About a month and a half ago, encouraged by my buddy I launched a new shop on Etsy.com. I had a shop on Etsy years ago attempting to sell vintage prints from scanned slides. I had no sales there and after 6 months, I closed that situation down. The focus of this shop, much like that of my friend Josh was vintage men’s clothing with a keen focus on trucker hats.
I got into selling hats on eBay a couple months before opening the Etsy shop because:
- People buy second hand hats (I wouldn’t have thought unless it was something super special)
- Most hats weigh under 13oz. and with ship via eBay pricing, first class mail comes at a 20%ish discount getting most hats out the door for around $2.25
- About half of the trips I make to the Goodwill Outlet, there are bins that have a decent amount of hats which weigh very little and pass a sight test, so the risk is much lower than say, AC Adapters or anything with a power cord
- Vintage hats are about 10-20% of the bins haul and most of them are relatively easy to clean (Check out Paul Cantu’s radical video on how to and out his channel)
One thing I quickly noticed was that certain vintage hats, particularly sports hats from the 80’s & 90’s command a MUCH higher price on Etsy vs. eBay. I have a running theory that the majority of buyers on eBay are shopping for personal purposes and looking to get the best possible (lowest) price for that item. Shoppers on Etsy are more interested in the boutique buying experience and more often than not are gift shopping. Some of these suspicions are confirmed in this episode of Scavenger Life (a great podcast if you haven’t heard it before). This allows for a two pronged attack in the second hand hat/vintage clothing market.
Etsy sale highlights so far:
- Vintage Sports Specialties Dallas Cowboys Hat – 24.99 shipped, sourced at per pound weight; .89c per pound
- Vintage Fanny Pack – This is an interesting example. I sold this on Etsy for 11.99 and a quick search on eBay completed listings show the same products moving and not moving for less
- Vintage Harley Davidson Snapback Hat – 17.99 with a damaged snap. Same story as the Cowboys cap.
- A handful of other hats selling from between 10.99-14.99 totaling in just about 100.00 in sales in about a month and a half with minimal maintenance
Ebay continues to be my main sales outlet, but Etsy is a great sales channel for vintage and collectible items and commands a much ticket value. Its also super fun to customize the buying experience through site design, something you can’t do on eBay outside of template customization. I’ll continue to post results here, thanks again for reading!