652: $150k Renting Out Dresses as a Side Hustle

0:00:04 $150,000 renting out dresses.
0:00:06 What’s up, what’s up, Nikola for here.
0:00:07 Welcome to The Side Hustle Show
0:00:10 because your nine to five may make you a living
0:00:12 if your five to nine makes you alive.
0:00:13 And here’s a side hustle
0:00:16 that earned just 160 bucks in its first month.
0:00:19 I came from just two customers, but it was enough.
0:00:22 It was enough traction to know that she was onto something.
0:00:24 Since then, my guest has scaled to
0:00:28 over 200 different garments, bringing in $150,000
0:00:30 in rental income last year.
0:00:34 She is @theprofitcollective on Instagram, summerfisher.
0:00:36 Welcome to The Side Hustle Show.
0:00:38 – Thank you, thanks for having me.
0:00:39 – You bet, stick around in this one.
0:00:41 We’re gonna learn how this business
0:00:43 and the math behind it works.
0:00:45 The delivery and logistics piece
0:00:48 behind moving clothing all around the place
0:00:50 and some of the marketing best practices
0:00:52 that you can follow along
0:00:53 if you wanna start something similar.
0:00:56 Now, you know, I love a fun rental business,
0:00:58 but dresses certainly aren’t the only thing
0:01:00 that you can rent out for a profit,
0:01:01 which is why I’ve put together a list
0:01:03 of 25 other unconventional things
0:01:05 that you can make money renting out
0:01:08 that is yours free to download at the show notes
0:01:09 for this episode.
0:01:11 Just follow the link in the episode description
0:01:14 and it’ll get you right over there.
0:01:16 Now, some of my understanding is you started
0:01:20 as a more traditional reseller, like go to the thrift shop,
0:01:23 find the brand name designer type of stuff
0:01:28 that you think is undervalued and flip it by low sell high.
0:01:28 Simple.
0:01:33 So what inspired the shift to the rental business?
0:01:34 – Well, I’m actually still reselling
0:01:36 and it is actually probably still a bigger part
0:01:37 of my business.
0:01:38 – Oh, okay.
0:01:40 – Yeah, so I saw an opportunity for the renting.
0:01:44 So what happened is I’ve had a model agency for 15 years.
0:01:46 That started as another side hustle,
0:01:47 which is a story for another day.
0:01:50 And I was in my agency one day
0:01:53 and a girl came in, one of the models came in
0:01:55 and said she was starting a dress rental business.
0:01:56 And I was like, what’s that?
0:01:57 I didn’t understand.
0:01:58 I was like, what are you talking about?
0:02:01 She’s like, oh yeah, we just put some dresses together.
0:02:04 My friend and I and we’re going to rent them online.
0:02:05 And I thought, okay.
0:02:07 And I just thought they were going to rent them
0:02:11 on Facebook marketplace or D-pop or something like that.
0:02:15 And I looked into it and I realized there’s this whole
0:02:17 industry around dress rentals.
0:02:19 And I thought, oh, I want to try this.
0:02:23 And I was already kind of flipping dresses on the side
0:02:26 and had built a whole business around that as well.
0:02:30 And so I decided I just put up all the dresses I had.
0:02:32 Actually, first I put up two dresses
0:02:36 and that was in October of 2022.
0:02:40 And then one day I was just sitting in my car
0:02:43 at my daughter’s cheer practice and one of them rented
0:02:45 and I got a notification that it had rented.
0:02:47 And I was like, oh my God, I just rented a dress.
0:02:49 But like now what do I do?
0:02:50 I didn’t really understand it.
0:02:52 And I just kind of went all in.
0:02:55 So I kind of worked it out as I went along.
0:02:58 And then I ended up putting all the dresses up then
0:02:59 that I had been flipping.
0:03:01 And it kind of grew from there.
0:03:04 And then I started buying dresses specifically to rent.
0:03:05 So yeah.
0:03:06 – Okay.
0:03:09 I love this, side hustles on side hustles, right?
0:03:10 What am I already doing?
0:03:14 How could I add a new revenue stream to this?
0:03:15 And this is really interesting.
0:03:18 It’s like, well, I’ll have it listed up for sale.
0:03:20 And in the meantime, until it sells,
0:03:22 hey, maybe I can make some revenue.
0:03:24 I can recoup some of that cost on the rental side.
0:03:26 I think that’s really interesting.
0:03:26 – Yeah, exactly.
0:03:29 It’s like a double-dip profit strategy is what I call it.
0:03:33 So basically, you’re making the money from flipping the item.
0:03:36 But in between, you’re also making the money from renting it.
0:03:37 – What happens when somebody wants to buy it
0:03:40 and you’re like, well, I can’t ship it out just yet.
0:03:41 I need to wait for it to get back.
0:03:43 – When it rents, I do take it off
0:03:45 from being available for sale, yeah.
0:03:46 – Oh, okay.
0:03:48 So those first couple, you get that notification.
0:03:51 Hey, this is somebody wanted to rent this thing.
0:03:55 There was a marketplace that had some existing demand
0:03:58 of renters versus you trying to build an audience,
0:04:00 build a following, build a two-sided marketplace.
0:04:02 So where it’s like, hey, it rent from me.
0:04:03 It’s like, no, no, no.
0:04:05 There’s already some existing validation and demand for it.
0:04:06 – Yes, definitely.
0:04:08 And yeah, there’s online sites
0:04:11 where you can rent dresses basically.
0:04:13 So they’re different in every country.
0:04:16 So for us in Australia, there’s a site called The Vault.
0:04:19 A big one in the US and the UK is Byrotation.
0:04:22 So there’s several of these types of websites
0:04:23 and they’re kind of peer-to-peer lending.
0:04:26 So basically you can put up your own wardrobe
0:04:28 or like I do, run it as a business
0:04:30 and rent to other people.
0:04:33 – There was one like bag borrower steal.
0:04:34 Is that one?
0:04:35 Or was that just like for buying handbags?
0:04:37 I don’t know if it was a rental service too.
0:04:39 I’m trying to think of like the left.
0:04:41 – You can rent bags on these sites as well.
0:04:43 – Okay, do you play around in that space or strictly dresses?
0:04:46 – No, I don’t really because their bags
0:04:47 are really expensive to buy.
0:04:50 And I just, because I self-insure all my items,
0:04:53 I just don’t want to play with that.
0:04:54 – Right, right, right.
0:04:58 What’s a sweet spot for cost of acquisition,
0:05:01 like brand style, and there’s a lot of different factors
0:05:04 that might must go into the purchase side of it
0:05:07 to decide, well, what might there be demand for?
0:05:08 – It’s quite nuanced.
0:05:12 So it will depend on, it’s like the intersection
0:05:16 of brand, style, size, all these things
0:05:19 that kind of come together to get a dress that’s in demand.
0:05:23 I would say that as opposed to when I’m reselling,
0:05:26 when I’m renting, it does need to be a fairly recent style,
0:05:29 like within the last 18 months, but definitely,
0:05:32 but usually even within the last six months
0:05:35 is that will be like the most popular styles.
0:05:37 Whereas when I’m reselling, that’s not as relevant.
0:05:38 – Okay.
0:05:40 – And then a lot of it will be like,
0:05:42 did a celebrity wear it?
0:05:45 Is it the color of that season?
