Rosie Carroll is the owner of Nifty Markets, a vintage consignment store and flea market in Ōtautahi Christchurch that’s painted bright pink, and a Virgo. She writes about what she’s learned after 12-months full-time in the retail business – in a year when retail has been challenging.

For as long as I can remember I have wanted to have my own business, moreso my own store. I think I have always been this way – my earliest business was setting up a table at the end of my driveway, selling flowers I had picked from my neighbours’ gardens.

I started my business, The Nifty Markets, a flea market in Ōtautahi in 2018. I ran the markets as a creative outlet, on the side of working full-time for four years. It was a way to fill my cup. In 2022 I made the decision to leave my job and turn Nifty into a consignment store, a space where we would also run the flea markets.

Although I studied business and have always wanted to have my own store, I never thought I possessed the ability to actually open one. It felt too big. And wasn’t e-commerce the way to go now? Doesn’t brick and mortar have too many overheads? 

I decided to do it anyway. And in October, the store turned one. I wanted to write down some of the things I have learned in the last year – things that I might have found helpful to read at the start of my journey.

It may sound corny but you have to believe in yourself and your vision before anyone else does. Back yourself. 

Start with baby steps. Once the seed of opening a store was planted, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Maybe the dream was possible. So I planned for a year before opening, I wrote everything down, and tried to plan for every possibility. 

Ask people for help. I talked to a lot of people in the planning stages. I approached people that I knew, and a lot that I barely knew. I asked if they knew of any spaces going, if they had tips to share, and so on. I found that many people are willing to help or share their advice. The worst thing someone will say is no. 

Start imperfectly. I had a clear vision of what the store ‘should’ look like. I had non-negotiables that I felt just had to be done. As I got closer to opening, it was becoming clear that some of those things just weren’t going to happen. I had to realise that, unless I had an unlimited budget, it wasn’t going to be perfect – and I had to be okay with that (easier said than done, as a Virgo, and control freak). 

Starting imperfectly is better than not starting at all, and most of those things that I was worried about would never get noticed by anyone but me. 

It’s going to feel scary. When I started getting close to making the final decision of leaving my job, I felt physically sick –  the thought of leaving my comfortable job, and with a recession looming, was enough to keep me up at night for weeks. But I realised that even though I was scared, I still wanted to do it. And once I made that decision, I could sleep again. This thing was happening, and all I could do was move towards it. 

Listen to your intuition. I had people tell me it wouldn’t work; people asked, ‘aren’t there enough secondhand clothing stores out there already?’ (my answer is always no). I had a gut feeling about the store, and I decided to trust it. It can be hard to explain to logical thinkers that you ‘just have a good feeling’ about your business idea. 

Transitioning from an employee to an employer is a funny thing. Sometimes when I make a mistake, I get a sick feeling in my stomach, worried that my boss is going to come around the corner and tell me off. Then I remember that, that’s me. I’m my boss. 

Stop trying to do everything yourself. Bring in people who are good at the things you aren’t. One day you’re at uni failing accounting and the next day you’re a business owner. I am so thankful for my accountant – I never thought I would be doing my own GST returns (it sounds so much scarier than it is) but here I am!

And hiring my first employee was so incredibly worth it. I had been working on Nifty by myself for so long, and I now had someone to bounce ideas off of, and someone who could see gaps where I wasn’t seeing them. My family and friends probably breathed a collective sigh of relief when I had someone else to rely on for business chats. 

When you start working seven days a week, you have created a monster. This is a piece of advice someone gave me before I opened and although it sounds dramatic, it is so true for me. I try really hard to take at least one day off a week. The weeks when I do work for seven days, I notice myself becoming more irritable and less myself. 

Days off are not just for your own good, but for those around you. It can feel hard to relax, but turn your phone off and take a day for yourself. 

You can’t stop yourself from feeling fear. Even after I got over the initial fear of leaving my comfortable job to open a clothing store, new fears came up – this honestly kind of surprised me. I thought I had climbed the biggest hurdle by starting the business. I thought I had done the big thing and became fearless. 

I have learned that people who take a leap of faith haven’t developed a lack of fear, it’s just that they feel the fear and decide to do the thing anyway. 

I have learned, or am still learning, that just because you are scared of doing something new, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it – fear almost held me back from writing this. I pitched this story, and then I let my fear convince myself that I was unqualified to give advice or that no one wanted to hear from me. So I’m writing this, hoping that I got over this fear and sent the article through.