Have you ever noticed that despite having a closet full of clothes, you still seem to cycle through many of the same articles each week? You find your favorites and wear them out the fastest while the other stuff takes time to work its way into the rotation.
I do it all the time. I’m just a collar shirt at work and t-shirt at home kind of guy, but I still have my favorites that I repeat more often than the others. This is fine when you can see everything you own in your closet because you always know what your options are, even if you choose the same old comfy clothes again and again.
You know when this kind of situation doesn’t work? When you have more clothes than you can fit in a bureau and a closet (or three), so you never see all of your options. When you don’t see everything, stuff isn’t added into the rotation, so some pieces stay new forever.
This is what happens at my house. My girlfriends solution when we start getting boxed in by clothes is to start throwing her stuff in trash bags and donate it all. Her heart is certainly in the right place, but I also cringe when I see how much money she is stuffing into those trash bags. There has to be a better way.
Enter idea guy. I told her I would take her clothes and at least get her something for them. I purchased the domain MyGirlShops 1 and a day or two later I had a website up with a few articles of clothing for sale. I would sell a few pieces on eBay to use as a lead generator by mentioning the website in my About Me page as well as including the url on the invoice I shipped with the product.
My girlfriend was fine with the idea. She got to wash her hands of it all. She also didn’t mind me asking constant questions about each article of clothing so I could write descriptions. What’s this? A scarf or a belt? I thought Empire Waist was where the Millenium Falcon was hiding. Why is it called a Pea Coat if it’s white?
The good news is after only a couple months I was seeing traffic surge in the logs, so it looked like it was working. Unfortunately nobody was buying directly from the website. I kept adding more items thinking it was a problem with the lack of selection. It was a lot of work, especially when you’re women’s fashion illiterate like I am.
Eventually I grew weary of this despite the fact that its daily page views was consistently increasing. I just don’t care about women’s fashion. I also couldn’t believe how many questions people ask about articles of clothing, but I guess I can understand since you can’t exactly try stuff on first if you’re buying online.
It’s too bad my girlfriend wasn’t into running this herself because she would probably love to talk clothes all day long. She thinks in clothes. If we are talking about an event that happened 10 years ago, she remembers it by what she (or someone else) was wearing. You know how people always say I remember where I was when Kennedy was shot, or when the Twin Towers were hit? She remembers what she was wearing.
I guess the lesson here is you really need to make sure you enjoy what you do because if your heart is not into it, there’s going to be trouble ahead. Not even the incentive of a growing visitor base could keep me from becoming bored with this one.
I bet someone out there could take this idea and build it into something great. This could start out as an online brand, then move into a chain of brick and mortar MyGirlShops consignment stores. Just make sure to get permission from your girl first before dropping her stuff off to be consigned. You’ve heard of revenge porn, right? Well, revenge consignment is even worse to some girls. You’ve been warned.
- Sedo direct sale link ↩