Home Fashion + BeautyAccessories Relovely: An Influencer Resale Platform Started in Jersey City

Relovely: An Influencer Resale Platform Started in Jersey City

by Hoboken Girl Team
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Second-hand is slowly becoming many people’s first choice when it comes to shopping. Whether it’s bargain hunting at the local Goodwill or finding unique pieces at a chic vintage store, shopping preloved has so many perks. It’s a sustainable way to indulge in fashion, it won’t break the bank, and it’s a great way to find unique pieces that not everybody has. Now, thrifting has made its way online making it more accessible than ever and easy to do while at home. With this, however, it has also become oversaturated. Customers can often spend hours scrolling through hundreds of pages of products to find something good. Enter Relovely, a marketplace for influencers to resell their clothing and accessories, started by two Jersey City residents, Lexi Spoden and Domenick Packett. 

On Relovely, sellers are regulated through a simple application process. Sellers must be fashion influencers and must have a fashion-designated Instagram business account and/or blog. Influencers have an abundance of beautiful clothes {often barely worn}, they take excellent photographs, and have loyal followings that would quite literally love to shop their closets — and now they can!

Hoboken Girl sat down with Lexi and Domenick to pick their brains on Relovely, how it works, and how they came up with the idea for an influencer exclusive resale marketplace. 

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Tell Us About Yourself

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Lexi: I’m Lexi, the founder of Relovely. I live in Jersey City, and I started working on Relovely after I came up with the idea a couple of years ago. I started brainstorming, creating a business plan and spoke with several developers to see if it was possible. Then I met Domenick, a local software engineer who believed in the idea as much as I did and wanted to partner with me to make it happen. 

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Domenick: I’m Domenick, the co-founder of Relovely. I’m a software engineer and I moved to Jersey City about two years ago from Charlottesville, VA. I was looking for a promising side project to work on and I met Lexi on a professional network where she pitched me the idea. I was really impressed and decided to team up with her.

On How They Came Up With The Idea

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Lexi: Over the past couple of years, I have become a major fan of thrifting and vintage shopping. Maybe it was sifting through my grandma’s old clothes and jewelry or moving to New York City with its abundance of amazing vintage and thrift stores that sparked my interest, but I love the idea of getting super unique items for a bargain. Plus, it’s a sustainable way to shop, so I’m all for that. 

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However, the online second-hand shopping experience was trickier. I would often spend hours scrolling through items I wasn’t interested in to get to something good. Also, there were often items that may have been great, but got lost because they were poorly photographed. With every problem, however, there’s a business idea. 

At the same time, the influencer market was taking over the fashion industry. Fashion bloggers, no matter how big or small were making a huge impact on consumer decision-making. Influencers fill their feed with stunning imagery and fashion every day, and they each have a loyal following that shows up to see their content for inspiration. That’s when a lightbulb went off. 

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Influencers’ closets must be overflowing at this point with beautiful, barely worn clothes. According to a post from @styledsustainable, the average consumer only wears about 20% of their closet. Also, garments that are worn usually end up in a landfill after just 7 to 10 years. These numbers are probably even more drastic for a lot of fashion influencers. 

Enter Relovely, a niche marketplace for influencers to resell their clothing and accessories. Relovely aims to provide an elevated, preloved shopping experience online, and thus promote sustainability within the influencer and fashion industries. 

On The Best Part Of Running A Business

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Lexi: Creating something that you’re proud of and that other people can enjoy. It’s great to see influencers excited about the platform, a space where they can be among other influencers to create an elevated preloved shopping experience online. And when we make a sale, I jump for joy every time! 

Domenick: Working together on something and then watching it come to life. There’s nothing more rewarding than a vision that finally becomes a reality.

On The Toughest Part

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Lexi: So many tough parts! Prioritizing and patience. I constantly have new ideas pop into my head for the site, so figuring out which ones are a priority, and organizing our thoughts and ideas to implement in the future. Also, managing every aspect of the business. So many things have been a learning curve such as legal and taxes, and the marketing/advertising part of it. Google has become my best friend. We really learn as we go. 

Domenick: Trying to stay motivated and productive even when it seems like the end goal is really far away. Anticipating problems and continually adapting and learning from our mistakes.

Their Goals For The Year

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Lexi: Right now we are focusing on building our seller network so we get more products for customers to shop and building awareness. Also, implementing some more ideas that will help with conversions such as an offer and bundling feature. We have a lot of cool features coming down the pipeline.

Being A Business Owner During A Pandemic

Lexi: It’s been… interesting. I lost my job due to COVID so, on one hand, it’s given me a lot of time to work on Relovely which is great, however, we are bootstrapping the business right now, so we have to be very strategic with our spending. 

Domenick: The pandemic has brought many challenging twists like the operational changes at the post office, which we rely on for all of our product shipments. It also definitely changed the way we celebrated our launch.

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A Typical Day

Lexi: I usually like to wake up early and work out, make some coffee, check my emails, and tend to any customer or influencer inquiries. Then I’ll start reaching out to influencers organically on Instagram and via email, telling them about Relovely. Throughout the day I’ll check on orders in the system, and if we have any new influencer applications to approve. I’ll also spend a lot of my time creating content and managing our social media, email campaigns, and other forms of advertising.

Domenick: Coding, coding, coding…lots, and lots of coding!

One Thing You’ve Learned

Lexi: Not to take things personally when it comes to business, and to be patient, and trust the process. 

Domenick: Opportunity brings opportunity. You have to be patient and persistent and keep working towards your goals and eventually, it will start to pay off.

Special Offer

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Relovely is offering Hoboken Girl readers 10% off their next purchase. Use code HOBOKENGIRL10 to redeem. Only one use per customer. Fashion influencers who are interested in becoming sellers can apply now at Relovey.com. A seller’s first three sales are commission-free, then just a small 10% fee is taken. Be sure to follow Relovely on Instagram, @relovely.us, and sign up for their email distro for an additional 10% off, and to stay in the know on new product and influencer launches. Head on over to www.relovely.com to check it out!

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