This post was updated Jan. 17 at 10:04 p.m.
Lillian Zhu’s shop is taking the UCLA campus by storm.
Run by the second-year cognitive science student, Lightning Thrift sells second-hand clothing to its 18.7K followers for under-retail prices. According to the shop’s story highlights on Instagram, items are posted with a minimum starting bid for customers, who can propose increasing bids in the comment section. After 24 hours, Zhu will contact the winning bidder, who will be shipped the purchased piece upon receipt of payment, according to the highlights.
“I started sophomore year of high school,” Zhu said. “I was just bored. … I saw on my Explore page that people were selling clothes – then, I got sucked into the whole community.”
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When Zhu first set up her account, she initially sold her clothing that she no longer wore, she said. Later, she would also find inexpensive pieces while shopping specifically to sell, she said. Julianna Ho, a second-year psychobiology student, said Zhu’s shop aims to sell styles that are tailored to the latest teenage fashion trends. With items that span from athleisure to formal dresses, Lightning Thrift’s versatility caters to a range of buyer preferences, Ho added.
“I usually would sell things that I would wear,” Zhu said. “When I go thrifting, the brands that I always pick up are Urban Outfitters, Levi’s, Free People, Lululemon, GymShark, Nike – those kinds of brands … (that) are trendy.”
Zhu said she would use sites such as Poshmark and Depop to search for any and all items she believes have the potential to sell. She then pulls various pieces together to curate collections. In the past, Zhu has centered collections – which mostly feature name-brand apparel – around specific themes, she said. For instance, over winter, Lightning Thrift sells assortments of warmer clothes, such as leggings or sweatshirts, she added, while during the back-to-school season, she sells denim jeans.
Last year, Zhu would lay out clothing on a white-colored surface to take photographs of the pieces, she said. However, she added that after she bought a mirror set-up recently, she now takes pictures of herself wearing the item she plans to sell usually against a plain background. In order to provide her social media feed with a more professional look, Zhu also edits the photographs she takes before posting online, she said.
Zhu said Lightning Thrift has been an accessible outlet to help her friends who also have items they would like to resell. Phoebe Qian, a second-year linguistics and computer science student, said as Zhu’s friend, she has had the opportunity to provide some old items of her own to be sold from Lightning Thrift which enables her to easily remove garments she no longer wears from her closet.
Over the past few years, Zhu has also developed new friendships within the thrift shopping community, finding consistent support from her peers when she needs it, she said. Zhu said she has been able to observe the creativity of others in her online circle to use as inspiration for her own account. She added that by engaging with the community, she is better equipped to discern what might be most popular with customers.
“Being on TikTok, seeing the trends, being on Instagram, looking at what other people are selling and what’s selling really well for them – that’s also helped me get a gauge of what the market is, because obviously, the market is always changing,” Zhu said.
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To determine prices to start the bidding, she mainly considers the original retail value – in addition to the cost of the item when she bought it and the prices shops are selling similar items for, Zhu said. For a lesser-quality item, Zhu said she might start the minimum bid at a lower price. Having shopped at Lightning Thrift before, Qian said she considers the prices Zhu sells at to be reasonable deals, given the retail value of many of the items.
Witnessing the behind-the-scenes of Zhu’s work, Ho said she can tell the diligence Zhu puts into the shop – from taking photos of clothing to creating financial analysis spreadsheets. Qian, who remembers when Zhu had much less of a following than she does today, also said she can tell how much dedication Zhu has committed to Lightning Thrift to be able to make it what it is now.
“She’s already accomplished so much,” Ho said. “Especially being the age we are, it speaks a lot about her marketing skills, entrepreneurship skills, business skills and life skills in general.”
Zhu said she was excited to participate as a vendor in a flea market that Delta Gamma, one of the sororities on campus, was hosting during her freshman year. Although Zhu has not been able to dedicate as much time to operating Lightning Thrift since she got to college, she said she hopes to take part in more live events and opportunities in the future.
“I want to keep this account – I don’t want to go inactive and kill it and lose all of these loyal customers I have,” Zhu said. “I want to keep doing it on the side until maybe in the future, when I have more time or have the resources to be able to put more into it.”
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