Our First Whatnot Show

We will never forget our first Whatnot show.

Starting with what we had

It was October 23, 2023. Jacob and I were newlyweds living in a 600 square foot apartment, both working full time and saving every penny we could to build our first home. We were already buying and selling vintage on the side when Jacob found Whatnot through other resellers. We watched a few shows together and thought, “We could totally do this, especially together.”

We had recently found a collection of vintage salt and pepper shakers at a garage sale, so we decided those would be perfect for our first show. We put them on little trays with a few other pieces, used our phone as the camera and pulled over a floor lamp for some extra light. We didn’t show our faces back then either, which was a lot more common on Whatnot at the time. The camera stayed focused on the vintage while we talked from behind it. We didn’t have some big setup. We just used what we had and went live.

A $6.71 payout—and a shipping lesson

About four people were watching. My mom, my brother Chris and one of Jacob’s coworkers made up most of the room, along with a few people we didn’t know who popped in and out.

We sold four things to two buyers that night. One woman bought something for $1, knew it was worth more and sent us a $5 tip. Our final payout was $6.71.

And we were excited about it! We were brand new. We could have sold absolutely nothing, and four things had sold.

Shipping was where we really had some learning to do. We took our four packages to the post office and spent more than three times what we had made because we shipped everything the most expensive way possible. We went into the show hoping to make a little extra money toward our bills and managed to lose money instead.

We still wanted to do another show.

Growing one show at a time

Almost three years later, the home we were saving for back then is the home we run House of Coop from today. Our flex room is our Whatnot studio, Jacob ships from the garage, and a show that had about four people watching can now have 400 or 500 people hanging out with us.

I love sharing this part of our story because we started where so many people start. We didn’t expect ourselves to be great at something we had just started, and we weren’t hard on ourselves because four people showed up or we only made $6.71. We had fun together, did the best we could with what we had and were excited that we had actually sold something.

Then we did another show. We learned a little more, changed things that weren’t working and kept improving as we went. We stayed focused on getting better instead of expecting everything to happen right away.

Give your beginning a chance

I hope someone who is at the beginning of something reads this and gives themselves that same chance. Your first attempt doesn’t have to look anything like what you hope it becomes one day. Ours definitely didn’t.

We’ll never forget that first show. 💜