in Detroit as a lab representative. And I travel a lot throughout the state, which is really cool because I get to go to different thrift stores and it's so exciting.
And I started on Poshmark a few years ago, but just as a buyer and I started on, or I went on eBay, gosh, probably 20 years ago, but as a buyer, not a seller. And I started selling on Poshmark when my daughter wanted to buy this, specific Vera Bradley backpack and she found it on Poshmark. And so we looked around and I wasn't really sure, the selling aspect, but then I said, well, you know what, if these people can do it, I can do it. So I have two teenage daughters and a husband who's, you know, who loves clothes as well. So I just started selling out of our personal closets and I was really surprised of how fast it went and it just started from there.
And then, in 2020, when COVID hit the state of Michigan, you know, we were all on lockdown, but the state of Michigan most, you know, we were on lockdown and then we had a lot of crazy restrictions on what stores we could go to and what we could buy. So my, a friend of mine from high school, she started buying pallets like merchandise pallets from a distributor.
So my husband and I started flipping like patio furniture, umbrellas, things of that nature, because you could not, you weren't allowed to buy those in Michigan. So, which was crazy, but we did, we did so well. And then we realized that we would see the same stuff posted. We just posted on marketplace, you know, local stuff.
So everybody was doing the same thing and I was seeing a lot of the same items. So we had a really good summer, but then we kind of moved away from that. And that's when I thought, well, I don't know how to do big items on eBay. I see them, but I don't know how to do it. So then I Googled that and that's where I found you guys.
Melissa: That's definitely what we love to do and kind of our little corner of the world. So I have family in Michigan, so I know some of the restrictions that you guys were under, so that's kind of
Melissa J: crazy.
It got to be a little weird. Yes.
Melissa: I bet. But you were able to turn something like a crazy time into a pretty profitable thing, which was really awesome.
Melissa J: Yes, we did very well. I couldn't believe I would post something. Hit hit, hit, hit, hit. And I had people coming. It was just insane, just insane. And then, you know, the word got out. So.
Rob: That's awesome. So after the summer, after the patio stuff that you guys are flipping locally, is that where you kind of reverted back into, clothes or you went more towards clothes, to keep your reselling business.
Melissa J: Yes. So, I started doing clothes on marketplace as well, but it didn't take off to where I wanted it to. So I went back to doing Poshmark and then the more I listened to you guys, I thought to myself, I wonder if they still do clothes on eBay? Well, they do because I've done just as well on eBay, as I've done on Poshmark with clothes.
It's just amazing. And it's just so fun to me. I just, I love doing it. I'm currently part-time because I work for the hospital during the day, but I'm working really, really hard to become full time. And I just was a part of your furniture summit because that's a local hobby I do too. I like to paint, you know, and things like that.
So it was really excited for that. So I'm kind of looking into, you know, doing more. Then just the clothes, but doing more of the larger items on eBay. So that's why, you know, I follow you guys should know what to do.
Melissa: Yeah. It's fun to have diverse, like we don't really have it pegged except for the larger items, like a certain thing that we do.
And I really want to get a little more into furniture because it's fun. It's kind of like a stress reliever, you know, to paint this thing. And it just, I dunno, it's kind of like therapy and just relaxing and then you see something completely new. I just think it'd be a fun hobby and a profitable one if you, you know, if you do it enough.
Yeah. So it'd be a lot of fun.
Rob: But I do commend you and I can relate to you because I used to work for a report company and I would travel and probably four counties that were in our area. And that's what I absolutely loved to do was hit up thrift stores have Goodwill, salvation, army, all those things. While I was doing my nine to five job, and I was able to find some really, really cool stuff and then turn around and resell it.
So that's awesome. While you're part-time that you're working towards that is so cool that you're able to do that for sure.
Melissa: Think outside of the box and you're like, I'm here. Let me go see what's there.
Melissa J: So yeah, I found, I also do, vintage housewares as well and Pyrex, I was selling vintage Pyrex for quite a while.
And there are, it's amazing like what the different thrift stores have and how different their pricing is from county to county, it's just, it's crazy. Detroit by far is the highest. And, you know, moving out of, you know, more into the suburbs, it gets a little different. It's just, it's just crazy of what you find.
I love the hunt.
Rob: Absolutely. I can relate to that too. That is my favorite part is the hunt.
