As I stated in my previous post regarding Poshfest, I came in late to this portion, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t learn anything. A few things to make sure you’re doing are:

-Make sure your instagram posts look great! Use apps like Unfold and Snapseed for editing (those were recommended by panelist Poshers). If you want a quick easy way to know if your posts look good, compare them against others you might admire. Also, take inspiration from that and use it to your advantage to make your images pop.

-Make sure you’re using relevant hashtags. It’s not so much about how many as it is they make sense for your brand. I mostly imbed my hashtags in witty sentences.

One panelist also mentioned not using such heavily oversaturated hashtags. General rule of thumb is find a hashtag that’s between 10,000-100,000 posts that way it narrows your audience and you have a better chance of engaging. I think I will utilize a handful of both saturated and less saturated and see what mix works best.

-Make sure to have your own brand hashtag. Most people might do this already, but I wasn’t and I will make it a point to add my own tag to my Posh related listings. It makes it easier to be found and gives your own brand point of view.

-Make sure you’re consistently active. This is harder for me since I am still working on scheduling. I sometimes don’t have all the time to post. However, with a little help from Google and a scheduling post app called Buffer, I feel like this will be simpler. I plan to schedule my posts when I get down time and at least I can be active without having to BE ACTIVE.

This was a hugely impactful panel for me personally. I have much less balance than I prefer AND I’m a planned person by nature so to be out of whack in this area is such a drag. There were some great recommendations during this portion that I will be utilizing like yesterday lol!

-Schedule out your days to what makes most sense for you. @Jbchic did a great job of explaining how she uses an app called Keeper to track how long she’s doing things such as:

-Pack & Ship

-Write descriptions

-Photography

-Self Share

-Follow

-List Products

What’s also great here is that it will give you an idea of where you can be more efficient or solicit help from friends and/or family.

I’ve already begun a weekly list of dividing up what days I plan to thrift, photograph, prep and organize inventory etc. If you’d like to see the future schedule I come up with, just send me a quick email and I’ll be sure and provide that in future posts.

-ORGANIZE, ORGANIZE, ORGANIZE!!!! Get some cute clothing storage bins, label them alphabetically and pre-pack your inventory so it can be easily found and easily shipped when ready. I’ve already ordered some and can’t wait to share how I’m finally getting my inventory life together.

Also, did you know you can order your free shipping boxes/bags from the post office AND schedule them to be picked up so you don’t even have to go up there? Talk about time saver!

-Source inventory from family, friends, church members, work pals and the like. One panelist stated that anytime she had friends that wanted to get rid of items in their closet, but didn’t have the time, she offered to take it off their hands.

I also met a lady that had some great tips on where to get inventory. Think of places like swap meets, local garage sales, and Goodwill Outlet (which literally sells clothing by the pound…yes like when you buy meat at the grocery store LOL). If you need more places to look you can check out my post on thrifting for some startup places as well.

I didn’t get to ask the panelist if she takes everything or is selective with her options, but I think for myself I would select what I like and send everything else to Goodwill.

This is a nifty little tool. It’s an excel spreadsheet that shows all your sales and how much you’ve made. The reason something like this is important (especially if you have had a ton of sales), is it can basically tell you what your quickest selling items are, what brands do well in your closet, how much you’re making and when, it is like a little tell all gold mine.

We were shown how to break this down and analyze it, but I am already pretty proficient in excel so I didn’t need so much of that part. I have been thinking since I used to analyze retail business professionally for some years, I might be willing to help some Poshers out for a small fee and analyze their business for them confidentially. This is just something I’ve been throwing around in my head, who knows if I’ll actually do it. Bottom line is, this is an important document that will zoom in on your business and tell you what to do more of to make that money.

I didn’t initially plan to look at the wholesale marketplace to see what was available. I have my wholesalers license for the state of Texas so I’ve already been dabbling in some outside vendors. However, I did somehow wind up back there and saw some items I was very impressed with. If you’re looking for some in-app vendors, these are the ones that I visited and personally looked through the items and found them to have quality that I would actually consider:

@alunalevi

@shannonlee_pm

@efashion_pm

So there are the details of what I learned and I hope this has been a very educational post for you. Of course if you follow Posh blog I believe they have live videos of parts of the event if you’d like to take a look and see what might be helpful for you.

In the next few Posh posts, I’m thinking of dabbling into a series on helping smaller closets. Some are just getting started and wanting more help in the arena of just selling ONE item and seeing what their business looks like as a side hustle as opposed to a part/full time hustle. They need assistance too so I’m looking to give it.

As always, ’til next time, HAPPY POSHING xoxo 😊