0:05:47 You know, is it winter or summer?
0:05:49 I rent a lot to wedding guests.
0:05:52 So a lot of people who are going to weddings
0:05:54 and just are going to wear that item once.
0:05:57 So there’s a lot of that with the sizing.
0:05:58 You do have to look at the market.
0:06:01 So a lot of girls in their early twenties
0:06:02 will get into dress rentals
0:06:05 and they will tend to rent those smaller sizes.
0:06:09 And I’ve found pretty good success with renting
0:06:12 like slightly like mid sizes, I guess it would be called.
0:06:15 So yeah, just slightly larger, not the teeny tiny sizes.
0:06:17 So yeah, but it does depend on the brand too,
0:06:19 because some of those brands do do better
0:06:20 in the really small sizes.
0:06:23 – And you’re still trying to source this stuff secondhand
0:06:26 or are you now comfortable?
0:06:27 So I could buy it off the rack.
0:06:30 I could buy it new to rent.
0:06:32 And then you’re kind of like a car rental business,
0:06:33 like I’m going to rent it out for a year
0:06:34 and then I’m going to resell it.
0:06:38 – Yeah, I would say that mostly I buy at retail now,
0:06:41 but I do use all the strategies to try and get
0:06:43 like a percentage off when I buy it.
0:06:45 So that when I, at the end of the rental,
0:06:50 when I go to flip it, I’m actually making money both ways.
0:06:53 So I’m getting 20% off retail.
0:06:55 I’m renting it, you know, five, 10 times.
0:06:57 And then I’m actually selling it still
0:06:59 for more than I paid for it, even though it’s pre-loved
0:07:03 because it’s such a new and hot and in demand item.
0:07:05 And I’m also using things like the currency arbitrage
0:07:08 and the geographical arbitrage of being in Australia
0:07:11 where I can get, you know, something like a Zimmerman dress
0:07:14 a lot cheaper and sell it to someone in the U.S.
0:07:16 – Yeah, you’re going to be throwing out brand names
0:07:16 that go where?
0:07:18 (laughing)
0:07:19 Like, all right, I’ll take your word for it.
0:07:21 But if you’re in that space, like,
0:07:24 if you know what is hot, what is in style,
0:07:27 then yeah, you can absolutely play around with that.
0:07:29 And so for the rental side is,
0:07:31 and you imagine it’s got to be local,
0:07:33 like you’re not going to ship something halfway
0:07:34 around the world for a rental, are you?
0:07:37 – So the majority of my reselling is actually like,
0:07:40 I sell a lot to the U.S. and the UK
0:07:41 and probably more than Australia.
0:07:44 But with the renting it is, yeah, only in Australia.
0:07:47 So I do it pretty much, all of it is by post.
0:07:50 So I do allow pickups sometimes.
0:07:53 I don’t love people coming to my house
0:07:54 and picking up the items,
0:07:56 but sometimes if it’s a bit slow,
0:07:57 I’ll let people come and pick it up.
0:08:00 But you get the problem that if they will pick it up,
0:08:01 they will be like, oh, what else have you got?
0:08:04 You know, can I try it on and all this type of thing?
0:08:06 And yeah, I don’t like that.
0:08:08 – I’m like, no, no, no, this is the one you ordered.
0:08:09 Here you go.
0:08:11 So inspired to do it.
0:08:13 A model at the modeling agency was like,
0:08:14 hey, I’m getting into this.
0:08:15 You’re like, well, you know,
0:08:17 there might be something else here.
0:08:20 There was some existing, you know, proof of concept, right?
0:08:22 These marketplaces already existed.
0:08:24 And you had the confidence to say,
0:08:27 well, I can add my own listings to this.
0:08:30 Was there a point of, you know, market saturation
0:08:33 if, you know, 10 providers all have the same thing
0:08:34 and like on that busy summer,
0:08:36 I guess it’s so fluid,
0:08:39 like the busy summers, you know, wedding season,
0:08:41 where, you know, different people want different styles
0:08:43 and different sizes at the time.
0:08:45 It’s hard to imagine it being like so overstocked,
0:08:46 overcrowded.
0:08:48 – Yeah, I think that it’s like,
0:08:50 even if 20 people have the same dress,
0:08:54 there could be easily 20 people that want to rent that dress,
0:08:56 especially like if it’s very in demand.
0:08:58 And you just got to do your research
0:09:00 when you’re choosing what dresses you want to rent
0:09:02 because you don’t want to pick a size
0:09:05 that like everyone else is renting that size.
0:09:08 Usually you can pick, find a size that, you know,
0:09:09 only one or two people have
0:09:13 and then just go by a size, that size for yourself.
0:09:14 – Got it.
0:09:16 So it’s okay to have the same style that other people have,
0:09:20 but maybe try and fill in the gaps on some sizes
0:09:22 that you don’t find readily available.
0:09:23 – Or you want to be first to market.
0:09:26 Like you want to be the first one to have it,
0:09:29 get it listed, then you’ll get all the bookings
0:09:30 and you’ll get bookings months in advance.
0:09:31 So it’ll be booked out
0:09:33 before anyone can get their item up.
0:09:36 – Are there any demand tools, like, you know,
0:09:38 number of customer reviews
0:09:40 or do these platforms show you like,
0:09:43 oh, this was, you know, rented out eight times
0:09:45 in the last two months, like something like that to say,
0:09:49 well, okay, clearly I should go buy one of those.
0:09:51 – Yeah, there is, in Australia, there is a site
0:09:53 which I don’t rent on for other reasons,
0:09:56 but it does do those little pop-ups that says,
0:09:57 oh, this dress was just rented.
0:10:01 So you can definitely use that to see what’s being rented,
0:10:03 but it’s not like reselling where on eBay,
0:10:05 you can like look at recent solds
0:10:07 or you can use a product research tool to look up
0:10:10 what’s selling, there’s nothing like that.
0:10:14 Yeah, there’s no, you’ve really, it’s quite like laborious.
0:10:16 You’ve got to go through other people’s calendars
0:10:18 and see what bookings they’ve got
0:10:19 to see how in demand it is.
0:10:23 So yeah, at first you’ve got to do quite a bit of research.
0:10:25 – Got it, and then you can learn the into now.
0:10:27 It’s like any business, once you’re in it,
0:10:29 you can’t see it any other way.
0:10:30 – Definitely.
0:10:32 – But from the outside, okay, I like this little trick
0:10:34 of like, oh, okay, it’s booked up the next three weekends.
0:10:35 It must be in demand.
0:10:37 A friend of ours used to do this for a wedding,
0:10:40 and like you said, like mid-late 20s,
0:10:42 like peak wedding attendance season,
0:10:45 we’re sick of wearing the same thing over and over again,
0:10:46 so she’d try something new.
0:10:48 And like, how much does it cost to rent a dress these days?
0:10:51 – The absolute least amount would be $80,
0:10:52 but I have like four dresses
0:10:55 that are about two and a half grand retail each,
0:10:58 and I rent those for 350 per rental.
0:11:00 And like, you have to pull my jaw off the floor,
0:11:03 like 2,500 for like, I’ve heard of wedding dresses,
0:11:07 yes, costing that much, but just like a regular dress.
0:11:08 This shows you how much I know about fashion.
0:11:10 – It’s really beautiful, Nick.
