How my clothing resale business brings in millions a year
Rick Senko was “broke” when he started reselling used items on eBay; He was a recently unemployed single father trying to earn enough money to support his 5-year-old son.
This was 2008, and the first item he sold — a cellphone he bought on Craigslist for $35 and flipped for $75 on eBay — says Senko, now 41 and living in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, felt like he’d discovered “a glitch in the Matrix.”
Realizing that he could make a tidy profit by selling used items online, he went all out. He studied brands and sales trends, exploited market inefficiencies, and often worked up to 20 hours a day “just going to the flea market, going to the thrift store, building relationships, studying my craft, learning, listing.” [items] every day,” he says.
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What started as a way to make a living slowly grew into a reselling empire, bringing in millions of dollars in sales annually as one of eBay’s best-selling items. In 2023, Senko started a wholesale business called Technsports, selling up to 5,000 used clothes per day to other professional sellers. Technsports generated more than $6.5 million in revenue in 2024, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.
Senko says Technsports is profitable overall, with a profit margin of about 50% per product sold.
“I haven’t taken a day off in almost 20 years,” says Senko. “It’s not lost on how lucky I am. But it’s also taken a tremendous amount of work, a tremendous amount of commitment, and a tremendous amount of sacrifice to get from where I came from to living a very, very lucky life, selling millions of dollars a year.”
‘You don’t need a lot of money to get started’
After becoming a father at 18, Senko worked as a CVS photo lab supervisor for five years to support himself and his son. He went to a vocational school to get a computer repair certificate, which landed him a better-paying job at Circuit City in the fall of 2008.
Two weeks later, Circuit City filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Senko became unemployed during the Great Recession and was unable to find a new job. Then his mobile phone broke down. “I didn’t have a lot of money, so I went to eBay to buy a second-hand car. [phone]” says Senko.
He saw one listed on eBay for $75, and then he saw the same model phone listed on Craigslist for $35. It was a “lightbulb moment” that seemed too good to be true, and he says: “I’d double the money. I’d get a free phone and then I’d get my original $35 back.”
Senko says he bought the phone on Craigslist and sold it on eBay for $70. He used his profits to buy another phone from Craigslist and used it on eBay, doubling his money again. “I’ve been doing this ever since, almost 20 years. Rinse and repeat,” says Senko. “You don’t need a lot of money to get started. You don’t need a lot of knowledge to get started. You just get started.”
He says he initially focused on electronics; from phones to video games, to any low-priced product, broken or working, that he could resell within a few days. As he learned which products were selling better than others and where to find in-demand stock, he says his earnings increased significantly, topping $100,000 in 2010.
It was around that time, he says, that he began shifting his focus to second-hand clothing, which required much less “customer support.” “A t-shirt doesn’t break in the mail.” Clothing, he notes, requires the level of research that Senko wants to do: While most people understand that electronics can be valuable, “not everyone knows that a particular Polo Ralph Lauren shirt can be worth more [than a gaming console] … Most of the time these [clothes] It gets thrown into piles on the floor at the flea market.”
Senko says she starts leaving home before dawn and spends most of each day picking up piles of used clothes at South Florida thrift stores, consignment shops, flea markets and garage sales. He adds that reselling gives him freedom and control over his schedule and taps into his competitive desire to win at all costs.
‘I’m after you every day’
Over time, Senko built relationships with sellers at flea markets and thrift stores to enable him to take the first step in selecting new stock. He listed and sold about 250 items a day, or tens of thousands of items each year, and hired up to five contract employees at a time to help him photograph items, list them online, and handle shipping.
According to documents, he generated more than $2.5 million from eBay sales in 2023; this figure was $500,000 in 2017. But he says he feels like he’s reached a ceiling on how many items he can list and sell per day.
So that same year, Senko decided to change its business model. Instead of buying select pieces and selling each one individually online, she began buying clothes in bulk and selling them wholesale to other sellers who were willing to spend time carefully inspecting each batch. He says customers sometimes buy up to 1,000 items a week.
“They process, fulfill, and sell one by one on eBay,” Senko explains. “The most valuable asset for my business has become my inventory. I am more profitable by selling more items at a smaller margin.”
The smaller time commitment also helped Senko fulfill a promise he made to his wife, whom he met during his brief time at Circuit City: They would work as hard as they could until his son graduated from high school, and then pursue early retirement. “[We wanted to] I will be able to go on a 50-year vacation,” says Senko.
He and his wife finally got permission last year to travel the country and visit places like New York, California and Las Vegas. “We are starting to enjoy the fruits of labor,” he says. But he says he is reluctant to retire: “To say I’ve been on a 50-year holiday mentally? I’m not even close to that.”
Senko says it’s hard for him to stop his competitive drive, especially when he knows there’s money to be made and he has the tools and expertise to do it. If he continues to work on Technsports, he says, he can try to ensure that his current level of financial stability continues for the rest of his life.
“I’m after it every day. ‘Cause when you unlock it [that] The ability to multiply money, take $5 and put it on eBay and sell something and get $25 back, how can you relax?” he says. “Have I worked too hard? Absolutely… I needed to expand the business. And ultimately I had to be the best.”
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