Loop Vintage
TikTok-fuelled thrift reselling turned into a real Edinburgh shop
- Founder
- Kenji L.
- Location
- Edinburgh
- Founded
- 2024
- Structure
- Ltd
- Revenue
- £128k turnover
- Team
- Founder + 1 part-time
Kenji buys vintage and deadstock from charity shops, car boots and wholesale bales, then sells it through weekly TikTok lives and a small Old Town shop he opened last year.
Background
Kenji was a fashion-and-business graduate working in retail visual-merchandising in Edinburgh. He'd been thrifting personally for years and had an eye for 90s sportswear and Y2K outerwear. He started filming hauls almost as a joke — the algorithm decided otherwise.
The spark
Kenji posted a haul from a Glasgow charity shop on TikTok during his lunch break. It hit 400k views in a week. Comments were almost entirely 'where can I buy this'.
First real sale
He ran his first TikTok live sale from his bedroom with 38 items priced £8-£35. He sold 31 of them in 40 minutes and immediately knew he had a business, not a hobby.
The turning point
At month 6 his accountant told him a sole trader structure wouldn't scale if he wanted a shop lease. He incorporated, opened a Tide account, and started keeping clean monthly P&Ls.
Scaling without overhiring
He signed a small Old Town lease at month 9, kept the lives running twice a week and used the shop for drop-ins and content. The shop now covers its own rent and the lives are pure margin.
Where it is today
Loop Vintage turns over £128k, employs one part-timer for sourcing and content edits, and is hunting a second site in Glasgow.
Timeline
- Feb 2024First viral haul video
400k views. Followed by 3 more in a fortnight. Account 0 → 22k followers.
- Mar 2024First live sale
38 items, 31 sold in 40 min. £640 revenue, ~£430 profit.
- May 2024Quit retail job
Lives averaging £1,200/wk. Sourcing 3 days, filming 2, packing 1.
- Aug 2024Incorporated Loop Vintage Ltd
Tide business account. Xero from day one. Clean monthly P&L.
- Nov 2024Old Town shop lease signed
180 sq ft, £950/mo + rates. Funded from 4 months of retained profit.
- Feb 2025Hired first part-timer
£11/hr × 20 hrs/wk for sourcing trips + content editing.
- Jun 2025Wholesale bale supplier
Switched 60% of stock to Italian deadstock bales. Margin up from 54% to 68%.
Revenue & profit by year
| Period | Revenue | Costs | Profit | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year 1 (2024) | £62,000 | £31,400 | £30,600 | Sole trader Feb–Aug, Ltd from Sep. Shop opened Nov. |
| Year 2 run-rate | £128,000 | £78,200 | £49,800 | Shop rent + 1 part-timer + bale sourcing. |
Challenges & fixes
Problem · First £1,200 wholesale bale arrived 80% mouldy / damaged. Supplier refused refund.
Fix · Switched to a UK-based broker with a 'pre-sort photo' guarantee. Costs 18% more but yield went from 20% to 84%. Net margin improved.
Problem · First Self Assessment flagged because ~30% of stock was bought cash at car boots with no receipts.
Fix · Introduced a £100 daily cash float, a logged purchases spreadsheet with photos, and signed seller declarations for items over £50. Cleared inspection cleanly the second year.
Problem · First two months the shop took ~£140/day Tue-Thu — barely covering staff and rates.
Fix · Started filming TikTok content live from the shop window with 'come visit' CTAs. Footfall doubled within a month and weekday revenue tripled.
The playbook
Two lives a week, 60-90 min each, ~£900 average revenue per live. Higher margin than the shop.
Strict weekly cadence. Sourcing burnout is the #1 cause of resellers folding.
Every item is photographed and queued for content before pricing — content backlog is never a bottleneck.
The shop's job is to make the lives feel real and to capture click-and-collect margin.
“I thought the shop would be the business. The shop is the studio. The lives are the business.”
“Going Ltd was the difference between a side hustle and a landlord taking me seriously.”
“Vintage isn't about hoarding — it's about turning stock over fast enough that the cash never sleeps.”
What worked
- TikTok lives are a real sales channel, not just marketing.
- Going Ltd unlocked the commercial lease he wanted.
- Keeping the shop and the lives as separate P&Ls clarified what was actually profitable.
Kenji’s advice to founders starting today
- Don't open a shop until lives or online cover the rent twice over.
- Keep your cash purchases bulletproof. HMRC will ask.
- Resale is a working-capital game. Don't spend the float on a new till — buy more stock.
- Hire for sourcing before you hire for sales. Sales follow stock.
What’s next
Kenji is opening a second site in Glasgow's Finnieston in spring 2026, hiring a full-time shop manager for Edinburgh, and trialling a £15/mo 'first dibs' membership that gives members 15-minute early access to every live.
The stack
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