Preloved Clothing Store. Swap, shop and save at Samjoco, the new way to buy used! $1.00 per swap or $2.50 without a swap!
My name is Bobbie Kobus. I have been married to my high school sweetheart for 26 years and we have 6 amazing children together.
As a mother of 6, there have always been financial challenges. Working was difficult because I wanted to be home for the children when they needed me, but staying at home made our financial situation worse. So I decided to create a company, a long time dream of mine, where I could bring home enough money to lighten our financial burden and help other families who were struggling too.
So I thought to myself when families are struggling what can I do to help? I don't have money to donate to help them, I can't sell them something and not make any profit, that would not help my families needs and I don't want to sell them something they do not need.
I decided to look at what families truly need; food, clothing, and shelter. The cost of shelter will typically stay the same, so there was not much I could do to help there. Food? I believe that families who are struggling typically change their menus according to what they can afford to spend that week. So that leaves us with clothing. I know I can help people save on clothing but how?
I went to quite a few second hand and consignment stores to see how much their clothing was. I was surprised to see that the cost was so high. There was no way I would be able to purchase these clothes and still fulfill my goal of lifting our financial burden while helping others. So I took some time to really think about how I could do this.
We were getting ready for Church one Sunday and I noticed my son Jacob's pants were too short. I wanted to cry because I knew we could not afford them that week. Then I had my aw-ha moment. I remember watching the movie Robots with my children. The character Big Weld's tagline was "See a need, fill a need". I needed bigger pants and someone else needs smaller pants. That's it! I knew at that moment how I was going to make this business work.
That is how I came up with the trade-in program. For every 3 pieces of clothing that someone sent back that no longer fits their child, and were in "like new" condition, I could give them 5% off their next purchase. Now I had to figure out how to price the items.
After doing an online survey I realized that most people wanted brand name clothing. I decided to check out the competition and started looking at other second-hand clothing websites. I noticed that they charged more for different brands and thought why? these are second-hand clothes.
I decided to do more research. I realized that the majority of the clothing is made of the same material (cotton), made in the same country (China), possibly in the same factories and more likely than not, their children will outgrow them within a few months. The pricing variation did not make any sense to me.
With that being said I decided to charge the same price for every "like new" piece of clothing at the lowest possible cost so I did the following comparative research on Baby bodysuits (onesies):
Tommy Hilfiger $17.95 at CafePress.com
Carter's $6.99 at carters.com
Baby Gap$14.99 at gap.com
The Children's place $9.95 at thechildrensplace.com
I came to the conclusion that $2.95 per piece is fair and reasonable for any brand preloved children's fashion.
