Closet Full of Treasures? Here’s How To Sell Vintage Clothing

Sourcing and curating vintage is a skill, and can even be a hobby you turn into a business.

With economic pressure accelerating adoption of secondhand shopping, selling preloved clothing presents an opportunity in a growing market for sustainable businesses. Reporting from ThredUp anticipates the global secondhand apparel market to reach $393 billion by 2030, growing at 2.7 times the rate of the overall global apparel market. 

Here, learn how to build your own vintage clothing brand, including how to source products, capture product photos, and develop a pricing strategy, with industry advice from vintage sellers.

Vintage clothing terminology

Before you start building a vintage clothing business, make sure you understand the terminology:

• Vintage: Vintage clothing describes items produced between 20 and 100 years ago.
• Antique: Clothing is considered antique if it’s more than 100 years old. These pieces are rare and frequently found in museums or personal collections.
• Secondhand: Clothing from any time period and in any style that has been previously worn.
• Retro (or repro): Items produced within the past 20 years, but made to look like pieces from past decades, are retro or repro (short for “reproduction”).
• Dead stock: Dead stock inventory that has never been purchased by a consumer. In clothing, this can apply to any unsold or unworn items.
• Resale: Resale, also known as recommerce, is the curated sale of secondhand items, primarily online.
• Consignment: In a consignment business model, a store (e.g., ThredUp or TheRealReal) sells items on behalf of individuals, who receive a share of profits after their pieces have sold. You can use a consignment app to add consignment functionality to your ecommerce site. 

Some resellers offer a mix of vintage and secondhand clothing, while others specialize in specific eras or styles. 

How to sell vintage clothing online in 11 steps

1. Find your angle
2. Build your vintage clothing brand
3. Fund your business idea
4. Source vintage clothes to sell
5. Price your products
6. Manage your vintage clothing inventory
7. Photograph your vintage products
8. Set up your online store
9. Sell vintage clothing on multiple sales channels
10. Market your vintage clothing business
11. Set up a shipping and returns strategy

Here are the essential steps to start a vintage clothing business:

1. Find your angle

Choosing a vintage clothing niche can help you distinguish your brand from competitors.

For example, Adored Vintage founder Rodellee Bas has curated her vintage store around romantic, feminine pieces since 2012. The shop now stocks new clothing, too, but Rodellee has stayed true to her initial aesthetic.

Here are some example niches for selling vintage clothing:

• A specific purpose or occasion: Transplant Vintage sells vintage wedding dresses from all decades of the 20th century.
• High-end designer clothing: Justin Reed stocks contemporary pieces from Chrome Hearts alongside vintage Jean Paul Gaultier and Valentino.
• A niche interest: Justin Bolois of Restaurant Relics sells vintage restaurant merch at pop-ups and on Instagram as a side hustle.
• Reworked or reclaimed styles: Suay adapts secondhand textiles into new pieces.

Conducting market research can help you find a niche. Run a competitive analysis to examine what other companies are doing well and unearth untapped markets. You can use Shopify’s free competitor research template to get started.

2. Build your vintage clothing brand

Building a brand for your vintage business can help you find a relevant audience, guide future expansion, and maintain consistent focus. Key brand components include a brand story, a visual brand identity, a mission statement, and a profile of your ideal customer.

Assemble your brand elements into a set of brand guidelines, a reference document to guide everything from your logo and color palette to your brand voice.

Refer to the brand guidelines as you design your site and curate your collection. Require employees to use them, too. “It builds trust in your customers if they feel like you have a clear, consistent point of view,” says Ky Allport, creative director of branding agency Outline.

3. Fund your business idea

Unless you choose a consignment model (where you pay for items only after they sell), you’ll need to buy inventory upfront. You can finance initial investments such as inventory and an ecommerce website through bootstrapping (self-funding) or by securing external funds—such as small business loans or crowdfunding.

One strategy for testing your new business is to start with a small inventory and add more products as you develop your customer base and discover their needs. Track your inventory purchases and sales, and monitor your cash flow to ensure you don’t spend more than you make over the long run. 

As you scale, consider your storage and fulfillment needs. Before making the jump to a dedicated office or warehouse space, calculate how much it will cost and how much you’ll need to make per month to earn a profit. In the beginning, you may be able to repurpose a closet or spare bedroom in your home.