0:11:12 It’s really beautiful dress.
0:11:13 – I’m sure it is.
0:11:15 The last article of clothing that I rented
0:11:17 was a tuxedo for senior prom.
0:11:20 Like, and it was, I don’t even remember how much it was.
0:11:21 It was probably 80 bucks, but yeah, okay.
0:11:25 So obviously the higher retail price,
0:11:28 the more you can command on the rental side, absolutely.
0:11:33 – And that’s helpful to have a range of $80 to $350 per rental.
0:11:39 Is there a rule, like a percentage of the retail price
0:11:40 or something like that that you go by?
0:11:43 – Yeah, I think like generally you want to get your money back
0:11:45 within three to four rentals,
0:11:48 but if I had have paid full price for like that dress,
0:11:49 it’s worth two and a half thousand dollars.
0:11:51 Obviously I wouldn’t have made that back in four rentals,
0:11:55 but there’s a way to find usually 10, 20% off at least
0:11:57 on full retail when you’re buying something.
0:12:00 So once you’ve done that or you buy it secondhand,
0:12:02 then usually you can get your money back.
0:12:04 Sometimes I’ll get my money back with one rental.
0:12:05 If I’m buying it pre-love,
0:12:08 you know, I might see it pop up on eBay or Depop
0:12:10 and I’ll get my money back in one rental.
0:12:11 – Gotcha.
0:12:14 Do you have like brand name alerts that pin you when,
0:12:17 oh, such and such inventory just got listed.
0:12:18 I need to go and check it out.
0:12:21 – Well, because I’m already reselling as well
0:12:23 and that’s quite a big income stream for me.
0:12:25 I’m sourcing every day, so.
0:12:27 – Constantly on the lookout.
0:12:29 – I’m there like when it comes up, I’m ready.
0:12:30 So yeah, for sure.
0:12:34 But like I do have like saved searches that I look through.
0:12:35 Yeah.
0:12:36 – And I suppose you could just start with,
0:12:39 if you have some existing dress inventory,
0:12:41 I’m thinking of like my wife’s classic addresses in there.
0:12:43 She hadn’t worn in years.
0:12:44 – Yeah.
0:12:45 – And who knows, like, I don’t know.
0:12:47 I have no concept of what the brands are,
0:12:49 but maybe it’s a timeless style
0:12:50 that people would be searching for.
0:12:54 Like is that branded keyword type of search,
0:12:57 like how important is that in your listing
0:12:58 on the marketplaces?
0:13:00 Like are people looking specifically for that brand
0:13:02 or could you describe it more as like a, you know,
0:13:06 a green A line, something, something strapless.
0:13:08 I don’t know, it’s just a keyword, keyword, keyword.
0:13:10 – Yeah, it’s heavily brand dependent.
0:13:12 People go on, they know what they want.
0:13:13 They know what dress they want.
0:13:16 Probably 80% of the time, maybe 90% of the time.
0:13:17 – Okay.
0:13:18 – You know, they’ve seen it come up
0:13:21 in the campaign photos or whatever.
0:13:23 Some celebrities worn it and influencers
0:13:24 put it on their Instagram.
0:13:26 They’re like, I want to wear that dress
0:13:27 and they go looking for it.
0:13:28 So, yeah.
0:13:29 – What brands do you like?
0:13:32 – For us in Australia, and actually a lot of these brands
0:13:35 kind of are the same ones as in the US or UK,
0:13:38 but like the Australian kind of based brands
0:13:41 are like Zimmerman, Age or Arge,
0:13:43 if you like to be fancy in that way.
0:13:46 Orishan is a big one for me.
0:13:49 Alame, Alame is probably the biggest brand that I rent.
0:13:51 It’s only been around a couple of years,
0:13:54 but it’s kind of in that style of Zimmerman as well.
0:13:57 So yeah, they’re the kind of brands, I guess.
0:13:58 – All right.
0:14:00 It’s all foreign to me, but it’s helpful to know.
0:14:02 I mean, you could go on,
0:14:03 I imagine any of these marketplaces
0:14:05 and see where the demand seems to be.
0:14:07 So that makes sense.
0:14:09 – More with Summer in just a moment,
0:14:12 including her rental marketplace listing best practices,
0:14:15 plus some of the logistical considerations
0:14:16 and things that can go wrong
0:14:19 when you’ve got this type of physical inventory business
0:14:20 right after this.
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0:16:26 Aside from the marketplace and maybe on the marketplace,
0:16:28 other listing best practices,
0:16:30 are you modeling the photos?
0:16:32 You’re tapping into people from the modeling agency
0:16:34 to like take these dress photos for you.
0:16:36 Like what goes into a good listing?
0:16:38 How am I going to stand out against everybody else
0:16:39 who’s already been on there?
0:16:41 Yeah, well, it’s really different to race-selling.
0:16:43 So with race-selling, you know,
0:16:47 I am trying to position an item to show its value
0:16:50 by using campaign photos where I can and stock photos
0:16:52 and then using certain photos
0:16:55 to like show that perceived value, I guess.
0:16:58 And with renting, it’s really no one uses their own photos.
0:16:59 They just use stock photos.
0:17:03 So it’s literally just screenshotting three stock photos
0:17:06 from the company’s website and putting it up.
0:17:08 There’s no modeling involved.
0:17:11 My modeling days are long gone at three kids.
0:17:14 So yeah, I’m not going to be modeling any of them close.
0:17:15 Fair enough.
0:17:18 You could probably get like customer pictures back
0:17:20 at some point, I don’t know, but like, that’s not important.
0:17:22 If you’re using Instagram as a rental platform,
0:17:24 which a lot, a lot of people do.
0:17:26 So a lot of people will just rent straight
0:17:28 off people’s Instagram profiles.
0:17:31 Then they will use a lot of like customer photos
0:17:32 and things like that for sure.
0:17:35 So this would be trying to create your own demand,
0:17:37 like build up an influencer profile.
0:17:39 And you know, hey, if you like my style,
0:17:40 you can actually rent this thing.
0:17:42 If you happen to be the same size as me, you can rent it.
0:17:44 No, they’re just rental companies.
0:17:47 So they just say like, you know, XYZ rentals.
0:17:50 And then they’ll go into maybe the Facebook groups online
0:17:52 and say, I’m renting these dresses
0:17:54 if anyone wants to come to my Instagram
0:17:56 and then the customers will just message them.
0:17:58 And then they just facilitate the transaction that way.
0:18:01 And so they’re not paying the rental platforms a commission.
0:18:03 What’s a typical commission fee?
0:18:07 I think it’s like 16.5% is what we pay on the vault.
0:18:10 I assume it’s similar on the other ones internationally.
0:18:13 Yeah, it’s not much for the level of demand
0:18:14 that they had to create the marketing
0:18:16 that they’re doing for you, the transaction,
0:18:18 they’re facilitating.
0:18:19 Yeah, they actually do the majority
0:18:21 of the customer service too.
0:18:23 So yeah, they have customer service people,
0:18:25 everything goes through customer service.
0:18:27 So it does take the burden off a little bit that way.
0:18:31 Is there a strategy in syndicating the listing?
0:18:33 Like if there are multiple platforms,
0:18:36 like, well, I might as well put it on Facebook marketplace
0:18:41 and offer up and we had eBay, like I’m gonna syndicate it.