Melissa: Is that something that developed over time or is it something, cause it's kinda like once it gets in your blood, like. Yeah. I don't know. It's just something that you really love to do. Like, has that kind of always been there like as a kid, did you guys go to thrift stores or how?
Melissa J: Actually, no. You know, and I, and I listened to a lot of interviews and they say, well, you know, I was raised in the thrift store. My mom was a thrifter. We weren't, we didn't go to thrift stores as much. In fact, I wasn't until I was in high school until I went to a thrift store, but we in Michigan, the outlets are very popular.
So we were outlet shoppers. Like I remember in high school, it was, I remember specifically we could go to the outlets. I could by Gues jeans for $29 and I could get three pairs for what you could buy at Hudson's for one. And I never thought of reselling it back then, you know, as a teenager, but big outlets shopper.
And it was more when I started having children to where I would go to resell stores, just because they grew out of things so quickly. And I didn't want to spend a ton of money on a lot of things that they would grow out of quickly. And it's always been my dream to open up my own resale store. So it's really nice that I can do it online and I have to pay, you know, the rent and the insurance and the overhead and all that stuff.
Melissa: For sure. So where do you, where do you keep your inventory right now? Like, is it?
Melissa J: Right now my husband recently built me a room in our basement, so I keep the clothes hanging in the basement and we still have pallet stuff left over in the garage. I actually have, a dresser and I have I posted on the Facebook page for the summit.
My husband found, you know, this vintage furniture, on the side of the road the other day. And that's in there. I have a couple shelves in there, so pretty much the garage and then my office and the basement.
Rob: Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, we, I definitely, I started out of.
Melissa: I wish we had a basement.
Rob: Florida doesn't have basements, but I started out of our spare bedroom when I originally started too, and then gradually we grew into a storage unit and actually shed a shed first and then a storage unit and then multiple storage units. So, yeah, that's really cool. That's cool where you're at, for sure.
Melissa: You can just do it out of your house and one thing that you said, which was pretty cool that, you're on Poshmark and were like, are people still selling clothes on eBay and you don't, you know, crossposting can be helpful. Do you do crossposts or you do just certain items on?
Melissa J: Nope. Everything it's across, everything gets cross posted on, especially on eBay and Poshmark. I also do Mercari, but I noticed that it's just kind of like a third one that, you know, I have an account, but I do well, you know, here and there, but Poshmark and eBay, everything does get cross-listed.
Melissa: Yes. Okay. Are you using a tool to do that or are you just posting?
Melissa J: No, I recently looked into flip, but I do most of, I do most of my stuff from my phone and they don't have an app, so, or they have an app, but it's just not can do some of that. I, but you know, that's part of it. I, I have a system where I like to do it myself and maybe I have about 350 listings.
So I don't have as many as a lot of the other sellers. So maybe when I hit over a thousand, I'll have to, you know, you use one of those services, but for now I'm cool just doing it myself.
Melissa: And then how old are your daughters? They could probably be like a help you on expanding with that too. If they're interested. I don't know.
Melissa J: You would think. They're a 19 and 15 and my 15 year old. She, well, my 19 year old, she's going into nursing. So she's following the healthcare aspect because my husband and I are both in healthcare and my 15 year old is, is more into the thrifting and the fashion. And, you know, she's really into, the vintage stock right now that's hot. So the, you know, the nineties and Y2K has been edge, which, you know, to me is crazy, but it's true. It's what it is.
Melissa: Our childhood is all vintage now.
Melissa J: It is. So I picked up a couple of Delia's jeans the other day, and they're too big for her, but, you know, vintage shirts, she loves, you know, So she, you know, I really, I wish I could, I've been looking into deep hop, but I noticed that it's more of like a modeling thing and I'm not modeling clothes.
So it was kind of hoping so we're, I'm trying to get them to do that.
Melissa: There's a whole bunch of little, like new, different ways to sell. There's a whole bunch of little ones or not little. They're pretty big like that we don't even venture on, you know?
Rob: New apps that have popped up. That's amazing. Yeah, for sure. So.
Melissa: Sorry, what were you saying? What'd you say? Sorry. No, go ahead. No, I was just gonna ask you, so how much time are you putting into you? If you're doing this part-time like, what, what's your time like each week?
Melissa J: Well I always have my phone on me, which, you know, if I get offers, if I can send things out or, you know, sharing my Poshmark closet, because I share it four times a day.
So I do that throughout the day at work. But as far as, you know, packing orders and all that stuff, it's usually between 8:00 PM and probably midnight.
