• iconNews
  • videos
  • entertainment
  • Home
  • News
    • UK News
    • US News
    • Australia
    • Ireland
    • World News
    • Weird News
    • Viral News
    • Sport
    • Technology
    • Science
    • True Crime
    • Travel
  • Entertainment
    • Celebrity
    • TV & Film
    • Netflix
    • Music
    • Gaming
    • TikTok
  • LAD Originals
    • Say Maaate to a Mate
    • Daily Ladness
    • Lad Files
    • UOKM8?
    • FreeToBe
    • Extinct
    • Citizen Reef
  • Advertise
  • Terms
  • Privacy & Cookies
  • LADbible Group
  • UNILAD
  • SPORTbible
  • GAMINGbible
  • Tyla
  • UNILAD Tech
  • FOODbible
  • License Our Content
  • About Us & Contact
  • Jobs
  • Latest
  • Topics A-Z
  • Authors
Facebook
Instagram
X
Threads
Snapchat
TikTok
YouTube

LAD Entertainment

YouTube

LAD Stories

Submit Your Content
From Chasing Bargains In Thrift Stores To Opening A Vintage Fashion Studio

Home> News

Updated 16:15 10 Jun 2022 GMT+1Published 14:55 10 Jun 2022 GMT+1

From Chasing Bargains In Thrift Stores To Opening A Vintage Fashion Studio

There's an art to vintage shopping, especially when it comes to purchasing authentic items 👕👖

The LADbible Team

The LADbible Team

Visa
Sponsored by Visa

Dom Hadley is living his dreams. At just twenty-four-years-old, he runs his own vintage fashion house, selling chic sportswear to a huge network of online customers. We take a closer look at the unbelievable story of how Dom's passion for fashion, a stranger he met online, and the Coronavirus Lockdown all combined to make Payday Vintage a phenomenon.

Even as a teenager, Dom Hadley was well into fashion, and loved a bargain. He remembers during sixth form, he felt like he had to wear something new everyday, so began buying vintage second hand clothing. 

“You remember those quarter-zip pullovers?” Dom asks me, proudly recounting the first designer bargain he ever purchased. “I got it for like three pound from a charity shop, but obviously they’re like eighty quid brand new!”

At first, Dom started making men’s fashion videos, showcasing how to style the clothes. The setup was minimal, with Dom filming himself alongside a clothing rail and a white wall. Nonetheless, not only did people watch, but they contacted Dom directly, who soon started selling the clothes he found. The quarter-zip pullover that only cost three pound, Dom remembers, sold for thirty pounds online.

Advert

“I started realising there’s actually a market for this. So it became a job or a side hustle,” Dom explains. “Then when I started making decent money from it, I was like: I want to set up a whole brand. That was kind of where Payday Vintage started.” 

Before long, Dom was visiting thrift shops and kilo sales, buying branded clothing and building an inventory of stock to sell on online platforms. For storage space, Dom used his bedroom at his parents’ house in Chester, then the living room of his student flat in Leeds, which he remembers being packed with boxes. He would photograph the clothes against white sheets of paper, using a small camera and natural light from a window. “It was very low budget,” he says. 

Visa

In 2018, while researching the competition, Dom stumbled across the profile of Alfie Biss, a teenager down in Norwich who was also selling second-hand clothes online. Alfie had secured suppliers for some excellent sportswear, according to Dom, but he had limited visibility online. Dom began helping to promote Alfie’s stock and after six months, the two young lads decided to start a business together.

“Mad, trusting some randomer on a website… I remember telling my parents about it and they were like: ‘What are you doing?’” Dom recalls, laughing at how crazy the situation was. “Someone who lives down south and we just spoke online and we were setting up a business together.”

Advert

Nevertheless, Dom and Alfie took the risk. They purchased a domain name and a template e-commerce website, then they invested in a bulk order for 150 articles of vintage sportswear. The clothes sold well, so they did it again. Then again.

For the first two years the business found its feet, selling between 20 to 30 items of clothing per week. Since Dom lived up in Leeds, and Alfie lived down in Norwich, they would each take turns to receive stock and handle orders. “The postal service made a lot of money out of us!” jokes Dom ruefully.

Dom says he learned to leave a trail of financial evidence for when things go wrong. With second-hand clothes it is inevitable that items either don’t arrive, arrive in a poorer condition than advertised, or - even worse - are dreaded fakes. One time, Dom purchased a bundle of designer shirts that turned out to be counterfeit, and the supplier refused to refund them. Dom used Visa chargeback to dispute the original payment, and get[CH1] his money back. 