0:18:43 Or is it like, no, no, no, I wanna focus all my energy
0:18:46 onto this one vault platform, for example.
0:18:48 Yeah, I was using a second platform a lot
0:18:52 when I first started and I did get to like 350 dresses
0:18:54 and I had them on two platforms and things.
0:18:56 I was trying to like not have crossover,
0:18:58 but there definitely was crossover.
0:19:00 And then so people were getting unhappy
0:19:02 because the dress wasn’t coming back in time
0:19:05 from one platform and it was just like getting really messy.
0:19:10 So I decided to ultimately just rent on one platform.
0:19:13 But if, I think if you had a small inventory,
0:19:14 you know, 50 dresses or something,
0:19:17 you could definitely probably manage that a lot more easily.
0:19:20 It was just, I had too many dresses to kind of,
0:19:21 yeah, keep track of everything.
0:19:23 – Yeah, well, there’s your next side hustle
0:19:25 is the inventory management software
0:19:27 for a grass rental.
0:19:28 – Oh my gosh. – Like a very niche software.
0:19:31 Like to manage the listings, like, oh, it got rented out.
0:19:33 I better take it down off of this other platform.
0:19:36 – Yeah, I did create like a notion, you know,
0:19:37 database type thing.
0:19:38 I didn’t have that going,
0:19:41 but I think there’s so much like human element involved.
0:19:42 It’s really hard.
0:19:43 Like if someone’s just like,
0:19:45 “Oh, I just forgot to post the dress back.”
0:19:46 And then you’re just like,
0:19:48 there’s like nothing you can really do about it.
0:19:49 You could charge them late fees,
0:19:52 but you know, you still don’t have the dress
0:19:53 and you need the dress.
0:19:54 – Yeah, yeah, I had that.
0:19:55 I promise that to the next customer.
0:19:57 – Yeah.
0:20:00 – And so there’s an element of logistical challenges.
0:20:02 Anytime you’re moving physical inventory around,
0:20:04 but what have you found here
0:20:06 in terms of sticking it in the mail
0:20:08 and making sure it doesn’t get damaged in transit
0:20:10 and you said self-insured.
0:20:12 So like if it shows up, somebody makes a claim,
0:20:17 like, oh, it was torn or it smelled bad or it didn’t fit.
0:20:19 Like there’s all sorts of things that could go wrong.
0:20:20 – Yeah, there is a lot of things that can go wrong,
0:20:24 especially I’ve noticed a lot more than reselling.
0:20:25 Like there is, yeah,
0:20:27 there’s more things that go wrong with the renting.
0:20:29 I’ve been pretty lucky with the post.
0:20:32 I think I’ve maybe had one thing go missing ever.
0:20:33 So that’s been good.
0:20:36 A lot of these platforms do offer insurance
0:20:41 and you pay $5, $10 per order to have that insurance.
0:20:43 And I did do that early on,
0:20:45 but I found that self-insuring was the way to go
0:20:49 because they make you jump through so many hoops
0:20:51 to claim on that insurance.
0:20:53 They want you to go to two separate dry cleaners
0:20:56 and get stat decks from those two separate dry cleaners.
0:20:58 And then they want you to go to a seamstress
0:21:00 and say, get the stat deck from them
0:21:01 to say that it can’t be fixed.
0:21:04 And then it’s like providing all this evidence
0:21:06 and it just is very time consuming
0:21:09 and it just wasn’t worth it in the end for me.
0:21:12 So I decided to just self-insure.
0:21:16 You get a lot of people who just don’t want to send it back.
0:21:17 They go, oh, but I’ll buy it from you.
0:21:19 And I’ll be like, no, it’s actually not for sale.
0:21:22 I’ve got like 10 rentals coming up on it.
0:21:23 So you can’t have it.
0:21:25 So you get a little bit of that.
0:21:27 – So what happens in that case?
0:21:28 Or what do you do?
0:21:31 I mean, eventually it’s like the late fees at the library,
0:21:34 where I can’t afford to return this book
0:21:36 ’cause I can’t afford to pay the late fee or something.
0:21:38 But at a certain point you just need it back.
0:21:40 – Yeah, well, I guess a lot of girls,
0:21:42 if they really, really want the dress,
0:21:45 they’ll just take the late fees up to the maximum amount
0:21:47 and then they get to keep the dress for like,
0:21:48 because a lot of these dresses
0:21:50 that people want are like completely sold out.
0:21:53 And I think that’s one of the biggest drivers
0:21:55 is that they would buy it, but they can’t.
0:21:57 So they have to rent it.
0:22:00 I did have one case, it was crazy.
0:22:02 I had this girl, it was,
0:22:04 and this was like in the first couple of months
0:22:06 when I started, she rented a dress from me
0:22:08 and she came and picked it up from my house.
0:22:10 And I just like have a hook on my front door.
0:22:12 So I put the dress in a garment bag
0:22:13 and they can just come pick it up.
0:22:16 And she came, picked it up and then four days later,
0:22:18 it was time to bring it back
0:22:20 and the dress didn’t come back.
0:22:22 And like the next day, you know, send her a message,
0:22:23 can you bring it back?
0:22:27 And she goes to me a bit and then I text her
0:22:29 and I’m like, can you bring the dress back?
0:22:32 And she’s said, oh, you know, oh yeah, I’m bring it back.
0:22:34 And then all these excuses started.
0:22:37 And then I got my dad’s terminally ill
0:22:38 and my car broke down
0:22:41 and like all these excuses day after day.
0:22:44 And then I was on a Facebook group one day
0:22:45 for one of the brands
0:22:47 and someone was saying, does anyone know this girl?
0:22:50 And it turns out it was like this whole scam
0:22:52 that she was doing to lots of renters.
0:22:55 And we all got together and tried to take it to the police.
0:22:58 And eventually this took like six months
0:23:00 of going to the police.
0:23:01 She did get charged
0:23:03 because she’d done it to so many people,
0:23:04 like more than 20 people.
0:23:06 – Wow. – But yeah, she said,
0:23:08 I’ll meet you at the police station
0:23:10 and give everyone their dresses back.
0:23:12 And then of course she never showed up.
0:23:14 It was like a whole thing.
0:23:15 So yeah. – Wow.
0:23:18 – There’s some crazies out there, I can tell you that.
0:23:20 – Yeah, anytime you’re dealing with the public,
0:23:23 you open yourself up to just, you know, random stuff.
0:23:25 You never probably would have considered
0:23:27 a couple of years ago, getting started.
0:23:29 But you’re like, oh, I can’t people just be decent
0:23:30 to each other.
0:23:31 I don’t know, bothers me.
0:23:34 But for the most part, send it off in the mail.
0:23:36 They send it back.
0:23:38 Is customer responsible for cleaning
0:23:39 or I’m not gonna introduce that wild card.
0:23:42 I’m gonna go clean it myself when it gets back.
0:23:43 – So the platforms like to say
0:23:45 that you have to dry clean everything,
0:23:47 but I learnt pretty fast
0:23:49 that that was gonna eat a lot into my profit margin.
0:23:53 So I probably dry clean about 20% of the clothes
0:23:55 because they can only be dry cleaned.
0:23:57 And that’s not by what’s on the tag
0:23:58 because most clothes will say
0:23:59 that they can only be dry cleaned.