Melissa: Okay.
Melissa J: So it's after work after dinner. And, you know, I, I love it so much. I just can't wait to where it's my, you know, it's my entire day.
Rob: For sure. That's totally exciting.
What about your, how much are you making right now on the side, if you don't mind sharing? Let's go monthly. Yeah. On average, what would you say?
Melissa J: Well average monthly, so before it was kind of hit or miss like a hobby, but, it's only been probably since around last November that I really said, okay, I'm going to do this.
I'm going to source. I'm really looking at stuff. So I would, my goal, last February was to hit a thousand in, take home, not just sales. So sales wise, it is sales wise, it's anywhere between $1,500 and probably $2,500 and, you know, bring home without the fee is, and all that stuff is I think, consistently about $1,000 to $1,500.
Rob: Nice. That's awesome. That's really cool. That is really, really cool.
Melissa: And that you love it. Like you're doing something you enjoy, you know, that's, that's extra money. And then when you can go full time, then you'll have all the hours to put into it. So.
That was ours. When we, before we went, full-time like, we didn't really have all the numbers lined up and everything ready to go. We were kind of pushed into it, but then we're like, okay, well, if we did this much part time, what could we do if we had those full-time hours?
Melissa J: So I was just thinking that I was just thinking that earlier, when I was preparing my thoughts and everything, and I'm thinking I'm only doing this a couple hours a night.
What if I could do this all day? I mean, what would my. It's just amazing. I mean, you know, I just, you know, it all comes in time though. It doesn't happen overnight, especially clothes, for sure. So that's why I'm trying to, you know, move into the big items because I have like a power wheels new in the box in my garage and you know, the furniture and things of that like that too. And, and I'm, I've been looking into building a website, but it's just it's just too hard. I want it to look perfect. And it's just too hard and I'm just not where I want to pay somebody to do it yet. I like my profits.
Melissa: Nope. There's so many different ways that you can take the business. So then focusing on the things that are really making the money.
Rob: Absolutely. And the cool thing is where you're at right now. You're doing clothes and you're doing very well at clothes and you can supplement and start going into maybe one big item a month. One big item a week, something like that until you get to the point where you're making more money and you're enjoying it, which is really cool about this business, you can do whatever you want and get the results from it.
The more that you work at it. So that's really cool.
Melissa J: Thank you. I think that's a good goal. I'd like to, I was telling my husband over the weekend, I would like to list and sell, you know, and hopefully, you know, maybe one item a week, just so I can, because you know, I'm still a little unclear on the shipping and, you know, you know, stuff like that.
But I, it was, it was a funny story. So I have this 1940s roaster with a cabinet, it's an old Western house roaster. And it was one of my impulse buys that I thought for sure it was going to sell right away. Yeah, no, you know, the things that you think are going to sell right away, they sit. So this was like my bad buy.
So I spent $70 on it now and I'm thinking, oh my gosh, it'll go so quick. And I've had it on marketplace. And I had it listed on eBay for just for local pickup because I, I have no idea really yet how to ship this thing. Well, somebody bought it over the weekend, right after my husband loaded it up and put it in an antique mall.
So we brought it home and now, I messaged the buyer and I said, well, when do you want to pick it up? And he's like, oh, I'm in Massachusetts. And I'm like, So I'm just, so now we're kind of going back and forth on how to do this. So I think like yourself, I think when you gave the example of your dining table, you know, I'm going to have to figure it out.
Rob: You got it. Absolutely. And it is, it is amazing. Once you do start doing a larger items and you start shipping, it opens absolutely but it just opens so many more doors and you're able to really make a lot more profits on the larger items. So that's cool. That's cool. That that's where you're at right now for sure.
Melissa: Oh yeah. I wanted to ask you, do you have a most memorable flip? Like, it could be good, bad, most money, whatever. Like most memorable?
Melissa J: I think my most, what comes to mind is when I was, when we were doing the, the pallet sales and we were not, we were buying pallets for $500 each and, you know, had a ton of items.
And I think the, the largest or the most memorable was it was a patio set and it was kind of like a hipster patio. So. And we figured it out that for the pallet, there were like 15 items or so, we literally paid barely anything for it. And I sold it for a couple of hundred dollars and that was just my big, you know, that was my big aha.
