The One with the Flannel Shirts

You know that ice breaker where you have to say an interesting fact about yourself? For the longest time I really hated that because I could never think of a sufficiently interesting fact about myself. But the other day it hit me - my interesting fact? Last year I made over $3000 in one month from selling old flannel shirts on Etsy.

Yeah, you read that right. Old. Flannel. Shirts.

For those who don't know, Etsy is an online marketplace where vendors can sell anything handmade or anything vintage - 20 years old or older. A lot of people make livings selling things on Etsy. And I have always been really interested in vintage things, whether it be clothes or knick knacks or whatever else.

In May of 2015 I created an Etsy shop and listed a few odds and ends I already had that were considered antique or vintage. I found things at thrift shops and antique stores and listed them and I sold a few things here and there but never saw a lot of success.

In August, on a whim, I posted a listing for a "mystery vintage flannel shirt" as I'd seen a lot of people selling similar things. That day I got a few orders, which really surprised me, so I took the time to update the listing and make it nicer.

Over the next month, I sold 167 flannel shirts and made over $3000 from this alone. But it was absolutely insane - see, I had no idea that it would be as popular as it was, so I didn't have the flannel shirts before I sold them. I was positive that I'd be able to find whatever I needed at thrift stores. When people ordered, I asked them what size and color they wanted and then would purchase that.

But since so many orders flooded in, it became a mad dash to purchase these shirts and ship them out. I had my entire family helping me, and I even had to take a few days off of work to go to thrift stores out of town to find the perfect vintage flannel shirts. In one day, I spent nearly $200 buying flannel shirts from a Salvation Army in Midland.

This was some of the aftermath of that shopping spree:

At one point my mom came over for the weekend and helped me package nearly 50 orders, pictured below. And that was my biggest week, clocking in at 57 orders:

 It became so overwhelming that I eventually closed the listing at the end of the month and took a break. It was INSANE but at the end of the month I'd earned enough money to buy the new computer I desperately needed and pay off the rest of my tuition, so all in all it went well.

But I never ever want to do that again, except maybe if it was my full time job and not something else I had to balance in between an actual job and a full course load. During that month I probably spent like a solid 24 hours altogether just waiting in line at the post office.