0:24:01 But really there’s probably not that many
0:24:03 that actually have to be dry cleaned.
0:24:06 But that has come into my sourcing more and more now
0:24:08 is that I try to source items
0:24:10 that can just be put in the washing machine
0:24:11 and hung out to dry.
0:24:14 I don’t like to get things that need, you know,
0:24:16 very specific dry cleaning anymore.
0:24:18 No matter how much, you know, I could make,
0:24:19 it’s just not worth the effort.
0:24:22 – Yeah, ’cause they have to be ironed afterwards.
0:24:24 You have a team member who comes over and like irons this stuff.
0:24:25 That’s like my least favorite activity.
0:24:27 – I iron it, it’s not too bad.
0:24:30 It’s like I said, like some of the stuff
0:24:32 that’s dry cleaned obviously comes all ready to go.
0:24:35 And then yeah, it’s more just like the linen pieces.
0:24:36 And I’ll just give them a quick iron.
0:24:39 But what I don’t, I’m not like pedantic about it
0:24:41 because ultimately you’re putting it in the post
0:24:44 and it’s gonna get crushed on the way anyway.
0:24:44 – Sure, sure.
0:24:46 – So you’re just giving it a quick, you know,
0:24:47 just so it looks nice.
0:24:49 But the customer’s gonna iron or steam it
0:24:50 when it gets to them anyway.
0:24:51 So yeah.
0:24:52 – Sure, okay.
0:24:55 Now with a couple hundred of these garments coming in
0:24:57 and going out at any given time,
0:24:59 and I imagine there’s some seasonality to it,
0:25:02 but like any tools or tech or inventory management system,
0:25:06 complex spreadsheet or account like you mentioned
0:25:08 the notion template, what’s what’s going on
0:25:09 on the trying to figure out, in my mind,
0:25:11 it might be weeks before I even noticed
0:25:12 that something hasn’t gotten returned.
0:25:14 But like it seems like you gotta be on top of it.
0:25:15 ‘Cause like, oh shoot,
0:25:16 I owe this to another customer next week.
0:25:17 – Yeah, definitely.
0:25:20 Like when I had 350 dresses, I did employ someone.
0:25:22 Like I just had like an assistant
0:25:25 and she was ticking off dresses as they come in.
0:25:27 We tried Notion, we tried spreadsheets.
0:25:28 It’s really, it’s really, really hard
0:25:30 when the inventory gets big.
0:25:32 It’s really hard to keep track of.
0:25:35 But now that I have around 200 dresses,
0:25:38 it’s actually not too difficult to keep track of.
0:25:40 I think you just, it’s like,
0:25:42 I guess if you’re a teacher and you know your students,
0:25:45 it’s like, I know my dresses, I know what’s missing.
0:25:46 I’m like, hey, that dress is missing.
0:25:47 Where is that dress?
0:25:51 – I’m not super like rigid in like ticking things off
0:25:52 and that I probably should be.
0:25:54 But usually you find out you don’t have it
0:25:56 if it needs to go back out again too.
0:25:58 And you’re like, oh, where is that dress?
0:26:01 – And I see some of them stored behind you
0:26:04 in the video closet space, spare bedroom space
0:26:06 that where they’re being stored.
0:26:09 – Yeah, this is a converted double garage that I converted.
0:26:12 This was my office for the model agency.
0:26:16 And now it’s my reselling rental room, I guess.
0:26:19 So I have a wall to take my photos for the reselling
0:26:21 and then, yeah, just keep everything in here on rack.
0:26:25 So you could easily keep it just in a small bedroom, though.
0:26:28 Probably, yeah, with a closet would be pretty hard
0:26:29 with 200 dresses.
0:26:33 Maybe if you had like 70 or 80, you could keep it in a closet.
0:26:35 – Do you find yourself buying multiple sizes
0:26:38 of the same style or is it like, I’m gonna buy one.
0:26:39 I’m gonna see what the demand is like.
0:26:42 And if it hits and I’m going really wide,
0:26:45 like I want the full catalog of this particular style.
0:26:46 I want to be able to serve all different sizes.
0:26:49 – Yeah, I definitely will buy all the sizes
0:26:53 because generally the thing is that they will sell out.
0:26:56 Like I’ve had dresses that sell out within 20 minutes.
0:26:57 So I have to be on the drop.
0:27:00 And then it’s a matter of if I didn’t get everything,
0:27:03 then I have to try and pick it up in the resell market.
0:27:06 If it’s, yeah, a really popular style.
0:27:08 – And then the biggest risk is
0:27:10 the demand doesn’t materialize.
0:27:11 Like it doesn’t end up renting out
0:27:13 as often as you thought it would
0:27:14 or for as much as you thought it would.
0:27:17 And now you’re kind of like, well, I’m sitting on this
0:27:19 and I’ve got to go and try and unload it,
0:27:22 try and resell it to recoup the initial investment.
0:27:23 – Yeah, but that’s why it’s really important
0:27:25 to try and get it, get those coupons
0:27:27 to like find things for 20% off.
0:27:30 Because then it’s super easy just to offload it.
0:27:32 Anyone will buy something that’s sold out
0:27:35 for like if 10% off even.
0:27:37 Like I said, then usually I can take,
0:27:40 if that item hasn’t rented, I can list it on eBay.
0:27:43 And then I’ll probably sell it to someone in the US or UK
0:27:45 and probably make $200 profit on it.
0:27:46 So the downside isn’t too bad.
0:27:49 Like you would think that you’d be stuck with stuff,
0:27:52 but the biggest downside is probably the damage
0:27:53 to the dresses.
0:27:55 And then obviously it becomes quite hard to sell them
0:27:57 once they’re very damaged.
0:27:58 – Oh, okay.
0:27:59 So they come back damaged.
0:28:01 Like is there a damage deposit?
0:28:03 Like if I’m renting out a place on Airbnb,
0:28:05 like, okay, I got to put down the security deposit
0:28:07 or you know, something like that.
0:28:09 – You could definitely request security deposits
0:28:11 and the platforms like allow you to request them,
0:28:14 but you’re going to severely hinder your rentals
0:28:16 because people are just going to be like,
0:28:18 no, I don’t want to pay a deposit.
0:28:19 You can if you want,
0:28:21 but you won’t be renting that many dresses probably.
0:28:22 – Okay.
0:28:24 And so it’s just kind of, you know, what happens
0:28:25 if you get it back and be like,
0:28:28 dude, there’s a huge tear down the side.
0:28:30 Did you expect me not to notice that?
0:28:31 – Yeah.
0:28:32 – What do you want?
0:28:33 Or are people more upfront and be like,
0:28:34 oh, I’m so sorry.
0:28:36 You know, I got it snagged on.
0:28:37 – You get a bit of both.
0:28:40 So you get, you do get people that are like,
0:28:41 oh, I’m so sorry.
0:28:43 Like I broke the zip, I’ll send you money.
0:28:46 I’ve even had people put cash in with the dress.
0:28:47 So I’m so sorry.
0:28:50 Like here’s the money to fix the zip or whatever.
0:28:52 So you do get some really good people,
0:28:55 but then obviously you get some special people
0:28:58 who send it back and it looks like, you know,
0:29:01 they’ve rolled around in the mud, jumped in the fire,
0:29:02 howled at the moon.
