Gymboree News & Gossip Column - Everything Leads to Now, Part 1
I once had a crazy idea that paid our house payment within four months and made half our income within a year: a weekly email newsletter about how to sell one brand of children's clothing on eBay.
Gymboree News & Gossip - Everything Leads to Now, Part 1
My first crazy entrepreneurial idea was twenty years ago. No, that's not quite true. My first crazy idea was when I was eight. My best friend and I planned to save all our allowance for ten years, move to Australia, and raise and sell brumbies as soon as we turned eighteen (brumbies are wild horses that roam around in Australia if you are not up on your 1980s Kirk Douglas movies or Australian fauna of the "not trying to kill you" variety).
We wrote reports about various areas of the country (well, I did), calculated how much money we would have based on current allowance levels (well, I did), and watched The Man From Snowy River until we could quote the whole film from memory (we both did that part). I was much more invested, and she completely blew off the research parts because, well, she was six.
Fast forward twenty years, and we arrive at my first crazy idea that actually made money: a weekly ezine that I published called the Gymboree News and Gossip Column (naming things was not my strong suit). We had three tiny kids at the time, and I was buying boxes of resale clothes on eBay for all of them because it was much cheaper than buying retail. I was also scooping up used clothes at garage sales and selling them on eBay myself.
One box came in with a dress from a brand called Gymboree. The quality was higher than anything else in the box, and the dress was adorable. I was hooked. When I discovered that the clothing was organized into lines and had a lucrative collectibles quality to it, I started seeking out and selling that brand exclusively. Then I started scoping out the clearance racks at the retail stores. Then I started a weekly newsletter on how to buy and sell Gymboree clothes on eBay. Ridiculous, right?
Within four months, newsletter subscriptions were making our house payment. Within a year the newsletter was making half our family income. Within two years I had two other contributing editors and an employee. Every single week I wrote the lead, which was mostly family stories of life with a pile of small, silly kids. Since my target audience was Moms with small kids, this worked perfectly.
This continued for six years until the economy crashed in 2008, and I learned a valuable lesson: the first thing people lop off when they belt-tighten is small, recurring payments for things they don't really need. We limped along for months and closed in 2009.
I learned two other important-to-me things from this experiment as well: (1) how to engage people via email, and (2) people exist who like my writing.
And now, an Irish blessing because I like those:
May you have:
No frost on your spuds,
No worms on your cabbage.
May your goat give plenty of milk.
And if you inherit a donkey,
May she be in foal.
Ahahahahaha! I love how utterly nothing this has to do with modern life.
I post The Sooth episodes on Wednesday mornings and other stuff on Friday mornings
I may also post at other times, but for sure on those days (I shoot for 6:00am PST delivery but don’t always quite make that). See you then!
About Rachel
I’m a writer, data analyst, Mom to six, and slightly weathered woman based in Oregon (I refuse to call myself “middle-aged”). That all sounds very mature and stuffy, which is why *this* is a space for play and experimentation and fun things.
About Purple Playground - Start Here
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Free Friday poetry or other short-form writing from me (essays, short stories, flash fiction)
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For paid subscribers, weekly episodes of my current book-in-progress. The first three episodes are free! (Books take a long time to write. This helps me continue to eat and have somewhere to live while I do that, so *thank you* if you decide to upgrade your subscription.)
Current book-in-progress: The Sooth
Juniper “Juni” Beauchard just wants to heal her father from his terminal illness but inadvertently sparks an intergalactic incident instead.
