From Reselling To Swapping

“I started reselling in middle school around 2002-2005 as a way to make extra cash and express my creativity. In 7th grade, I remember going to the mall in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, where I grew up, and quickly realizing that the clothes there didn’t look the same on me as they did on my friends. I was tall and awkward, and it made me feel super uncomfortable to try to squeeze into the tiny Hollister tees that were so popular at the time. This was true, in real time, peak diet culture, Y2K clothing: Everything was tiny and plastered with labels.

When I discovered thrifting, I immediately felt energized while shopping instead of drained.

I remember being like ’Wow, this is cool - I can buy this sweater that has cats on it because I like cats’. That is such a different experience than buying what you see on the mannequin and then being disappointed when it doesn’t look the same on you as it did on that mannequin.

I started taking the bus to the two thrift stores in my hometown more often than going to the mall, and made friends who liked to do the same. One of my friends introduced me to a really trendy consignment shop downtown in the basement of a high-end clothing store. I was amazed, I had no idea consignment shops were a thing! So I started bringing my own clothing there, and the store owner was really impressed. He asked me where I got my clothing, and when I told him I thrifted, he planted the idea of reselling in my head. At the time, thrift store prices were extremely low, I’m talking $0.50-$1 for a shirt, so I was making around $120 a month profit just from taking things to this consignment store. That is a lot of cash for a kid in middle school! I was actually the top seller at that store for about six years and worked there for a little bit. It was a great experience, I learned a lot about fabric content, how to spot quality, and pricing items.

Since then, I have had so many different iterations of my reselling brand, Disco Thrifts. I have rented racks in stores, paid for booths at pop-up markets, hosted my own DIY pop-up markets, resold on apps, and had my own Instagram store where people bid on items. Anyway you can think of reselling clothes, I’ve done it. This year, I decided to pivot to hosting clothing swaps that I call Disco Swaps and backed away from the reselling space. I’ll always shop secondhand and resell every now and then but my focus is on my swaps.

So much has changed since I got into reselling. People used to think buying used items was kind of gross. Wearing secondhand clothing was looked at as something people only did out of necessity.

Now I think people can recognize thrifting and reselling as a skill.

Not everyone can walk into a thrift store or shop online reselling apps, see an item, and style it in their head. That takes practice! With social media, people can now learn from others online who make styling videos, which is how I spend most of my time, to be honest. Catch me on TikTok following every single woman on there who I see doing a styling video using items bought secondhand, ugh, it is just the best.

When I first started thrifting and reselling it was kind of hard to access. There were no reselling apps on our Nokia dumb phones, I couldn’t look up ‘thrift stores’ on Google maps, I had to find out where to buy and sell things by word of mouth. Not to age myself, but at that time the internet was something you accessed at home, on your desktop computer, via dial-up connection. I vaguely remember my mom buying vintage Christmas decorations off of eBay, and to pay for her items, she would mail them a check! You had to work for it. Now we all have the internet in our pockets at all times and endless access to the secondhand market.

The reselling market has become oversaturated because people are buying more now than ever before due to trends cycling so quickly.

The average life of a trend is now something like 2 weeks, which is wild! People are seeing something online that they want; suddenly, they need to buy it right that moment and have it on their doorstep as quickly as possible. Most consumers are wearing it 1-2 times, then donating it or reselling it online. Both supply and demand are higher now more than ever for that reason. So while access to the secondhand market has drastically increased, it is now difficult to know where to look across all these different platforms to find what we want. I really appreciate that the Gem app is solving that problem. As a consumer of exclusively secondhand goods, I want to be able to find the quality goods I am looking for easily.

I decided to pivot to clothing swaps this year because I think there are a lot of people out there reselling that do it better than I! I love reselling, there will always be a place for it in my life, but it has gotten so competitive. I’m less interested in keeping up with the trends these days and more interested in promoting sustainability.

Getting people interested in making their wardrobe more sustainable, no matter what type of style they have, is so exciting to me!

My reselling brand, Disco Thrifts, now exclusively does Disco Swaps, clothing swaps organized by me.

I have been hosting clothing swaps for a long time! In the past just for fun, with friends. My roommate and I in Minneapolis would host swaps where we would have 30 girls in our 1000 square foot apartment. I always thought it was a fun way to get together with friends and get new-to-me clothes for free.

All Disco Swaps are ticketed events. There are two ticket tiers, one that comes with one bag and one that comes with two bags. I like providing the swap bags because it limits the amount of goods people can bring which inspires more critical thinking while packing swap bags and the swaps end up having a lot of quality items. Swappers pick up their bags before the event, fill the bags with gently used items they no longer wear, and bring their goods to the swap. When I check people in at the event I always say “Once your bags are empty, you can start filling them again!”

I provide racks, hangers, etc., so once someone puts their stuff out they are free to start grabbing new-to-them items to take home. It can get chaotic, someone said at my first event “This is like the bins but everyone is nice!”, referencing those pay-by-the-pound warehouses where people are throwing elbows digging through piles. There are no 1:1 trades at Disco Swaps, I always get asked if people can bring stuff that they only want to get rid of if they get something they think is valuable enough in return and I let them know that they have to trust the process. The clothing swap will provide!

I definitely put a lot of work into Disco Swaps to make sure everyone has a good experience and feels good about buying a ticket. I know there are lots of free clothing swaps out there and I encourage everyone to go to those too! I do believe that my experience as a reseller, my dedication to sustainability, and my passion for throwing a good party makes my clothing swaps stand out.

My goal moving my reselling brand Disco Thrifts to exclusively host Disco Swaps was to build community, promote sustainability, and inspire confidence through creativity. I want people to leave my events with new connections, feeling good about helping our environment and excited to style all their new finds.

The energy at clothing swaps is completely unmatched!

You have all those good dopamine hits that we get while shopping without the dread of watching the total go up at the cash register when we leave.

My advice when picking out items to bring to a swap is to gather those items taking up space in your closet that you never wear, but you would be excited to see your best friend in. If it is something you would love to see your homegirl style, bring it! Often people think, ’I don’t want to just give this away, I paid money for this…’, but there is a cost to that item taking up physical space in your home and mental space in your head. Bring good stuff, trust that other people will do the same. Get to clothing swaps early so you can see everything that comes through and wear clothes that you can try on other clothes over (leggings, tank tops, whatever you’re comfortable in). Lastly, be open-minded! Flex that part of your brain that challenges you to look at an item and see its potential.

I have almost completely stopped donating to for-profit thrift stores this year.

Most thrift stores are only putting out about 15% of donated goods, and the rest are going straight to the landfill. All of the leftover goods from Disco Swaps are donated to local non-profits or recycled. If you are getting rid of clothing and want to make sure it stays in circulation, I suggest first trying to resell it. If an item can’t be resold, please do some research and see what your local shelters or mutual aid organizations are looking for! If an item has become unusable due to stains or rips, turn it into rags to be used for cleaning, or if you’re really wild like me, you can slice it up and turn it into filling for pillows or ottomans. Sustainability is not convenient, but it is worth it!”

Follow Disco Thrifts on Instagram and TikTok to know about the next swaps!