How I Started Thrifting

Hola! It’s been a long time since my last entry. Thank you for coming again and checking on my blog. I am so excited to share with you guys about today’s entry, that I’ve planned for a long time to talk about it. Based on the picture above, I think you all can guess what it’s about. So, let’s jump into it.

Before I go further, have you all went to any thrift store around you? If yes, you’re cool man! But if not, I think you should go for it. At least for once. Because there’s so much in there. And when we talk about thrifting or second-hand shopping, there’s so beauty in it. And here I am, a young man that is addicted to thrifting or we call it as “bundle” in Malaysia. There are several events that really got me into thrifting that I would like to share.

1.Skateboards

The main thing that really got me into this is my big bro himself. When I was in primary school, his age was around 24 or 25 and at that time skateboarding is a thing. It’s a trend for the youth and adults but not to a kid like me. But the obsession that my big bro had also got me into it when he started to share all about skateboarding from tricks to clothing, from zero to hero.

So, what’s the relation between skateboards and thrifting? The thing comes together when we skateboarders want to rock our shirts better. It must be from the skating brand too. Brand such as Trasher Magazine, Blind Skateboards and Etnies were famous at that time. Anyone who wear it would be so cool. Hahaha! But only thrift store can provide us with it because they sell imported secondhand clothes from overseas such as USA and Japan. If not, we must make orders online to have it which were a bit pricy and fussy. So, we have to hit the thrift store just to search for the particular clothing brand in it.

2. Life Survival

As we frequently went to the thrift store, I had become more interested and started to dig in more items such as trousers, collar shirt and jackets. All these things were sold at a very affordable price. Even now, there’s still “bundle” that provide secondhand clothing as low as RM1 per piece. And when I get older, I started to understand the real struggle face by my parents. It took all their sweat to earn a penny. So, to ease their burden, I choose to shop mostly at thrift store. From top to bottom, from in and out, all covered by secondhand clothes except for my personal wear hehehe. 

From there, I could save some budget on my clothing and could shop more because it’s super cheap. Even though it is not that much but I’m more than happy to help my parents especially when it comes to spending money on me. That’s the moment where my love towards vintage just grew bigger as I started to appreciate more about it. 

3. Quality

In term of quality, secondhand clothing is way better than all the fast fashion clothing that available right now. The materials used, the sewing and stitching, everything has changed due to the technology. But it just makes the shirt less preferable because there’s no value in it. It’s not comfy anymore to wear normal plain shirt from boutiques because for me it feels so thin that I had to use it as my inner-wear compared to vintage shirt that are way better. The mass production in today’s clothing not just limit the quality of it, but also contribute to more waste and pollution. But nowadays, everything need proves right. I can claim this and that but there’s still biased in it. So here I would like to suggest you guys to go shop at the thrift store at least once and experience it on your own.

4. Business Opportunity

Next up as I got deeper into this vintage scene, I notice that there’s a chance to make money from it. In this world, there are thousand or even millions of people that have different interest from each other whether it is in term of entertainment, art, beliefs or culture. And in this vintage scene, entertainment play a big role in it as artist have their own fanatic fans that will collect their merch and keep it for memories especially when it comes to shirt. From thrift store, we could find the original merchandise of the artist itself and it cost a lot of money. The amount that you can’t even imagine! 

Just see it for yourselves how much it cost for certain certain. Maybe not all but a few of it really cost that much. The old stereotypes that says “bundle” is a cheap and dirty cloth should be thrown away. And from that, I started my reselling business that help me survive without my parents’ money anymore. The best part about this vintage online business is that I can make a lot of new friends from all over the world and started the vintage community on our own. There's also a few online reselling platform such as Grailed, Ebay, Etsy, Bump and many more that we can use to sell our products. Not to forget the social media such as Facebook and Instagram especially. You can check on my Instagram business profile here (https://www.instagram.com/?hl=en) hehe. I’ve been doing this business since the 2016 and still going strong bruh. Anyone that love vintage clothes should check it out! It’s a great thing to have this kind of opportunity to support the young businessman and our local business to succeed. So, go shop at your local thrift store or at mine now.

Overall, it is great for me that I found this hobby or I can call it as a passion at so young at age because it affects my life such a meaningful way. And I think thrift store in Malaysia need more love from the people around because there’s so much treasure and experience to learn. Signing out, see you next time!