Things grew slowly-but-surely for Payday Vintage, until the Coronavirus lockdown in 2020 had unexpected ramifications. Trapped inside all day, with nothing to do, thousands of young people actively sought out comfortable clothes, and consequently Dom and Alfie’s second-hand sportswear business made a killing.

As demand soared, Dom and Alfie found themselves racing to scale up. They needed warehouse space - for sorting, steam-ironing, photographing and packaging clothes - so rented out a headquarters down in Norwich. Dom remembers buying an array of equipment to kit it out. “Six-foot two-tier hanging rails, swing tags, irons, shelving, desks, packing table, camera and tripod, box lights, flashguns, and a new steamer” - which Dom remembers arrived broken. “It was supposed to be new! I used Visa chargeback to contest it again.”

Advert

Visa

Today, on average, Payday Vintage has between 200 and 300 customers buying vintage clothing on its website every week. In addition to its Norwich headquarters, where Alfie is based, Dom is about to open a 700 square-foot studio in Manchester, something which he has long dreamt about.

“I’m sure it would be more cost-effective to bring everything under one roof in the future,” laughs Dom. “But he doesn’t want to move up North, and I don’t want to move down South.”

Four years on from his decision to go into business with the stranger he met on the internet, Dom couldn’t be happier. “Me and Alfie are mates now, but we weren’t beforehand. That’s why the dynamic has really worked,” Dom explains. “Because we’re not close mates, it forces us to keep working hard… We don’t get complacent.”

I ask Dom if he has any celebrity customers. He chortles and tells me about one order he received for thousands of pounds, to a Beverley Hills postcode. He wonders aloud whether it might have been for some very famous sisters. "I'm sure they must use fake names to keep their addresses private," he says with a smirk. "Either that or it could be a stylist..."

Advert

Since launching Payday Vintage, Dom is more passionate about fashion than ever before. Not only does he have a constant source of clothes to wear, film content with, and sell, but he has also learned to sew, purchased a sewing machine, and plans to use the studio to produce customised, or “upcycled” pieces to sell through Payday Vintage.

“That’s definitely the next move now, upcycling,” reveals Dom, nodding enthusiastically “With fashion, people just want a piece of clothing that no-one else has. By upcycling we can give someone a different piece of clothing at an affordable price… We want to repurpose items: give it a new life so it doesn’t just go to landfill.”

The main success, from Dom’s perspective, is that he and Alfie have both managed to make a full-time living from their side hustle. Last year they even took on their first full-time employee, to help with running the warehouse, and this year they hope to take on staff in the studio too.

“Especially for the age I’m at, I can’t really believe how big it’s become,” Dom gasps. “I knew it was going to do well, but I didn’t expect it to go so well, so quickly.”

Whether shopping online for a quarter-zip pullover, starting an e-commerce website, or renting out a studio for your fashion house, how you pay online matters. Visa helps protect your online payments meaning you can pay with confidence, and start building that side-hustle into something bigger.

Advert

VISA. A network helping to protect your online payments.

Featured Image Credit: VISA UK

Topics: Fashion, Money, Environment

The LADbible Team
The LADbible Team

Advert

Advert

Advert

Choose your content:

8 hours ago
9 hours ago
10 hours ago
  • Getty Stock ImagesGetty Stock Images
    8 hours ago

    Major warning to Firestick users as world’s largest illegal sports streaming platform is shut down

    The world’s largest illegal sports streaming platform has been shut down

    News
  • Joe Schildhorn/Patrick McMullan via Getty ImagesJoe Schildhorn/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images
    8 hours ago

    Epstein files reveal naked photos of Ghislaine Maxwell in billionaire's home

    Footage from his Florida mansion revealed dozens of photos

    News
  •  Instagram/sofi.co__ Instagram/sofi.co__
    9 hours ago

    Burning Man attendee reported missing days after man found dead in 'pool of blood'

    A man was found in a 'pool of blood' at the Burning Man festival on 30 August

    News
  • Phil Faraone/VMN18/Getty Images For Comedy CentralPhil Faraone/VMN18/Getty Images For Comedy Central
    10 hours ago

    Demi Moore reveals ex-husband Bruce Willis' 'difficult' personality change after dementia diagnosis

    Bruce Willis' ex wife Demi Moore opened up about his health condition on the Oprah podcast

    News
  • Second-hand clothes shoppers given huge warning by scientists over vintage items ‘swimming in germs’
  • Major fashion brands respond as Chinese videos 'exposing true cost' of luxury products go viral
  • Man shows insane reality of £17,000 a night room in the 'world's only seven star hotel'
  • Man who 'left his life savings in a phone booth' and 'quit money' explained how he survived