A mum turned her side-hustle selling clothes on Vinted into an £11k a year "empire" - after losing all her possessions in a house fire. "

Lisa Brown, 49, worked as an interior designer for over a decade, until she began suffering from heart problems.

She began selling clothes on eBay as a way of making money, until a house fire wiped out all her possessions.

After spending eight years re-buying and selling clothes, she's managed to earn £800-a-month from her Vinted sales - enabling her to go on days out with her son, eat at restaurants and order takeaways.

Lisa, from Stansted, Essex, said: "I physically can't go back to work - so Vinted has become my passion. "

"I started afresh after the fire in 2022, which devastated us. "

"Buying and selling are things I enjoy, and they fulfil a need to make money. "

"It's my safety blanket."

After losing her interior design job in 2007, Lisa realised she wouldn't be able to work a full-time job again.

She was living with undiagnosed heart problems - which she now believes is postural tachycardia syndrome (PoTS), an abnormality of the functioning of the autonomic nervous system.

A year later, she had an ablation - a procedure in which tiny catheters cause tiny scars in the heart to block faulty signals - to try and treat it, but she's been unable to go back to work since.

"All I wanted to do was get better," she said. "

"I could only work hours when I had energy to - I really had to start listening to my body."

"This would mean resting and sleeping when I needed to - I couldn't commit to working set hours."

Lisa began selling her old clothes on eBay and for the first nine years, business was "booming."

She really enjoyed selling things second hand, and she could make a living selling clothes, handbags and jewellery.

Having a side-hustle enabled her to live a "normal" life, while working the hours she was able to do. "

"Business was doing really well," Lisa said. "

"I did what I could manage."

"I know I'll always be ruled by my heart condition - but I really enjoyed it."

On January 26, 2016, Lisa and her husband, Paul, 52, a carpenter, arrived home from an evening out while their son, Charles, now nine, was being looked after.

Lisa said she "smelled something funny" coming from the log burner - and investigated in her bedroom upstairs, as she could hear "animal-like scratching sounds." "

"Paul joined me upstairs and opened the door," she said. "

"He opened the loft trap, and could immediately see a fire inside. "

"From there, it was like: ‘Right, get the baby, get out.'"

"We lost everything."

The family lost their possessions in the fire, and their house was burnt out.

A fire investigation team concluded the cause was the flue - which was touching the woodwork, and too close to the electrics.

It's taken eight years for the house to be rebuilt - and Lisa says it's still not finished.

But she's spent the time buying new possessions, "admitting" she's "a bit of a hoarder."

She said: "The fire didn't exactly help with my hoarding issue. "

"We lost everything - I went out, buying for myself a lot."

In 2022, Lisa decided to start up a business on Vinted - selling a number of items she'd bought since the fire.

She quickly learnt a number of tips and tricks to selling as much as she could - and now imparts her knowledge on other sellers.

Within two years, she's managed to turn her small side-hustle into an £11k "empire" - and has turned it into a "constant stream" income of £800-a-month."



Her biggest tips include "never" bundle-selling, and always posting items at a higher price than expected. "

"Always send people who ‘favourite' your item an offer," she said. "

"Price your items higher than you want, so the offer is something you'd accept. "

"I personally think bundling discounts is counterproductive. "

"What I do is, I say: ‘Having a huge clear-out, please see my other listings.' "

"It's a call-to-action, to go and see the rest of my wardrobe."

Lisa's top tips for selling on Vinted -
1. Never bundle items - always say you're doing your own discounts
2. Send people who ‘favourite' your items an offer
3. Build your business up over a period of time
4. Take multiple photos on each listing
5. Relist old items