Style, sweat and survival: Inside Kenya’s online thrift store hustle

AI illustration of a woman marketing her online thrift store

‎In an interview at a small café in Pangani, 28-year-old Ruth Achieng sat while her phone buzzed nonstop with Instagram notifications.

Orders, DMs, and tags kept rolling in, proof that her online thrift store has become a sensation. 

‎Yet, as she leaned forward to share her story, she laughed softly and admitted, “This was never part of the plan.” 

‎When she graduated with a degree in Business Administration, she imagined herself working in a shiny Nairobi office, heels clicking against polished floors.

Instead, three years later, she was still at home with nothing but rejection emails and a folder of ‘we’ll get back to you’ letters. 

‎“My email inbox was a graveyard of polite rejections,” Achieng said.

‎In Kisumu, survival was slipping through her family’s fingers. The once-reliable farm had turned into cracked soil and shrinking harvests, barely enough to keep food on the table.

Meanwhile, her siblings’ school fees loomed like storm clouds, threatening to cut short their dreams. And with every phone call from home, her chest tightened.

‎“The unspoken message from those calls was always the same- find a way, before it’s too late,” Achieng said.

‎One evening, scrolling through Instagram on borrowed WiFi, she stumbled on something that sparked an idea- thrift store pages.

Young people were buying and selling second-hand clothes online, and the demand was wild.

Comment sections overflowed with ‘is this still available?’ and ‘DM sent!’

That night, she decided that if the doors to employment would not open, she would build her own.

‎With just her savings of Sh2,000, she went to Nairobi’s Gikomba Market and bought her first sack of thrift clothes. It was not glamorous.

“The clothes smelled of sea freight, some had missing zippers, others were outdated," Achieng stated.

However, she scrubbed, ironed and styled each piece until it looked brand new. She modeled the outfits herself against a cracked wall, edited the pictures with free apps, and launched her Instagram page- Chiq Thrift.

‎“The vision was to have an online thrift store that was affordable for every Nairobi baddie who came across my page,” Achieng said.

‎The first weeks were painfully slow. Likes came from cousins, and most posts went unnoticed. Nevertheless, she was not ready to throw in the towel. She leaned into storytelling.

Through spending countless sleepless nights on research, she started posting daily, creating fun outfit ideas, and recording reels of herself transforming ordinary pieces into trendy looks.

Then came her breakthrough- a short reel where she turned an oversized shirt into a chic off-shoulder dress. 

‎“It went viral- my followers doubled in a week, and so did my sales,” Achieng said with a nostalgic smile.

‎That viral moment flipped the script. Chiq Thrift was no longer just a hustle to get by, it was evolving into something bigger.

With every shilling earned, she poured it back in larger bales from Gikomba, faster deliveries through boda boda riders, and sharper content online.

Soon, her customers were not just buying clothes- they were proudly tagging her page, showing off their thrifted treasures. What she was building went beyond fashion.

‎“Today, I have two women employees who once faced the same hopeless job hunt I did,” Achieng remarked.

‎“With my store thriving, I can now introduce myself not as ‘unemployed’, but as the CEO of Chiq Thrift,” Achieng added.

But not every thrift entrepreneur stumbled into the business by chance; some were driven by passion from the very beginning.

Speaking from Upper Hill, 32-year-old Kevin Musili revealed that when most boys his age were chasing footballs, he was chasing fabrics.

He would sit cross-legged on the floor of his mother’s bedroom, watching her glide into dresses before heading to a runway show.

“She was a model in Nairobi’s golden era of fashion- her closet a rainbow of textures, cuts, and shimmering jewelry," Musili said. 

‎“From her, I inherited not just my sharp cheekbones but also an unshakable passion for style,” Musili added.

‎His father, however, had other plans. “Fashion is not for men,” Musili’s father would say.

‎Pushing him toward mathematics, physics, and all the safe subjects that promised ‘serious’ careers, his father ultimately decided that engineering would be the best path.

Musili obeyed, tucking away his sketchbooks filled with designs for jackets, cufflinks, and bold shirts.

He graduated top of his class in engineering, smiling in his graduation photos while silently wondering if he had just stitched himself into the wrong life.

‎“However, passion has a way of haunting you,’ Musili voiced candidly.

‎While working his nine-to-five, he noticed that something was missing in Kenya’s fashion style. While Nairobi’s men dressed decently, they were rarely willing to explore more stylish options.

Suits were stiff, shirts predictable, jewelry almost nonexistent. The city’s women had countless boutiques and thrift stores brimming with variety, but men? A desert. That gap nagged at him.

