She Spent $15,000 on Vintage Purses as a Side Hustle — A Year Later She Quit Her $82,000 Job

Nica Yusay, a lifelong thrifting enthusiast, had spent years developing an eye for finding high-end purses far below retail value, building a personal collection before her fiancé suggested turning the skill into a business. In January 2021 she spent $15,000 on luxury purses to resell on Poshmark and Depop, then posted a TikTok about negotiating prices with customers that went viral, gaining her about 10,000 followers almost immediately (the video has since drawn nearly three million views).

Six months later she launched a Shopify site under the name FashioNica, and by the end of 2021 the side hustle had brought in $300,000 — enough for her to leave her $82,000-a-year job as a digital marketing brand manager for Pieology Pizzeria that February and run the business full time from her home in California. She calls the decision "extremely scary," describing growing up in a single-parent household that left her feeling financially insecure: "This is not a stable job in any way. If you don't even sell one bag, you made zero dollars this week."

By the time she'd built an audience of 137,000 Instagram followers and 115,000 on TikTok, FashioNica was bringing in roughly $1 million in revenue over the course of 2022, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It, earning up to $55,000 on a single "drop." Drops happen weekly, every Wednesday at 7 p.m. Pacific, releasing a new batch of 20 to 30 designer bags priced anywhere from $170 to nearly $19,000 — and can sell out within two minutes, after nearly a week of preparation.

She runs the business on a strict six-day schedule: Mondays for selecting and photographing bags for the upcoming drop, Tuesdays for posting photos and writing descriptions, Wednesdays for the drop itself plus marketing on Instagram Live, Thursdays sourcing new inventory at thrift stores and with vendors, Fridays on shipping labels and her Instagram inbox, and Saturdays packing and shipping orders, with Sundays off. In March she hired her mother and sister to help with shipping, freeing up roughly a full day — time she said she'd rather reinvest in sourcing five to ten additional bags for the next drop than use to rest.

She competes in a luxury resale secondhand market that management consulting firm Bain & Company estimated at $33 billion in 2021, the same year competitor The RealReal reported nearly $1.5 billion in sales; her edge, she says, is a trained eye for bag styles that have held their value over time, with some pieces in her inventory up to 30 years old. Her team now includes her mother, her sister, and a part-time photographer, plus a vendor who takes a cut based on how many bags they source for her. She says her five-year goal is to move FashioNica into its own warehouse facility with a full staff, rather than running it out of her house.