Shopify’s third-party logistics (3PL) partners help you expand your business without having to prepare packages yourself. Meanwhile, the Shopify App Store has more than 200 accounting apps to help manage your finances.

4. Source vintage clothes to sell

If you’re patient and have an eye for scouring racks, consider sourcing vintage finds at your local thrift store.

Naomi Bergknoff, founder of online vintage clothing business Omnia, visits thrift stores whenever she travels. 

“Always carry extra Ikea bags in your car and have cash,” she says.

Here are some more inventory sourcing options:

• Auctions: Lots or bundles of vintage garments or accessories are a mainstay at auctions. With an online auction platform like Maxsold, you bid online for items you pick up in person, while eBay sellers choose to make their items available for shipping or local pickup.
• Estate sales: Stay on top of upcoming sales by getting on the email list of local estate sale management companies. You can also find sales through websites like EstateSales.net.
• Online marketplaces and classifieds: Sites like Craigslist and NextDoor can turn up treasures for sale, as well as listings for garage sales, moving sales, and estate sales.
• Pickers: Once you’ve built up your business, consider outsourcing by hiring a picker, someone who makes the rounds at thrift shops or other inventory sources.
• Flea markets: Showing up early means first dibs, but dealers also unload stock at the end of the day or at the end ofthe flea market season.
• Collectors: Private collectors may be interested in working with you to sell parts of their collections.
• Wholesalers: Sign up as a trade customer with wholesalers to access vintage in bulk at wholesale prices. Wholesalers generally get their stock by picking from the extra inventory from thrift stores or collection boxes.

Naomi is selective when sourcing inventory for her store. “I’m always thinking about what I’m attracted to and what I know my customers will like to see,” she says.

Some sellers diversify their inventory by selling new products, too. With this approach, you can test different categories or fill gaps in your collection while you build vintage sourcing expertise. 

With the Shopify Collective sourcing network, you can supplement vintage stock with new products from popular Shopify brands. You list products on your ecommerce site, and your partner brands ship them to customers.

5. Price your products

You can use marketplaces like eBay, Etsy, or Vestiaire Collective to determine the value of specific goods by researching the prices of similar products. Some online marketplaces have built-in tools for pricing. Depop, for example, suggests prices based on similar products sold on its platform.

Also consider pricing for seasonality. For example, you might charge more for lightweight linen pants in summer than in winter.

Shopify’s free product pricing calculator can help you set prices according to your profit margin goals. If you plan to list your items on marketplaces like eBay and Etsy, account for the fees they take from your sale price.

6. Manage your vintage clothing inventory

Developing an organizational system helps you sort, store, and identify items for shipping and fulfillment. Create a system for easily storing and finding items, as most items will be one of a kind. Sort on racks or in bins by SKU, date, category, or other criteria that aligns with your online inventory system. 

If you’re on Shopify, you can track inventory with Shopify’s native inventory management tool. 

If you have a brick-and-mortar location, you can sync your online and in-store inventory with a point-of-sale (POS) system like the one from Shopify. The Shopify POS also syncs sales information and customer data across in-store and online touchpoints.

7. Photograph your vintage products

Product photography for a vintage business is different from photography for a new clothing brand because each item is unique. This means you’ll need to photograph every item you sell, instead of reusing one photo for different size options. 

Follow these guidelines to capture great photos:

• Shoot in batches. “Dividing the stock into weekly collections makes it easier to manage as a batch process,” Naomi says. She does weekly product drops on her site after measuring, prepping, and shooting a batch of vintage clothes.
• Work with the resources you have. When Naomi can’t shoot with models, she finds creative solutions, like styling vintage clothing on a dress form. “If styled with care, it can look really great,” she says.
• Don’t skimp on lighting. “I like using natural light, but that can be fickle,” says Naomi. Add basic lighting kits and off-camera flashes to your photography tool kit.
• Use AI tools. Sidekick, an AI assistant built inside Shopify, can add and edit backgrounds and lighting, turning mobile images into studio-worthy shots.

8. Set up your online store

Set up a website and start selling online. Most ecommerce platforms (including Shopify) have a free trial so you can play around before committing. 

