From Thrift Shopping to Making $30-100K/mo
Selling on Amazon

IMG_5597
Taylor Wengler

Amazon Seller

E-commerce
United States

$10-100K mo

From Thrift Shopping to Making $30-100K/mo
Selling on Amazon

IMG_5597
Taylor Wengler

Amazon Seller

E-commerce

$10-100K mo

United States

Hi Taylor, tell us about who you are and how you started your business?

I grew up in Florida, and never went to college. 
 
I always hated working for other people who controlled my schedule and when I could take time off. I love to travel and visit new places but having a regular 9-5 just never was cutting it for having time off. Along with that I’ve always loved thrift shopping. 
 
Growing up, most of my clothes came from the Goodwill. So one day I was in the airport and I was telling my husband how much I just wanted a job I loved to do. So I started looking on YouTube for people selling clothing online and that’s when I discovered Poshmark & how people were selling name-brand clothing on Poshmark for crazy money, and I knew I definitely could do this! 
 
I buy all brand-name stuff for myself at Goodwill and I know good quality clothing, so as soon as we got home I went to Goodwill and started my journey. I started this at age 23. However, that only lasted about a year and a half. I grew it to about $100k in my first year but I realized this wasn’t a sustainable business if I slowly wanted to just be an owner and not just a worker in my business since I would have to shop for clothing daily at thrift stores. 
 
So that’s when I discovered selling on Amazon and that is what i am doing today. I sell new products on Amazon like beauty products, grocery products, toys, clothing & shoes etc. 
 
My business was founded in 2019. I started this business with about $20.

What Do You Sell?

Treasures by Tay – Sell anything from beauty products, grocery products, toys, clothing & shoes. Pretty much anything that sells.

What Is Your Website?

How did you come up with the idea for your business?

I didn’t have any personal experience or knowledge of the industry when I went into it but growing up during the recession my dad and my aunt would flip storage units and they would sell stuff on eBay all the time. My aunt always flipped clothing from thrift stores on eBay as well. So I had that as role models of that industry growing up and flipping things online. So even though they don’t do that anymore, I knew it was a business that worked.

 

 

 

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Were there any driving forces behind your motivation to start your business?

I wanted more freedom to do what I wanted to do with my day. I wanted to travel, focus more on my mental health and spend my days doing what I enjoyed rather than slaving away at a job I hated.

Talk us through the process of building your product/service?

Alot of my journey was trial and error. I learned alot about selling on amazon & poshmark through tons of youtube and small courses here and there. But to be honest, I learned the most through trial and error. You learn very quickly from your mistakes. 

 

Building my business was mostly a learning journey in the sense of learning different softwares and programs to level up your inventory purchases and buying things that people wanted. Also learning how to see how many sellers are selling the same item so you aren’t relying on items that have a lot of competition. Learning how to source effectively was difficult in the beginning but is something you have to learn fast so you aren’t losing money and making sure those products are moving fast. 

 

During this journey of learning the ins and outs, I made many bad purchases, lost money on inventory or had inventory sitting for a long time because I didn’t know all the data points that an item needed to be hitting. This led to less money to use on quality products.

 

 

Discuss your marketing strategy..

Since I also coach students on how to sell on Amazon, I mainly use TikTok to acquire new clients. I answer questions about selling on Amazon to help other sellers and just keep it real. A lot of Amazon sellers on TikTok are giving bogus answers, or not telling the truth about selling on Amazon. I pride myself in “keeping it real” and “authentic” about being an Amazon seller and I think that’s what draws a lot of my clients to me. I rely on all organic traffic and word of mouth. Just being authentic has worked well for me and also being relatable.

Revenue & Financials

I have done anywhere from $30K – to $100K per month depending on the season. I use a bookkeeper because I am not the most amazing person at managing finances for my business. I rely on her to tell me where to allocate my funds to level up my business. I mostly reinvested my profits back into my business in the beginning before taking out any money. I used Amazon loans once to get capital but haven’t done that in about a year. I’ve mostly utilised business credit cards that give rewards back.

Is this a side-hustle or full time business?

Full Time

Talk to us about any challenges you faced along the process?

My Biggest challenge was not realizing how much money I needed to be saving for taxes. 
During my first big year selling on Amazon I made over $500K and I didn’t save for taxes because 
I just wanted to keep reinvesting my profits to make the business grow faster. 
However, This came back to bite me in the butt and had been a real wrench in the road, 
when paying that off. But it definitely was a real hard lesson to learn, that I will not make again. 
 
This definitely made me want to give up, but I realized I just needed to make better business 
decisions and pay more close attention to my business finances and grow at a reasonable rate.

How many hours do you work per week on your business?

10-15 hours.

What is the biggest challenge you are facing at the moment in your business?

The biggest challenge at the moment in my business will be growing different avenues 

of revenue for my business. As I grow, I want to add more services to help more 

Amazon sellers.

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