0:29:05 Like it looks really bad.
0:29:08 Like it’s just totally wrecked.
0:29:10 And you’re like, what, like you try to,
0:29:12 I did have a game on Instagram for a while
0:29:15 with my followers, like guess what happened in this dress?
0:29:18 Because like I’d show the stains and like it was really funny.
0:29:21 But yeah, sometimes they just come back destroyed.
0:29:24 And so, I mean, if they’re completely destroyed
0:29:26 and the person is just ghosting me,
0:29:29 then that’s where I’m basically self-insured.
0:29:31 So I just have to cop it on the chin.
0:29:33 The platforms will follow up to a degree.
0:29:35 They’ll say, you know, can you pay?
0:29:38 But ultimately they don’t have to pay.
0:29:41 Like I would have to, you know, file a police report
0:29:43 or something to try and get them to pay.
0:29:45 Or I think you could take it to small claims.
0:29:48 I do see people, you know, those girls in their 20s,
0:29:52 they get on the Facebook groups and start ranting
0:29:53 and saying that they’re going to take things
0:29:55 to small claims court or things like that.
0:29:57 I just too old for that stuff.
0:30:00 So I’m just like, whatever.
0:30:02 And yeah, sometimes you can sell stuff with damage.
0:30:04 You just disclose the damage.
0:30:06 You say, look, the hems torn,
0:30:09 but you can easily, you know, get a seamstress to redo it.
0:30:11 I did have a seamstress kind of on tap for a while
0:30:13 that I was taking stuff to.
0:30:16 But I think, again, it’s just like a time thing.
0:30:18 It’s just not really worth it for me.
0:30:20 – Okay. Yeah, it’s kind of at a certain point,
0:30:24 it just becomes, you know, a loss, you know, a percent loss.
0:30:25 – Yeah. – Like stores expect
0:30:27 some level of shoplifting, unfortunately.
0:30:28 – Yeah, exactly. – Like it’s just,
0:30:29 it’s a cost to do in business.
0:30:32 And, you know, hopefully you’re diversified enough
0:30:33 in terms of transaction volume
0:30:36 that a couple of bad things that happen
0:30:37 are just kind of par for the course.
0:30:38 – Yeah, exactly.
0:30:39 It’s exactly like shoplifting.
0:30:41 That’s how I always explain it.
0:30:44 You know, you’ve got to expect that some bad things happen,
0:30:46 but for the most part, it’s pretty good.
0:30:47 – More with summer in just a moment,
0:30:50 including when to exit out of a dress to sell it
0:30:51 rather than keep renting it.
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0:33:28 – Okay, like if you have something that’s really hot,
0:33:30 like, oh, it’s been rented a bunch of times.
0:33:32 Is there a rule of thumb?
0:33:33 Okay, it’s getting worn out.
0:33:35 Like I gotta resell it or like I have to,
0:33:36 let’s ride this cash cow.
0:33:38 Let’s see how many more times we can rent it.
0:33:43 Like is there a metric or some sort of rule of thumb there
0:33:44 for like, when is it time to flip
0:33:47 and get out before it gets too cold?
0:33:49 – I think it just comes down to experience.
0:33:50 I don’t think there’s like a spreadsheet
0:33:52 or I could say if it’s rented 10 times.
0:33:54 It will depend on the material.
0:33:56 So certain materials will hold up better than others.
0:33:59 So something that silk probably doesn’t hold up usually
0:34:02 that well as opposed to something that’s like 100% linen
0:34:04 will usually go quite well.
0:34:06 You know, it will depend on how much it’s fading and stuff.
0:34:10 I think that a lot of the time, like when I first started,
0:34:14 I was really concerned about it looking pristine.
0:34:16 And I think what I’ve come to realize
0:34:19 is that people expect it to be secondhand.
0:34:21 They know it’s a secondhand dress.
0:34:23 They know other people have worn it.
0:34:28 So it doesn’t really matter if like, it’s clearly been worn.
0:34:31 Like obviously they don’t want a hole in it or whatever.
0:34:36 But like, yeah, the expectations aren’t too bad, I think.
0:34:38 I mean, you get the odd one who’s like,
0:34:40 this should be brand new, why isn’t this brand new?
0:34:43 But yeah, people do expect that it’s been worn.
0:34:44 Yeah, that’s fair.
0:34:47 It’s like getting in a rental car or even vacation rental,
0:34:49 like you know that other people have been in there.
0:34:50 Okay, that’s fair.
0:34:52 – So when to flip it, I guess if, yeah,
0:34:55 if it just starts to look really tired and old,
0:34:56 then I’ll probably just flip it.
0:34:58 It might come down to like just getting
0:35:00 to the end of the season.
0:35:03 So for us, it’s quite busy from kind of September
0:35:05 till April.
0:35:08 And so maybe, you know, I would start getting rid of stuff
0:35:11 towards April, May, June and getting that cash in
0:35:14 ready to buy new stuff for the next season.
0:35:15 – In the next years, okay.
0:35:19 – So it could come down to cash flow or yeah, just demand.
0:35:21 Like I can see that, yeah, people just,
0:35:24 it’s just not in demand and just becomes a math equation.
0:35:27 Then like, obviously when you’re buying a dress,
0:35:29 you’re buying cash flow basically.
0:35:33 So the dress, just like a house, the dress is the asset
0:35:35 and I’m buying the cash flow from the rentals.
0:35:38 And so I’ve got to kind of make a mathematical decision
0:35:41 is, you know, the money best sitting in the dress
0:35:44 or is it best moving it on and buying something
0:35:47 that’s kind of yielding a better rental?
0:35:50 – Yeah, I mean, what an interesting cash flowing asset.
0:35:53 Something I never would have considered, but yeah,
0:35:57 here are these marketplaces that need people like you
0:35:59 and like Summer to fill the inventory here.
0:36:01 So that’s super interesting.
0:36:03 Do you ever get people, you know, if you send it out,
0:36:05 they rented this certain size and they’re like,
0:36:07 oh shoot, it doesn’t fit and the wedding’s tomorrow.
0:36:09 Like, sorry, I can’t help you.
0:36:10 Like what happens?
0:36:11 – Yeah, you definitely get that.
0:36:14 People always think they’re skinnier than they are.
0:36:16 So it’s always, usually it’s too small.
0:36:18 And yeah, sometimes people will hit you up
0:36:20 and say, well, can I get a refund?
0:36:21 And I’ll be like, no,
0:36:24 because you essentially did the whole rental,
0:36:25 like I posted it to you.
0:36:28 Sometimes I will give them back the cleaning fee
0:36:29 if they haven’t worn it, I will say like,
0:36:33 if you return it on one, I can refund you the cleaning fee,
0:36:36 just, you know, as for goodwill, I guess.
0:36:38 But ultimately they have taken it out of the rental pool
0:36:40 for that amount of time.
0:36:43 So I do need to be compensated for that.
0:36:46 A lot of people will try and be tricky.
0:36:47 And like, well, first of all,
0:36:49 they’ll ask you for a try on service.
0:36:52 So they’ll say, oh, I’ll pay to just post it to me
0:36:53 so I can try it on.
0:36:56 And then I’ll, you know, I’ll send it back.
0:36:57 So they just want to pay for the post.
