How to Respond When Strangers Ask If You Are a Reseller

“What are you doing with all those books in your cart? Are you interested in accounting and biology? Are you interested in learning how to lose weight in your seventies? Are you reading all those books or are you selling those?”

Maybe it’s a worker at a thrift store, someone having a garage sale, or just a random stranger. But at some point, you might have someone coming up to you and asking, “What are you doing with all those? Are you a reseller? Are you selling those for a profit?” How do you handle that situation?

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How I Used to Handle It
Well, I’ll tell you right now, when I was brand new, I did not want anyone knowing I was reselling when I was at a thrift store. If I was scanning books and somebody walked up next to me, I would put my phone down and pretend as though I was looking at the book. I didn’t want anybody to see. If anyone ever asked me, “What are you doing with those books?” I’d literally lie. You know, I’m building a bookshelf. I’m taking some college classes.

How Should You Handle It?
But what should you do in that situation? For me personally at this stage now, I’ve been in the game for so long and a lot of these people know what I’m doing already, so I just tell them the truth.

With books, sometimes I tell them, “Hey, I like to read, I like to learn, but I also resell as well.” And that is accurate; it’s not a lie. When it comes to clothing, I will sometimes say, “Yeah, I got a full-time eBay clothing business. I’ve got a store with a thousand items in it.”

But What Will Others Think?
Some resellers don’t want to tell the truth because they’re scared that the shops will raise their prices or that other customers will judge them. I used to have a limiting belief that if I told somebody at a thrift store that I was reselling, they would think that I’m a bad person because when I first started at thrift stores, I always thought the thrift store workers there were there to help the poor.

I thought thrift stores were just for people who needed cheap products. The thrift stores were just undercutting everything and selling things so cheap because they’re really trying to help people. But the thing that I’ve realized is that a thrift store is just a moneymaking business. Yes, some thrift stores have charitable goals as well—and that is all well and good—but they are also out to make money. So I’ve come around to thinking that they don’t really care who may be buying their items.

Garage sales are a little different. Sometimes I won’t be 100 percent honest because I have had instances where somebody actually didn’t want to sell me an item because they realized that if I wanted their item to resell, it must be worth more than what they had priced it at.

Honesty Is the Best Policy
In general, if you’re at a thrift store and someone asks, just tell the truth. It actually will help you build relationships with the workers. For me, I’m friends with a lot of the managers, and they’ll tell me, “Hey, we got a whole bunch of brand-new books in the back. Do you want me to wheel out the bins for you?” Or they will say to me, “We got some new vintage clothing. You should check it out. Hey, did you know that we got a couple Diesel jeans?” That happens all the time at the smaller thrift stores.

Don’t be ashamed if you’re a reseller. You don’t have to feel as though people are going to be judging you.

Curiosity
Sure, many times people will stare at you when you’re looking things up, scanning things, or maybe going through the sold listings. People don’t think you’re a bad person; they’re just curious. Most people don’t realize that you can make money online selling stuff on eBay or Amazon.

They are just curious. When you pull out your phone and scan something, they don’t know what the heck you’re doing. A lot of times, people will stare at you and ask questions, not because they’re trying to judge you, but because they’re just generally curious.

The Truth Shall Set You Free
So I do get asked all the time. And these days, I find I just tell the truth. I used to lie my butt off until I realized I really didn’t have to. And you don’t have to either. You are a reseller—a hustler. That’s something to take pride in.