You know, we can do this. This is possible. And you know, just, just any type of article of clothing that. You know, when you go, when you go places, like I do a lot of the clothing bins, which you know, is a crazy beast in itself. So it's kinda like, people think I'm crazy when I'm climbing in there, but, you know, people think of it as garbage and there's some good stuff in there and all you have to do is just give it new life and just keep it out of the garbage, I mean, Yeah, there's something in there for everybody.
So that's the most memorable thing it's just turning garbage into something, a treasure. Absolutely.
Melissa: I love that about this businesses that we can recycle so much stuff because as a culture, we buy so much stuff like that. And so we can give old things new life again and get them to somebody who wants them.
Like I forgot. I don't even know how you pronounce it. I, for even forgot about Delia's like how do you pronounce it? Yeah. Anyways.
Melissa J: Delia's I could be wrong. I don't much.
Melissa: But I remember having the magazine like in high school.
Melissa J: And I'm just kicking myself because probably about 10 years ago. I finally got rid of all of my nineties clothes, you know, that I could definitely use.
Now I had, I threw a pair of Doc Martens away because it's crazy. Never again.
Melissa: Hold onto those things. They're going to come back. They'll come back. Yeah.
Melissa J: It's just, everything comes back.
Melissa: You never know. It's crazy. So what would be like we have all different levels of people listening in from just starting or wanting to start, to, you know, veteran flippers, but to somebody maybe starting out, what would you give them a piece of advice?
Rob: Which you probably wish you had knew have known. Thank you. But when you started out, what would you, what could you say to people?
Melissa J: It would definitely, it would definitely be clear pictures, especially with clothing and be honest with your descriptions and have a very detailed description. So, what I learned was, I mean, my first pictures are just terrible and I look at, because you know, in the past mark world listings don't disappear.
So if I go down low enough, I'll see those first listings from just like, I can't believe somebody bought those. And just being, you know, clear on Poshmark. They, and I know eBay too, you know, they like the clear white background and I think it looks pretty and it looks just clean and crisp with clothing and.
Clear pictures being honest with your description, you know, talking about any flaws and I mean, you could be honest because people will buy them with the flaws. If they're looking for that item, you know, they're, they're not going to care that there's a pinhole where a tag was, or if it's missing a button, just be honest.
And, and I think that, you know, I think people always think something has to be perfect. Well, it doesn't have to be perfect. Yep.
Rob: Such great advice for sure. And the other thing about when you're selling online and you're shipping stuff out one way or another, they're going to find out about that. So being honest, best way to go for sure. So, great, great advice.
Melissa: Yeah, because he will get those returns. You used to promise stuff.
Rob: Our big saying is under promise and over deliver. So make sure you're, I'm always telling people, even if I don't find scratches, scuffs, or scrapes on an item, almost every single one of my listings, I have that.
And tell people have proper expectations. This is a used item that I am selling. It is not new out of the box. When I started, I learned that the hard way I used to say, if I thought something was nice, all this is gorgeous, excellent condition, and somebody else would get it. And once they shouldn't and they would be like, yeah, this is not excellent condition I want to refund.
So.
Melissa: So refunds are a lot lower now that you set the bar a little bit lower.
Melissa J: And I've only, honestly, I've only had, I think that's important. I think it's important to be honest and fair and totally wrong. I mean, there's going to be returns, but I mean, it's always going to happen. But like you said, you cut down on, I'm just being honest and, you know, and, and I also to a clothing, to a new clothing, reseller lay off the filters, you know, because filtering can definitely change the object and you don't want to do that.
You don't want the think it's purple when it's a gray or something like that. For sure.
Melissa: They think they're getting one shade and it's like 10 shades lighter or something.
Rob: For sure. Yeah. So. That's awesome, Melissa, thank you so much for jumping on here. Let us know everybody who's listening right now. Let them know where they can reach out where they can find you follow you. Yeah, please let us know.
Melissa J: Okay. Well, my name is Melissa Jackson, obviously, and you can find me at Nannie Meg Resale, N A N N I E M E G resale. I'm on Instagram and on Poshmark, eBay and Mercari.
Melissa: And we'll put those links in the show notes. So you can grab those and go check her on Instagram and maybe go buy some vintage clothes from her closet. Right? Awesome.
Rob: Melissa, thank you so much for doing this. We greatly appreciate you and revealing some of your business. Thank you so much for doing this and taking the time. So have a wonderful day.
You too, thank you.
Melissa J: Bye-bye.