‎“One random evening, with my mother’s old jewelry box beside me, I decided to act,” Musili stated.

‎He built an online thrift store, Vogue on Fleek, at first just a simple Instagram page.

He curated handpicked men’s blazers with character, statement rings, sleek watches, and shirts that whispered ‘upper class’ without shouting. 

‎“Ultimately, I wanted my clients to feel like a Kenyan version of James Bond or Idris Elba- stylish yet sophisticated,” Musili explained.

‎He modeled them himself, captioning posts with a mix of confidence and wit. Slowly, the orders trickled in.

University students wanting to stand out, young executives hungry for style, and even grooms searching for something unique for their weddings quickly became his clientele. 

‎What started as a side hustle grew into a brand. His thrift store blurred the line between thrift and luxury, giving Kenyan men the green light to express themselves through fashion unapologetically.

‎“Forget the engineer label- I am now putting crowns on Kenyan men one outfit at a time,” Musili remarked.

‎His father never admitted it, but sometimes, Musili catches him lingering on the store’s page, eyes tracing the comments from happy customers. 

‎“My mother? She beams every time she sees her son styling jewelry with the same flair she once did on the runway,” Musili expressed proudly.

‎However, all is not sunshine and rainbows in the online thrift store business. Just like any business, online thrift store owners have their fair share of challenges.

For 26-year-old Jasmine Wambui, an online thrift store owner in Kasarani, the toughest chapter of her journey was not about sales or style- it was a storm she never saw coming. 

‎When she opened her online thrift store, Curvy Queens, at 24, she was more than just a seller- she was her own model. She would style the fits, strike a pose, and post. At first, sales trickled in, and so did compliments. However, soon, the internet turned cruel.

“Strangers picked at her body, ridiculing her for being plus-size while modelling her own clothes," Wambui grimaced.

‎“The comments cut deeper- mocking, shaming, trying to shrink my confidence,” Wambui added.

‎For a while, it worked. Nights ended with her phone in her hand and tears on her pillow. She even drafted a farewell post, ready to quit. Depression nearly stole the dream she had stitched together piece by piece.

‎Nevertheless, she did not fold. Looking for motivation from within, she reminded herself why she started- to make fashion accessible and inclusive.

Slowly, she grew a tougher skin. Every hateful comment became proof that she was visible, that she was shaking norms. 

‎“I learned to delete, block, scroll past, and most importantly, to keep showing up,” Wambui said.

‎Today, her store thrives not just because she sells clothes, but because she wears resilience. 

‎“In every outfit, I tell my customers- style has no size,” Wambui reiterated. 

‎At 25, Moses Mbogo, a Thika resident, also faced his own mountain in his online thrift store business. However, while Wambui’s scars came from online ridicule, his trial was cut from a different cloth.

At the crack of dawn in Nairobi, when the city was still yawning itself awake, he was already on the move, weaving through shouting hawkers in Gikomba Market.

‎“My motivation every day was finding the best quality of vintage but stylish clothes to sell in my online thrift store, Vintage Vibez,” Mbogo explained.

‎However, the market was not always welcoming. Sellers sized him up, amused that a man was picking out blouses and skirts.

They hiked prices, convinced he would not know the difference between polyester and silk. 

‎“Some even tried passing off worn-out items as premium finds,” Mbogo said.

‎Nevertheless, he was not just another buyer- he was an early riser who had wrestled his way through damp mornings and pushy crowds for years.

He knew fabrics by touch, stitching by glance, and quality by instinct. 

‎“I remember when a seller tried to pass polyester as silk, I immediately flipped the garment inside out and exposed the lie,” Mbogo said.

‎“Heated exchanges were part of the game- voices rose, hands gestured, and insults flew,” Mbogo added.

‎But he never backed down. He was not in the business of being outsmarted.

The more he returned, the harder it became for sellers to scam him. Word spread quickly in the market.

‎“This guy knows his clothes- try to trick him, you’ll embarrass yourself,” the sellers in Gikomba would say.

‎Soon, I was not just selling thrift clothes- I was rewriting the rules of who could thrive in the world of fashion reselling,” Mbogo emphasized.

In the end, the online thrift hustle is stitched together by more than fabric; it’s stitched with sweat, survival, and style.

For Achieng, it was survival; for Musili, passion; for Wambui, resilience; for Mbogo, grit.

Their stories remind us that fashion is not just about what you wear, but about the battles you fight to keep the dream alive.

Anyone can flip clothes, but turning secondhand into gold takes hustle in your veins and fire in your gut.