Where do you deliver, baby?: these super-powerful girls tell us what it's like to have an online bazaar
Who doesn't like having nice clothes in their closet? There will probably be some other person who, really, does not take their clothes as important, but for many people wearing blouses, pants or dresses that make them feel good is important. The number of things in the drawer is irrelevant, as long as they have that spark joy that Marie Condo says so much in her videos.
Once you shake off the widespread prejudices of second-hand clothes, you find that the girls who run these instagram projects are super energetic, smart, highly organized and independent.
That's why, when you onvr-I mean, the people on the internet who have made “nenis” their target to download their classist, racist, misogynistic comments or a combination of all of that together, it's best to reverse the trend: talk about the enormous scrub that is starting and maintaining a bazaar and what these girls like most about doing it.
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What does “las nenis” mean?
The comments, mostly from men, were initially mocking the girls who sell (and also those who buy) on the internet , whose main platforms are Instagram and Facebook, and which deliver to different points in the cities where they are located (for example, some Metro line in CDMX).
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But all these comments do not take into account the effort, time, organization and juggling that these enterprising girls have to do and that, many times, find in online sales a super effective way to become independent, help their family or buy themselves, with their own money, what they want.
And just as attacks and ridicule reached them, there are also many people who recognize the work of these women.
No formal job or to supplement the monthly income
Melany Tapia is 25 years old and started her Meelates.mx bazaar in July 2019, months before all the karanavairus mess broke out in the world .
Meel is a graphic designer and started her second-hand clothing bazaar project when she quit a job that no longer offered her the job growth she was looking for, but she still didn't have another secure job and for years she's been contributing to the income familiar. Being left without a job was a kind of luxury that she could not afford.
“The first update was completely my closet, my mom's and my aunt's. I did the garment update and that was what I started with. After that, I was already looking at flea markets, markets and garage sales," he says.
In Mexico it is extremely difficult to measure the informal labor market, but it is estimated that almost 6 out of 10 female workers in the country are unprotected, that is, they have no employment relationship, no benefits, no social security, and no health and Many times, they are not even paid in a timely manner.
Months after starting her project, Melany got another job as a designer and combined it with the bazaar.
In 2020, more than 647,000 jobs were lost due to health emergencies, according to IMSS figures.
That was the case of Ana Laura Reyes, 22, who worked as a coordinator in a CDMX movie theater and, although her full salary arrived the first three months of closure, from one day to the next the company stopped paying them without notifying them at all.
After that failed job search attempt, and encouraged by her boyfriend, she decided to open Candy's Bazar at the beginning of August 2020 and its success has been resounding.
United Bazareñas vs. criticism and prohibitions
In addition to all the effort and time invested in their projects, some of these girls in Mexico City have also had terrible experiences with the Metro police; Last year, for example, the STC guards harassed them and prohibited them from making deliveries or exchanges at the stations, which made it difficult to deliver the products.
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According to the SCT, as long as street vendors are not encouraged at the stations, the security elements cannot threaten or detain the girls.
How hard is it to run a bazaar on Instagram?
Short answer: a lot. Long answer: you have to invest, not only money, but a lot of time, a lot of organization and a lot of creativity.
Frida Vargas is 23 years old and has had her Twenty Two bazaar for two years.
Along with Melany, Frida agrees that it is a full-time job that requires many hours and a lot of effort.
Meel divides the process into seven stages:
- Search.
- Selection.
- Cleaning.
- Ironing.
- Photographs.
- Publications.
- Submissions.
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The Most of the girls go to markets, flea markets and they taste good to the movement in the bales. Others, like Ana Laura, have the opportunity to have new clothes shipped from the United States and they sell them at much lower prices than in department stores.
But getting the clothes is only one part of the whole job.
Many times the clothes cannot be washed in a washing machine and have to be done by hand or taken to the dry cleaner (which increases the price).
That's right: they all take charge of ironing each of the garments, taking pictures with a personal style, taking measurements, making descriptions and updating their Instagram accounts.
There are those who have decided to raid the family closets, like Jaqueline, 18, who is the creator of the Beware of Chacharitas bazaar.
Unlike Meel and Frida, Jaqueline started her project in October 2020, in the midst of a pandemic.
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What the four bazareñas agree on is making updates to their business profiles, coordinating payments with their clients Wrapping each item of clothing, making the deliveries, and following up until the dress, pants, or blouse reaches the hands of the new owner, is a long process to which you have to dedicate hours a day.
Despite the enormous time and effort it takes, Ana Laura says that “the bazaar is a fundamental part of my income, so I always try to make my followers feel good”.
Special thanks to @neko_katz, for allowing us to include this illustration in the story.
How much do they earn in each update?
It is somewhat difficult to calculate and it is not always the same for all of them, since it depends on the number of garments that are sold in each update, which is generally carried out every week .
In addition to asking Melany, Jaqueline and Frida, we asked more girls who have their own second-hand clothing stores and, on average, if they sell all or most of the clothes they put up for sale in each update , with an investment of 1,000 pesos they can earn between 2,000 and 3,000 pesos in profit, already discounting the operating expenses (laundry, wrapping materials, shipments or transfers in public transport).
That is, if a girl makes updates every week and sells absolutely all her clothes, she can earn between 8,000 and 12,000 pesos every month.
But there is also the other side of the coin: if they sell two or three garments in an update, the profits can be reduced to about 500 or 600 pesos, which does not pay off the financial investment, time or effort. dedicated.
The changes that the pandemic forced
For Melany and Frida, the pandemic helped them gain more followers in their accounts, which translates into an improvement in their sales.
Frida misses the one-on-one communication with her customers because she enjoys meeting them and delivering her garments personally, and since the health crisis began, she decided to completely cut off this type of deliveries, although she accepts that making shipments through a company local or by Correos de México has also made things easier, “before the pandemic it would not even have occurred to me to contemplate it and now it is quite simple for everyone.”
Whereas for Ana Laura, the pandemic and the economic difficulties in which so many people find themselves, meant starting her own business.
Of course, the venture came with a habit that would have been unimagined before: in addition to washing all the clothes, they must also be sanitized before delivering them to their clients.
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