0:37:00 They’re like, oh, I won’t wear it, which is a bit silly.
0:37:03 And then sometimes people try and trick you into that.
0:37:04 So they’ll book a rental
0:37:07 and then they’ll try and do the, oh, it doesn’t fit me.
0:37:10 And I guess some newbies might be like, oh, that’s okay.
0:37:12 Just post it back and we’ll give you full refund.
0:37:14 And I guess with time you learn
0:37:18 that you’ve been taken advantage of a little bit.
0:37:19 – That’s code for I’m gonna wear it all weekend
0:37:21 and then tell you it didn’t fit.
0:37:22 – Exactly.
0:37:26 – Yeah, yeah, so many ins and outs in this industry.
0:37:26 – Yeah.
0:37:27 – It’s kind of crazy.
0:37:29 So I’m picturing a day in the life,
0:37:32 especially during busy season, checking inventory levels,
0:37:35 like managing the in and out of receiving stuff in,
0:37:39 taking it to the cleaners, dry cleaning it, ironing,
0:37:42 and then sending out kind of the next weekend’s batch
0:37:45 of inventory, like anything else that’s going into it
0:37:47 on a day-to-day basis.
0:37:48 It sounds like on the marketing side,
0:37:52 it’s primarily just putting your buy button up for sale
0:37:54 on these existing marketplaces,
0:37:57 like, you know, tapping into their traffic.
0:37:59 – Yeah, the listings are like so easy,
0:38:01 it’s so much easier than like eBay,
0:38:03 like an eBay listing for reselling is,
0:38:04 there’s a lot of thought.
0:38:07 I’ve even created a chat GPT bot
0:38:09 to like do my eBay listings really well.
0:38:12 Like there’s a lot that goes into it with the rentee.
0:38:12 It’s not like that.
0:38:16 I just kind of chuck up whatever is on the website
0:38:18 and it takes like two seconds.
0:38:21 So yeah, like a day in the life is basically
0:38:24 the postman comes and drops off packages at my door
0:38:26 at about eight o’clock in the morning.
0:38:28 And then I just bring them inside
0:38:29 so no one else steal them.
0:38:32 And then I can, you know, put the stuff
0:38:32 in the washing machine.
0:38:34 – How funny, do you think they’re like, yeah,
0:38:35 this woman gets a lot of mail.
0:38:36 What’s going on here?
0:38:38 – Yeah, they’re like, whoa,
0:38:40 because I have the stuff for reselling coming too.
0:38:42 So I get a lot of packages.
0:38:44 But yeah, the postie and I are on good terms.
0:38:48 He knows where the side gate is if the big gate’s closed.
0:38:50 So yeah, he just comes and drops it off
0:38:53 and I just will open up the packages
0:38:56 and then put whatever needs to be put in the washing machine
0:38:58 and then, you know, section out what needs to go
0:38:59 the dry cleaner.
0:39:01 And that’s pretty much it in the mornings.
0:39:03 And then I’ll just maybe at about three o’clock
0:39:05 I’ll start packaging up.
0:39:09 It takes me maybe an hour to do seven or eight dresses
0:39:10 if I need to do that many
0:39:13 and take them to the post office around the corner.
0:39:15 I actually could have the postie come and pick it up
0:39:17 but we just take it to our post office.
0:39:19 And then that’s it.
0:39:21 Drop the other stuff off at the dry cleaner.
0:39:23 Yeah, it’s not time intensive.
0:39:25 It’s not a time intensive.
0:39:29 It’s more of a capital intensive business, I would say.
0:39:32 But there are ways to, you can start with no money down
0:39:35 which is, you know, something that I teach to my students.
0:39:37 So basically, if you wanna get started,
0:39:38 the two ways you can get started
0:39:41 without putting a lot of money into inventory
0:39:44 is you can work on a consignment model.
0:39:46 So you can go to all your friends and family
0:39:48 and say, who’s got dresses?
0:39:49 They want me to rent.
0:39:51 – Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I like it.
0:39:53 – Yeah, you could get started that way
0:39:56 or the other way is, and this might be a bit controversial
0:39:59 but you can buy things on, say if you’re in the US,
0:40:02 you could buy things on somewhere like Revolve
0:40:05 that have, you know, change of mind return policies.
0:40:07 And you could see, put it up for rent, see if it rents.
0:40:09 If it doesn’t rent, you send it back
0:40:12 and before you have to pay your credit card.
0:40:15 And then you can get a feel for what rents
0:40:17 and at least then if you have gotten that piece
0:40:19 that rents you’ve already recouped, you know,
0:40:22 a third of your investment straight off the bat
0:40:24 before you’ve actually had to pay any money out.
0:40:27 – Okay, and imagine a lot of stores have that similar,
0:40:30 even if it’s a 30 day return policy,
0:40:32 it’s gonna give you a low risk way
0:40:35 to validate the demand or test the demand, I don’t know.
0:40:37 – Yeah, or if you just wanna try it out, yeah.
0:40:38 – That’s fair.
0:40:39 Well, we’ve got the rental business,
0:40:41 you’ve got the profit collective,
0:40:43 you’ve got the reselling business.
0:40:44 What’s next for you?
0:40:45 What are you excited about this year?
0:40:48 – So I put out courses on the reselling.
0:40:50 So I have a course called Pre-Lover Profit
0:40:52 and then I have the course on the rentals
0:40:53 called Rental Riches.
0:40:54 And that’s kind of like blowing up
0:40:57 to the point where I actually closed my model agency
0:40:59 after 15 years at the end of June
0:41:02 because it just kind of blew up pretty big.
0:41:04 So yeah, I’m just gonna keep teaching women
0:41:06 how to do what I’m doing basically,
0:41:08 or men if they wanna learn.
0:41:09 – I never asked like, is there a market
0:41:12 for like I’m gonna rent out a suit
0:41:14 or like men will be the equivalent on the men’s side?
0:41:15 – I think there would be.
0:41:17 Like you can definitely, even with the women’s,
0:41:20 you can rent out jackets or coats and things like that.
0:41:22 It’s not a massive market in Australia
0:41:24 because it’s just too hot here basically.
0:41:25 – Okay, okay.
0:41:26 – There’s not many parts of the country
0:41:28 that are like cold enough for coats all the time.
0:41:30 Like there is elsewhere,
0:41:33 but I’m sure that you probably could do things
0:41:34 with men’s stuff.
0:41:36 I don’t know, are you gonna do it, Nick?
0:41:38 Are you gonna put your clothes up?
0:41:42 – I love this like idea of getting paid over and over again
0:41:43 from something that you do once.
0:41:45 I could not start in my closet
0:41:48 ’cause it’s been decades since I got any new clothes,
0:41:50 but it’s such an interesting one.
0:41:52 And it’s like, if you’re gonna go after the men’s market,
0:41:54 maybe you’re gonna be a big player
0:41:57 if there’s no existing supply base there
0:42:00 or there’s more people doing it on the dress rental side.
0:42:02 It’s more established, it’s more of a thing.
0:42:03 – It’s really interesting to think about it
0:42:05 as like an asset class in general
0:42:07 because people might think that I’m crazy
0:42:10 because I did put a hundred grand into dresses.
0:42:12 Like in that first year, people were like,
0:42:13 what are you doing?
