Selling children's clothes and toys online

A mother asks whether it'll fit her three-year-old. The tag says 3T. It won't.

Three habits carry this whole trade. Sell by the child's height in centimetres and by flat measurements, never by an age on a label. Grade second-hand condition in the same four words every time and photograph every flaw you named. And stay out of the categories where you can't verify that a used item is still safe, which is a shorter list than people think and a firmer one than people like. A ₱200 preloved dress with three measurements in the listing gets returned about as often as never; the same dress listed as "3-4 years" comes back constantly.

Everything below is those three habits, plus what the money looks like.

Ask for height, never age

A three-year-old in Cagayan de Oro can be 88cm or 102cm, and both mothers will tell you "three years old". Age is not a size. It's a rough guess made by a factory in another country about a child it has never met.

So when someone asks whether something fits, the reply is one question: how tall is she, in centimetres? Most parents know, and the ones who don't will go and check against a wall, which takes them ninety seconds and saves you a return.

There's a shortcut hiding in the ukay-ukay bales, and it's worth knowing. Japanese and Korean children's labels are already in centimetres. A tag reading 110 means the garment is cut for a child around 110cm tall, and that's a far more useful number than any 3T ever printed. When you have those pieces, put the number straight into the listing title, because the parents who've bought preloved before know exactly what it means.

For everything else, build a translation table once and reuse it forever:

Height	Commonly labelled	Also seen as
80 to 90cm	12 to 18 months	90 (JP/KR)
90 to 100cm	2 to 3 years, 2T	100
100 to 110cm	3 to 4 years, 4T	110
110 to 120cm	5 to 6 years	120
120 to 130cm	7 to 8 years	130

Treat that as a starting point, not gospel, because brands run big and small and a 4T from one label is a 3T from another. It's a way to sort a pile fast, not a substitute for measuring.

The measurements to publish, and how to take them

Lay the garment flat on the floor. Don't stretch it. Measure in centimetres, because that's what parents use here, and put the numbers in every single listing.

For tops, dresses and jackets:

• Chest, straight across from armpit seam to armpit seam
• Length, from the top of the shoulder seam straight down to the hem
• Shoulder, seam to seam across the back
• Sleeve, shoulder seam to cuff

For bottoms:

• Waist flat, across the top with any button fastened
• Inseam, crotch seam to the bottom of the leg
• Total length, waistband to hem
• Rise, crotch seam to the top of the waistband at the front, which is the number that decides whether it fits a chunky toddler

Four numbers per item, thirty seconds with a tape once you have a rhythm. Then add one sentence of interpretation, because parents are not tailors: "Chest 32cm, length 44cm. Fits a child around 100 to 105cm, roomy rather than fitted."

That sentence is what converts. The numbers are what stops the argument afterwards.

If you're selling the same style in several sizes and colours, structuring that as options inside one product rather than fifteen separate listings saves you an enormous amount of admin, and there's a method for it in how to handle sizes and variants.

Grading second-hand kids' clothes so nobody argues

Use four words. The same four, every time, until your buyers know what they mean without asking.

• Like new. No visible flaws. Possibly never worn. Say if the tags are still on.
• Very good. Washed and worn, nothing visible at arm's length.
• Good. Light pilling, slight fade, or one small mark, named and photographed.
• With flaw, priced down. A real flaw, described exactly, sold cheap on purpose.

Then check the things that go wrong on children's clothes specifically, which are not the things that go wrong on adult clothes:

• Knees. On trousers and leggings, always the knees. Thinning shows when you hold them to the light and not before.
• The front of the chest. Food, milk, formula. Old stains that were washed but never quite left.
• Necklines. Stretched from being pulled over a head three hundred times. A stretched neck makes a good top look tired.
• Every snap on the crotch of a onesie. A missing snap is invisible when the garment is folded and it's the first thing a mother finds. Fasten every one, all the way along, before you list it.
• Printed graphics. Cracked or peeling prints don't get better and they photograph badly.
• Waistband elastic. Pull it. If it doesn't come back, the garment is finished.
• Name tags in marker. Very common on school uniforms and hand-me-downs. Not a dealbreaker, absolutely something to photograph.

