As the digital world grows, young people continue to use it to their advantage in order to sell and resell clothing and shoes online. Some do this through social media, but there are also special apps designed for resale that became increasingly popular as teens shop for rare or special items. Students at Camas High School (CHS) worked through the process of developing a successful system, creating thriving clothing resale businesses.

 Junior Josh Dabasinskas began selling sneakers a little over three years ago on eBay and GOAT. Since then, he has expanded to platforms such as StockX and Instagram (@pnwsells). Instagram has been the most successful for him.

Dabainskas learned the process of sneaker resale on his own, “through trial and error,” he said.

 “I would buy something and sell it for more, and if I couldn’t I would just take a loss on it and just keep repeating this,” Dabasinskas said. 

In order to keep repeating this process until a point of success, Dabasinskas saved up money. Once a profit is made on a pair of sneakers, he reinvests a portion of the money back into the business. Consistent profit took him a year and half.

 “For the first six months I was on Instagram, I don’t think I sold one thing,” he said.

Josh has been able to grow his platforms by making valuable connections with other sneaker resellers. 

“On Instagram, I would reach out to people with a bigger following and ask them for tips and whatnot, and then make friends that do the same thing that I want to do, then they’ll promote my stuff as well as I’ll promote theirs.”

Josh explains that the ability to profit and mark up the price of a shoe all depends on the size of your platform and your knowledge of how to sell them. Since Josh has created a good credibility and reputation for his business, people looking to sell shoes will come to him to sell their shoes because they are confident in his large following base.

Sometimes he buys the shoe from someone else selling their own shoes, or directly through a store like Nike when they first drop a shoe. 

 “I will bring people into a store with me in order to get more pairs of shoes. If I find a shoe that I think I can make a lot of money on, I will buy as many pairs of shoes as I can get.”

“Retail and resale price of a shoe are very different,” he explains. If he goes into a store and buys out the whole stock of a shoe, people will have nowhere else to buy the shoe except from him, which allows him to mark up the price of a shoe to a fair resale price. 

Anyone has the same opportunity as Josh to create a successful resale business. His advice to those who are interested is, “just don’t be scared to lose money, losing five dollars is worth it when you can keep getting money back to reinvest,” he said. 

This started out as a hobby for Josh, but as his business grew, it became more serious.

Josh said, “This coming summer I plan to open a store at Bridgeport Mall. I didn’t really think this was going anywhere but during COVID sales increased.”

The cost of opening the store is all funded by profits from his business.

Senior Jaden Gillett runs a resale business as well. His business, @rager.vtg, focuses primarily on resale of vintage T-shirts. The name of his business, as well as his interest in vintage clothing was inspired by Kid Cudi and his style. 

As a younger kid, he went garage-saling and thrifting with his mom, later leading to the beginning of a resale business.

He now has a better appreciation for clothes, saying, “I feel like thrifted clothes have more of a story behind them, and they’re more unique. When people our age became interested in this as well, it had an impact on the selling and is definitely easier to sell because people started to understand the true value.”

He explains that the age and the print will help him determine the value of resale for the shirt. Similarly to Josh, he met people who resell as well, who have helped him along the way.

 His first trip in search of shirts to resell was to the Goodwill bins. Here, he met people that do it as a full time job. He was inspired by them and their Instagram profiles, so he made his own for the purpose of vintage resale.

“I met a lot of people through this who had a lot of knowledge about the value and learned by them,” he said.

Once he started focusing on the quality of his posts and clothing articles, it caught more people’s attention and turned from a hobby to a business.

In addition to Instagram, Jaden sells on Depop, an app made for clothing resale, on eBay, and even in person events like pop-up shops.

“The transition from selling online to in-person is really what took over,” he said.

All of the work for @rager.vtg is done by Jaden. Before school started, he was putting around 20 hours a week into his business, but now that school has started, hours have reduced.

Jaden dedicates his success to meeting new people and learning as much as he can but really emphasizes on consistency.

“You have to be consistent, you won’t be successful if you aren’t. It all just depends on how much time you put into it.”

The dedication and drive of these CHS students cultivate a space for them to not only garner money but to pursue a creative interest as well.