0:42:15 Like, and I said, well,
0:42:18 but it’s an asset that I can resell afterwards
0:42:21 for the same price I paid for it, if not more.
0:42:22 And it’s giving me cash flow in between
0:42:26 for pretty, you know, a low amount of work.
0:42:28 So I think it’s really interesting to think about
0:42:30 and something I’ve been talking about on Instagram
0:42:32 a lot this week with my followers was like,
0:42:34 how you could, you know, in Australia,
0:42:37 it’s all about, oh, no one can afford to buy a house.
0:42:39 You know, houses are so expensive here
0:42:42 and people, you know, might be able to save say 30 grand
0:42:43 for a house deposit,
0:42:45 but that’s not enough for a house deposit.
0:42:46 You need 200 grand here
0:42:48 ’cause like the average house price is a million dollars now.
0:42:51 And I was like, well, what if you, you know,
0:42:54 took that 30 grand invested it into some dresses,
0:42:55 took that rental income
0:42:57 and then the reselling income over the course of two years
0:43:00 and you could turn it into 200 grand quite easily.
0:43:02 So it’s something to think about.
0:43:05 – Yeah, dresses as an asset class, like you said,
0:43:06 it is capital intensive,
0:43:09 but you’ve kind of protected your downside.
0:43:12 Like, oh, I’m hopefully gonna cash flow in the near term.
0:43:14 And if I bought well enough upfront,
0:43:16 I can recoup sometimes even better
0:43:18 than my acquisition cost on the back end,
0:43:21 you know, despite the wear and tear and depreciation.
0:43:22 Like, it’s really interesting,
0:43:23 something that we’d never have when you,
0:43:26 your email came across as like, what a random,
0:43:29 so yeah, I get a kick out of businesses like this for sure.
0:43:32 So follow along, summer is at the Profit Collective.
0:43:34 You can find her on Instagram over there.
0:43:38 And if you hit up the profitcollective.co/rookie,
0:43:40 you can join her free masterclass
0:43:44 on the three biggest mistakes that newbies are making
0:43:47 when starting a pre-loved clothing business.
0:43:51 Again, the profitcollective.co/rookie for that.
0:43:53 Summer, this has been awesome.
0:43:54 Thank you for joining me.
0:43:56 I always get a kick out of stuff like this.
0:43:56 – No problem.
0:43:58 – Let’s wrap this thing up
0:44:00 with your number one tip for side hustle nation.
0:44:02 – If you think you can or you think you can’t,
0:44:03 you’re right.
0:44:06 So I get a lot of people say that they,
0:44:08 all the reasons they can’t start their side hustles.
0:44:10 So they can’t start their side hustle
0:44:12 because of where they live or, you know,
0:44:14 how much money they have or something like that.
0:44:16 And whether they think they can or they can’t,
0:44:18 they’re right because I had a girl
0:44:21 who messaged me just yesterday, actually,
0:44:23 and she said, “Oh, I would love to do what you do,
0:44:26 but I live in Italy and it’s a really small market here.”
0:44:28 And so I looked up the population of Australia in Italy
0:44:30 and I said, “Actually, you have doubled
0:44:33 the population of Australia.”
0:44:34 So that’s not an excuse.
0:44:35 So I think a lot of–
0:44:36 – Smaller geographically, yeah.
0:44:39 – Yeah, I’m like, so that can’t be an excuse.
0:44:42 So a lot of people think that, you know,
0:44:43 that I’m special because I live in Australia
0:44:45 or because I had a model agency
0:44:46 and I have a background in fashion and all these things.
0:44:49 But I think that all these things can be learned.
0:44:52 And yeah, you just have to have the right attitude
0:44:53 that you can make it work for you.
0:44:55 – Yeah, what an interesting business.
0:44:57 Whether you think you can or you think you can’t,
0:45:01 you are right, a little Henry Ford wisdom from that,
0:45:03 which was my one and only corporate job working for Ford.
0:45:04 – Oh, there you go.
0:45:06 – Obviously long after Henry passed,
0:45:08 but whether you think you can or think you can’t,
0:45:09 you are right.
0:45:12 Make sure to grab your free listener only bonus
0:45:13 for this week.
0:45:14 We’ve been talking about dresses,
0:45:16 but it’s just one of a lot of different things
0:45:17 that you can rent out for a profit.
0:45:21 So the listener bonus is 25 other unconventional rental
0:45:23 ideas that you might be able to borrow
0:45:25 some of Summers Playbook for.
0:45:28 And a lot of these different assets and products
0:45:30 already have these preexisting marketplaces
0:45:32 that you can tap into.
0:45:34 They’ve already kind of validated the demand
0:45:35 and gotten people used to saying,
0:45:37 well, hey, this is something that I don’t have to buy out,
0:45:39 this is something that I can rent
0:45:41 for just the time period that I need it.
0:45:43 So make sure to grab that.
0:45:46 It’s a free PDF download at the show notes for this episode.
0:45:49 You can follow the link in the episode description
0:45:50 and I’ll get you right over there.
0:45:53 Now, another recent rental episode
0:45:55 that we did, another example of this
0:45:58 was Gary Graywell’s moving box rental service
0:45:59 like renting out plastic bins.
0:46:02 Definitely an interesting one, episode 635.
0:46:05 He ended up partnering with a local moving company
0:46:08 to handle the storage and the delivery logistics
0:46:10 and was like, let’s take up a lot of space
0:46:11 if I got 50 or 100 of these things.
0:46:13 So you don’t have to scroll too far in the archives
0:46:15 to find that one and get 635.
0:46:18 And then another one from a year, year and a half ago
0:46:24 is 564 with Lenny Tim on his mobility scooter rental business.
0:46:27 He’s doing this in LA and yeah,
0:46:28 I think he had a fleet of six or seven of these
0:46:31 and he would deliver them to nearby hotels.
0:46:34 Like mostly for, you know, people, travelers, tourists,
0:46:35 people coming into LA from out of town,
0:46:38 like it doesn’t make sense to bring my own mobility scooter.
0:46:40 So I got a rent one while I’m in town
0:46:43 and he was making a few grand a month doing that on the side.
0:46:48 So lots of different things that you might be able to rent out
0:46:49 and you just start to notice these things
0:46:51 as you go to back to day to day.
0:46:53 And like, oh, what are those things
0:46:55 that are maybe a little more expensive
0:46:56 than you’d like to pay for something?
0:46:59 How many times are we really going to use that thing?
0:47:02 And dresses can check that box for those weddings
0:47:02 or those one-off events.
0:47:04 But Summer, thanks so much for sharing your insight.
0:47:05 Big thanks to our sponsors
0:47:08 for helping make this content free for everyone.
0:47:10 You can hit up sidehustlenation.com/deals
0:47:13 for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place.
0:47:15 Thank you for supporting the advertisers
0:47:16 that support the show.
0:47:18 That is it for me.
0:47:19 Thank you so much for tuning in.
0:47:20 If you find a value in the show,
0:47:22 the greatest compliment is to share it with a friend.
0:47:26 So fire off a text message to that fashionable friend of yours
0:47:28 and say, “Hey, have you ever thought about this?
0:47:29 Check this one out.”
0:47:31 Until next time, let’s go out there and make something happen
0:47:34 and I’ll catch you in the next edition of The Side Hustle Show.