The Top 5 Reasons Everyone's Quitting Reselling + My Indie Business Dilemmas

I have friends trying to sell all of their merchandise and move out of their antique mall booths and/or shutting down their online shops. I've received several e-mails from others doing the same, asking me for advice on what to do through this process, or asking me what I'm doing with my own reselling business. Am I quitting reselling for good? Yes and no.

My antique mall booth before: a quick shot before I got to worth and re-arranged the hell out of it. It currently holds nearly all of my stock, soon to hold all of it! My sign was sponsored by Build a Sign.

I have taken a long break from thrifting because my apartment was filled beyond a level I found comfortable and I couldn't do it anymore. It was starting to feel like I was obligated to continue to buybuybuy to keep up with my Monday thrift haul posts, which was definitely the wrong reason to keep stressing out my living situation. I had to be proactive, stop, step back and evaluate. I need a fresh start, once I've sold off a lot of my current merchandise I'll go back to thrifting with a fresh approach and I'm excited to add much more handmade/crafts/art to the mix! My antique mall booth and online shop are going to stay open, and I'm glad I finally put my foot down and stopped feeling bad about potentially not pleasing others to save my sanity!

1. You have to constantly acquire merchandise and it's torture for the minimalist-minded.

You cannot stop acquiring in retail. And like I wrote before, thrifting is not a substitute for materialism. It's just a cheaper way to fulfill the primitive reptile-like part of our brain that always craves more. Which leads to the next problem...

2. This is a difficult job to do without a dedicated, organized, detailed storage system.

I'm always going crazy trying to find the best way to organize my merchandise in my shared 2-bedroom apartment. I've filled my pantry, kitchen cabinet, part of my bedroom closet, and an expedit unit from IKEA all at once. It always gets better but the process is frustrating, it's just not something my brain likes for some reason. It's strange because I adore organizing, but organizing my reselling merchandise makes me angry and twitchy. Part of it is because...

3. Sometimes merchandise will sit for months and months.

Moving the same merchandise around for months is soul-crushing. You get tired of seeing the same-old all the time. It's very uninspiring for an artist. We need fresh stimulation to innovate.

4. It's just harder to resell now.

Don't get me wrong, I still believe with hard work you can sell anything for any amount of money. It's up to you as the business owner to create the need. That said, there was an ease that came with selling that just isn't here anymore. You really have to hustle, promote, and work hard because of reproductions, increase competition, and less buyers.

5. Reselling requires a lot of physical and mental labor. And time.

A big thing that wears me out with reselling was moving the same boxes of merchandise up-and-down my 34 steps and out the door to my car across the street and then to-and-fro from my antique mall and/or local sales over...and over...and over again! You're mentally exhausted from setting up the same things and physically exhausted from the car being stuffed to the brim with boxes. But the mental exhaustion of it all was much worse.

Let's not forget the hours of labor involved in finding items (driving, the actual hunting, lugging it upstairs), cleaning, photographing, editing photos, listing, taking inventory, storing, transporting to shops, packing, shipping! Hours upon hours of work.

But wait, there's more: So there's all of the facts above and that fact that for many of us, reselling IS a full time job but it's not our only job.

I've reduced enough of my merchandise to stuff my antique mall booth with all of merchandise. Having it all out of my home clears my mind enormously and the break will help me write/edit my content the way I want to. Blogging is my first love and I'm excited to work as hard as possible on it again and get my brain mess together for future fun, creative projects!

So Spill, Reseller and Indie Biz Buddies: Are you thinking of quitting? Taking a long break? Having problems with selling or writing? We all get there at one time or another. I was inspired to write this post because of the amount of e-mails I'm getting from fellow re-sellers quitting. It's harder now, but it's not impossible.

Daily thrifting updates, information, & Inspiration: Follow Thrift Core on Twitter and Facebook.