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My wife has a website[0] selling vintage items to Japan that she finds in flea markets, eBay, classifieds, charity shops etc. Mostly fabrics and kitchen stuff r

My wife has a website[0] selling vintage items to Japan that she finds in flea markets, eBay, classifieds, charity shops etc. Mostly fabrics and kitchen stuff rather than fashion items though. Pretty good profit margins on each item, but it's very labor-intensive. Every item is unique, so it takes time to takes photos, upload, write a description ... Once it's sold, most of this effort is gone and you need to move on to the next item. In that sense, I imagine teenagers might have time and energy for this kind of sales process. The big money is made by those online portals and apps, rather than the sellers. [0] https://www.frau-vintage.com https://www.frau-vintage.com

sdoering 9y ago
Probably an effect of promoting it here, but the page is currently awfully slow. After load it really does look good - even for me not being able to read Japanese.
- gingerlime 9y ago
  Thanks for letting me know. The site is hosted in Singapore to be closer to Japan, and it should load faster from there. But I'll see if I can optimize some stuff (the technology behind it is rather boring, just wordpress with woocommerce).
  - icebraining 9y ago
    Just as a heads up, you seem to be loading an 800KB password strength estimation script on the homepage: https://www.frau-vintage.com/wp-includes/js/zxcvbn.min.js https://www.frau-vintage.com/wp-includes/js/zxcvbn.min.js (which unlike the other scripts, is not coming from the CDN and not compressed).
    - gingerlime 9y ago
      Thanks a lot :) it probably came with the theme (I updated the entire website about a month ago using a commercial theme)... I definitely have some work to do to optimize. Wordpress isn't my regular stack, but I'll dig in and tweak a few things. Really appreciate the heads up.
tcbawo 9y ago
One of the most surreal moments of my life involved traveling to Japan in the early 2000's and encountering a t-shirt from my high school at a clothing resale shop.
- rograndom 9y ago
  On a trip to South Korea more than 10 years ago, I was in a "hip" clothing store with my wife's cousins. We found a shelf of hats that said "Mount Cabot Lodge" + my home town & state. My home town has ~15000 people, is not really famous for anything and there's no "Mount Cabot Lodge". Mt Cabot is actually ~200mi away. I figure someone threw a dart at a map of the US and used that to pick the town. I regret not buying it.
hkmurakami 9y ago
Afaik the market for second hand women's clothing is big in Japan on Mercari (the only startup there with a >$1B valuation iirc). Maybe that's a viable additional growth channel for her to reach an audience that's not finding the web store front. The downside I think is that users on said app are conditioned to expect pretty steep discounts.
- gingerlime 9y ago
  Thanks for the tip. I asked my wife and she said that Mercari doesn't allow sellers outside Japan (or at least didn't use to). According to my wife, this seems to be quite common for platforms to insist on sellers operating from within Japan, and buyers expecting local delivery. Since we live in Berlin, and sell from there, it makes those things tricky some times. We'll look into it though.
  - sharemywin 9y ago
    They do now. My wife(Ohio) has sold plenty of things from there. https://www.mercari.com/help_center/article/163/ https://www.mercari.com/help_center/article/163/ W-9 and 1099 are US specific tax forms
    - gingerlime 9y ago
      I saw that they now operate in Japan, US and UK. We're based in Germany, so not sure whether we can technically use it...

sdoering 9y ago

Probably an effect of promoting it here, but the page is currently awfully slow. After load it really does look good - even for me not being able to read Japanese.

gingerlime 9y ago
Thanks for letting me know. The site is hosted in Singapore to be closer to Japan, and it should load faster from there. But I'll see if I can optimize some stuff (the technology behind it is rather boring, just wordpress with woocommerce).
- icebraining 9y ago
  Just as a heads up, you seem to be loading an 800KB password strength estimation script on the homepage: https://www.frau-vintage.com/wp-includes/js/zxcvbn.min.js https://www.frau-vintage.com/wp-includes/js/zxcvbn.min.js (which unlike the other scripts, is not coming from the CDN and not compressed).
  - gingerlime 9y ago
    Thanks a lot :) it probably came with the theme (I updated the entire website about a month ago using a commercial theme)... I definitely have some work to do to optimize. Wordpress isn't my regular stack, but I'll dig in and tweak a few things. Really appreciate the heads up.

tcbawo 9y ago

One of the most surreal moments of my life involved traveling to Japan in the early 2000's and encountering a t-shirt from my high school at a clothing resale shop.

rograndom 9y ago
On a trip to South Korea more than 10 years ago, I was in a "hip" clothing store with my wife's cousins. We found a shelf of hats that said "Mount Cabot Lodge" + my home town & state. My home town has ~15000 people, is not really famous for anything and there's no "Mount Cabot Lodge". Mt Cabot is actually ~200mi away. I figure someone threw a dart at a map of the US and used that to pick the town. I regret not buying it.

hkmurakami 9y ago

Afaik the market for second hand women's clothing is big in Japan on Mercari (the only startup there with a >$1B valuation iirc). Maybe that's a viable additional growth channel for her to reach an audience that's not finding the web store front. The downside I think is that users on said app are conditioned to expect pretty steep discounts.

gingerlime 9y ago
Thanks for the tip. I asked my wife and she said that Mercari doesn't allow sellers outside Japan (or at least didn't use to). According to my wife, this seems to be quite common for platforms to insist on sellers operating from within Japan, and buyers expecting local delivery. Since we live in Berlin, and sell from there, it makes those things tricky some times. We'll look into it though.
- sharemywin 9y ago
  They do now. My wife(Ohio) has sold plenty of things from there. https://www.mercari.com/help_center/article/163/ https://www.mercari.com/help_center/article/163/ W-9 and 1099 are US specific tax forms
  - gingerlime 9y ago
    I saw that they now operate in Japan, US and UK. We're based in Germany, so not sure whether we can technically use it...