A British woman quit her job as an orthopaedic nurse to resell clothing and bags sourced from charity shops full-time on the secondhand platform Vinted, and now earns thousands of pounds a month. Chloe Thompson, 32, from Torbay in Devon, started out testing the waters with just £10 worth of charity goods and a few items from her wardrobe, and quit nursing four months later. She once resold a denim jacket she bought for £12 for £70. She currently maintains around 500 active listings on Vinted and eBay, selling an average of 150 items a month, with per-item sourcing costs usually no more than £5 and sale prices mostly between £15 and £30.

Key Points

  • Chloe Thompson is from Torbay, Devon, UK. She was an orthopaedic nurse and now resells secondhand clothing and bags full-time on Vinted after quitting her job.
  • She started with £10 worth of charity goods and quit four months later; she once sold a denim jacket bought for £12 for £70.
  • She currently maintains around 500 active listings on Vinted and eBay, selling an average of 150 items a month, with per-item sourcing costs no more than £5 and sale prices mostly between £15 and £30.

Thompson's resale model is based mainly on "mystery box"-style bulk buying: she purchases clothing by the bag or box from charity shops and wholesalers without knowing in advance which brands are inside or whether they will sell well. She admits this amounts to betting on her own inventory, and that ordinary shopkeepers would rarely buy in large quantities completely blind, yet this model is the norm in the resale industry. She finds it fascinating, and acknowledges that judging what to buy requires accumulated experience.

Before she started reselling, Thompson had never used Vinted. It was after helping her partner, who deals in antiques, run their business that she became interested in the thrill of the hunt and began wondering whether she could try it herself. She says her interest in clothing and bags far exceeds her interest in her original job. At first she only planned to resell "on the side," but the flexible way of working became an important reason she kept going.

On income, Thompson says it is not stable month to month: some months are clearly higher than her previous nursing salary, while others are close to her old income level. She believes people often fail to realise that reselling, or any business, cannot guarantee consistent monthly income, with busy seasons and slow seasons. Overall, though, she feels her finances are better than when she was a full-time employee, and she prefers having control over the business she is building.

She currently sees the period around the start of a new season as a good sales opportunity, because people refresh their wardrobes; she is also preparing for the holiday season, which is usually a hot sales period. As the business expands, she is considering renting an office or warehouse to get more space. She also notes that new sellers often give up because they do not understand that "figuring out how to make a profit on a platform takes time to work out." Sourcing, pricing, photography, writing product descriptions, and judging which items suit which platforms all have to be learned through practice, and many of her own mistakes have taught her more than her successes.

For people in the used-clothing trade, this case shows that the supply side made up of charity shops and wholesalers, the dual-platform operation of an individual reseller in England across Vinted and eBay, and the seasonal demand driven by changing seasons and holidays are micro-level frontline examples worth watching in today's secondhand clothing resale ecosystem.

Source: I quit my nursing job to sell on Vinted and now make thousands a month · Originally published 2026-09-30