Here are a few things to consider for your ecommerce site:

Visual design

With Shopify, you can customize your store’s design to reflect your brand. There are more than 1,200 no-code Shopify themes to choose from, and you can customize your site in minutes with Shopify’s drag-and-drop editor and AI site builder. 

If you decide to customize your site even more, such as by adding custom graphics, consider hiring a pro from the Shopify Partner Directory.

About page

An About page shares your brand story and tells your customers what you’re about: your aesthetics, decade or style of focus, your inspiration, etc. 

Justin Reed’s About page shares the origins of the brand (“founded in 2017 by Justin Reed”) and their mission (“to create a one-stop shop that provides a fresh and forward-thinking approach to discovering and buying clothing and art”). It also explains how the company works (consignment model) and emphasizes the brand’s commitment to service (“a hands-on and worry-free approach”).

Product pages

Secondhand clothing product pages might include different information than new clothing product pages.

Justin Reed’s product pages include an authenticity guarantee and a product condition listing. Shoppers can click the question mark near the product condition to learn more about the brand’s standards for fair, good, great, excellent, and pristine condition.

Collection pages and navigation

Use collection pages to organize your online store and improve navigation and SEO. You can group vintage clothing by era, color, occasion, item type, season, or any other schema that makes sense for your brand.

Keep customer experience at the forefront as you design your site’s navigation. That’s what the team at Mote, a Shopify partner agency focused on website design, did when creating Justin Reed’s website.

“This is a luxury resale website, so there are a lot of one-of-a-kind products,” says creative director Sara Mote. “Being able to drill down and filter by a particular brand or a particular size is important for this client because there may be an item that is only available in one size.” 

Mote created a filter for both collection and search pages so that customers can refine their search at every step of the browsing journey. You can set up advanced filtering for your Shopify site by adding the Search & Discovery app. 

9. Sell vintage clothing on multiple sales channels

A dedicated ecommerce site gives you control over design, helps you reach customers through organic search, and creates a hub for your brand. Selling beyond your ecommerce site, however, can help you reach a wider audience. Here are a few options:

Online marketplaces

Online marketplaces like Etsy, Depop, eBay, Poshmark, and Vestiaire Collective are all popular platforms for selling secondhand clothing. Each comes with its own listing and transaction fees:

In person

If you don’t have a dedicated retail space and want to connect with customers face to face, look for opportunities to sell at local clothing and vintage markets or pop-up booths at festivals.

“Mixing online with in-person events and vintage markets was a great way to bridge the gap with local customers, move product, and make new connections,” Naomi says.

10. Market your vintage clothing business

There are several ways—some paid, some organic—to spread the word and attract customers to your store. Here are some marketing strategies to consider:

Social media marketing

You can use social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok to style your products and highlight new items. 

To build anticipation, Justin Reed typically posts Reels of upcoming items in the days leading up to a new drop. Here, the brand teased a Chrome Hearts baseball bat in a Reel that received more than 150,000 views:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Justin Reed (@justinreed)

One way to encourage social media engagement is to prompt viewers with a question like Transplant Vintage did with their “What vintage wedding dress would you wear?” Reel that received 1.2 million views. The video showed four different styles from different decades, and more than 3,000 people commented with their favorite.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Saturn Bridal by Transplant Vintage (@saturnbridal)

Email marketing

Connect with customers on a regular basis by sending out a newsletter highlighting new drops, sales, or seasonal collections.

“The weekly newsletter is successful in driving traffic to our new arrivals,” says Naomi. Omnia incentivizes newsletter sign-ups with a 10% off pop-up banner on the brand’s website.

If you have a Shopify store, you can start a newsletter with Shopify Messaging, which includes newsletter templates to help you get started. It also integrates with Shopify Segmentation, so you can send more targeted emails based on store data like previous purchase history. 

If you want to add a site pop-up form to acquire more newsletter sign-ups, Shopify Forms is a free option.

11. Set up a shipping and returns strategy

To develop your shipping strategy, you’ll need to decide on your shipping locations, carrier partners, rates, shipping options (e.g., free, flat rate), and return policies.

You can use Shopify’s built-in shipping features to receive discounted rates, print pre-made shipping labels, and choose shipping insurance (up to $200 per package). Online marketplaces like Etsy and Depop also provide pre-made labels.