Business woman from home.. She earned 141 million from selling clothes online

In 2011, Tori Gerbig was still working in her insurance job and earning an annual income of only 2 25 thousand a year.

And at the age of 24 she was fond of surfing the internet in search of fashionable and affordable clothes, and unfortunately there were not many options at that time, which led her to think about launching a business specializing in the sale of women's clothing on the site "eBay" (.)

According to Tori, it was just a fun hobby and did not know that after 10 years she would be busy all day working on the site "Pink Lily", specializing in the sale of women's clothing, where its profits last year alone from the field of online clothing amounted to 141 million dollars of total sales, and today the number of followers on social networking sites 3 million and 600 followers.

In a self-written article published by the American website "CNBC", Tori recounted how she achieved such a resounding success.

Sales of  141 million dollars

Tori points out that in order to launch her own store on eBay, she and her husband Chris made an initial investment of about 300 to buy clothes and accessories from a wholesale site, and since she was not familiar with the pricing strategies, she priced the items according to her point of view, and she and her husband worked from the living room; so they had nothing to worry about except shipping costs.

Earnings varied over the first few years, but their income was typically between 300 and.1,000 a month, and they used that money to pay off student loans and invest it back in business.

She used to travel to Los Angeles to meet vendors and place product orders, and recently attended trade shows to expand her selection.

Two years later, in 2013, she created a personal Facebook group to market her clothes, and she had good customers who showed increasing demand for her products, especially in her local community in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

By the end of the year, she managed to save 20 thousand dollars from her earnings, which she used to launch the official website of the store "Pink Lily", which contributed to the truly flourishing of her business.

She adds that in May 2014 the profits of the store exceeded 100 thousand dollars, and after 3 years of management of "Pink Lily" as a side business, she left her job in the field of insurance to work in her Trading Company, where her husband Chris joined her after a few months to oversee the company's finances and operations, and at the end of the year their revenues exceeded 4 million dollars.

In 2019, after earning 7 70 million in total sales, "Tori" says it received an investment offer for a minority stake, which helped it support the rapid growth of its business, expand its product offerings and assign a great team.

At the moment more than 11 thousand products are sold on her site Daily, not to mention that she has established a store with 250 full-time employees, she also points out that although she still visits trade shows, she has managed to create a core group of selling partners to create her own design models for her company.

Here are her best tips for starting a successful business:

Find a gap in the market

It is very important to find a gap in the current market, when I discovered that fashion-savvy women who want to find a dress for  50 or less do not find what they want, I thought about filling this need.

Reinvest your profits

If you want to achieve rapid growth, you need to reinvest all or most of your first profits from your business, which may lead to you suffering from severe financial distress during the first few years, noting that she worked about 60 hours a week, and followed an austere spending policy, in order to reinvest the money you earned from the site "Pink Lily".

Find fun ways to promote

As Tori explains, being active on social media is an essential part of your success: she regularly organizes Instagram polls to investigate customer needs, posts photos of some of the products she is considering buying or brands she can partner with, and then uses followers ' feedback and comments to make final decisions, showing that this step helps integrate shoppers and involve them in the decision-making process.

Tori adds that she would ship the products in custom bags with the company logo on them, then show photos of customers posting a photo of themselves in their new dress on Instagram, as well as tagging her website.

Customers are brand ambassadors

At Pink Lilly, she offers a paid jobs program-with a commission of up to 10% on each sale - to an exclusive group of veteran customers who can provide positive testimonials about the quality of their products, an important and sustainable part of her marketing strategy, which contributed to sales of 7 7.5 million last year.

Be unique

Tori concludes her advice by stressing the need to define a product line that can be owned exclusively in your company, where the entire inventory must be purchased from any seller-for example - so that no other retailer can access it, and in this way, you can alone sell a product that is not available in the market.