Tail buying business?

[Imogen Finnly]

Ihad a dream last night and it sprung up a cool idea! What if someone started a business where they bought old tails and monofins from people, refurbished them and sold them? I think that would be pretty cool. Just an idea haha

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[deepblue]

It is a good idea. Like a second-hand sports shop for mers. :D

[Imogen Finnly]

Yeah! In my dream is suggested a hand delivery pick up system but that wouldn't make sense if it was nation wide haha

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[Arella]

Thats actually a really clever idea...

[Imogen Finnly]

I think it would be a fun thing to do, but I don't really know much of way of repairs and stuff. But someone has to do this!!:D

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[MermanZen]

I love the idea x)

[Mermaid Lorelei]

It's a little like Fifi's program, except she uses them for photography instead of selling them afterwords. It's a good idea.

[Mermaid Dottie]

I agree. I've thought about making tails, buying up old ones and fixing them, and maybe doing a photobooth type of thing with them at the fairs. Costume only tails, of course.

[Imogen Finnly]

I seriously want someone to do this!

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[tealmermaid]

n/a

[Fifi Tigg]

I was thinking about something like this. There would be a good market for it.

Either that or a props for rent type thing to do mer-photos. I have several friends who are professional photographers; I wonder if they have the right clientele.

When I added a couple of tails to my photography business 'Peppi Portraits' I wasn't sure how it would go, but now I have a separate business just for mermaids 'Busselton Mermaids' and I am booked months in advance and have started investing in adult size tails as well because there is a huge call for it! :yay:

[Imogen Finnly]

That's great!:D I think spiffed up second hand tails and monofins would be so great, like to sell to people who only do those kinda photo shoots

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[Anahita]

That'd be a pretty cool idea. I'd be worried though with some of the level of repairs that some tails might need... You've got to turn a profit somehow, and if you sink too much into purchasing and fixing a tail, esp. a used one, you could really easily go into the red.

I only know this because I used to do something like this for historical costumes - buy either extant (authentic, from the era) garments and restore them so that they were wearable, or purchase old reproduction clothes and refurbish them so that they looked like new/were more historically accurate... It got very pricey, very fast, and I STILL have loads of extant and repro garments that either were unable to be restored, or cost so much to restore than no one wanted to purchase them.... :(

[Imogen Finnly]

Woah. That's nuts. Not even on like ebay or anything?

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[Anahita]

Not only on eBay, but even on Etsy.

The problem is that if you buy something for $100, then you put in another $100 to repair it, that's already $200 to break even on the initial cost.... And repairing it is very labor intensive, as it's often a delicate and difficult operation because of the age of the materials. So there's house of work that do need to be compensated for as well. Add into it people are just getting huge - so I buy something that I think is a wearable size (technically everything is a wearable size - after all, someone wore it once, right?) because it's what I consider larger, and then everyone complains it's too small. :( And people don't want to spend $300-400 on something they can't fit into.

[Imogen Finnly]

Wow. I never thought of it that way. It seems like its really labor intensive, but I feel like it would be rewarding to see the finished product. What if you tried selling it to people who specialize in old things like that? Like antique-enthusiasts ?

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[Anahita]

Well, that's the target audience in a way. Living Historians and reenactors are the people I was doing it for, as they're the people who need the clothes repaired so that they can be worn. Otherwise restorative work would be less difficult. I still do repairs when people bring me the dress and pay for only the repairs - but I've stopped actually purchasing the things to repair myself unless I intend to wear it. It's a bit of a more difficult and different audience than general antique enthusiasts, because those are the people who just want a pristine looking gown, and in doing so, don't really care the size (as they use them for displays instead of actually wearing them). Living historians need the stuff to be wearable, large, able to be used frequently... and apparently dirt cheap. :p

[Imogen Finnly]

So now you only do it for friends or for yourself or something?

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[Anahita]

Yeah, pretty much just for people I know/are in the same groups as me.