Write the specific flaw in plain words in the description, with the photo number: "Small faded mark on the left sleeve, photo 4. Doesn't show much when worn." That sentence costs you nothing and earns you the benefit of the doubt on the next twenty items. A flaw you photographed is part of the listing. A flaw you didn't is a refund, and the same principle applies to any resale clothing, worked through further in how to sell thrift clothes online.

Wash and press before you photograph. Always. A pressed garment photographs as clothing; an unpressed one photographs as second-hand clothing, and those are two different prices for the same dress.

Second-hand toys, and what "complete" actually means

Toys are harder than clothes, because a toy can look perfect and be useless.

Before you list anything:

Count the pieces. Puzzles, block sets, play kitchens with accessories, board games. Count them against the box, and if you can't, say how many are actually there. "38 pieces, box says 40" is an honest listing. "Complete" when it isn't is a return.

Check the battery compartment. Open it. Is the cover present? Battery covers go missing and they are essentially unreplaceable, and a compartment that won't close properly is a problem for anyone with a small child in the house. Are the contacts corroded green from batteries left inside for two years? That's often unfixable.

Make it work. Put fresh batteries in and confirm it does what it's supposed to do. Film five seconds of it working and put the video in the listing.

Clean it properly. Hard plastic gets a wash and a wipe and a full air dry. Plush toys go in a mesh laundry bag on a gentle wash and then dry completely, all the way through, because a damp stuffed toy in a plastic parcel arrives smelling of mildew.

Look for the mould marks inside plush and bath toys. Squeezy bath toys with a hole in the bottom hold water and grow things inside. Squeeze one over a tissue. If anything comes out, don't sell it.

Then say what's missing, out loud, in the title if it's significant. "Wooden train set, 27 pieces, one carriage missing a wheel" sells fine at the right price. The same set sold as complete comes back.

The safety categories to leave alone

This is the part where being cautious costs you a little money and protects everything else.

There are principles that apply almost everywhere, and there are rules that are specific to where you are. The rules are not something to take from an article. Look up what your own country's product standards and consumer protection authorities publish, and if you're importing new stock to sell, find out what applies to imported toys before you order a carton, because the answer can change what you're allowed to land and how it has to be labelled. That's a phone call and a website, once.

The principles are more portable, and they're worth stating:

Small parts and small children. The near-universal line is that anything with pieces small enough to be swallowed isn't suitable for children under about three. If a toy has small parts, say so in the listing regardless of what the box says, and don't describe it as suitable for a baby.

Button batteries. Small coin cells are a serious ingestion hazard and the compartments on children's items are usually meant to need a tool to open. If a battery compartment on a used toy pops open with a fingernail, don't sell that toy. This one is worth being inflexible about.

Cords and drawstrings around the neck. Drawstrings at the neck and hood of children's clothing are restricted or banned in several markets because of the strangulation risk. Either remove them before listing, or don't list the item. The same caution applies to long cords on toys and to anything with a loop that can go over a head.

The categories where you can't verify history. Car seats, bicycle and sports helmets, cots and cribs, sleep positioners, baby carriers and walkers. A used car seat may have been in a crash you can't see. A used helmet may have taken an impact that already used up its protection. A cot may have been recalled or modified or be missing a fitting. You cannot check any of that from a photo, and the sellers who run this trade well simply don't touch those categories. That's the right call and it's free to make.

Recalls. Before you resell a branded toy in any quantity, search the brand plus the word recall. Recalled items circulate in second-hand channels for years after they've been pulled, and a recall notice is public and easy to find.

None of that is legal advice and none of it is a substitute for the rules where you live. It's the floor, not the ceiling.

Bundles are the business, because ₱180 items are not

The arithmetic problem in preloved children's clothing is that the items are cheap and the shipping is not.

A single top at ₱180 with ₱90 of shipping is an order where the courier earns a third of the transaction. Do that fifty times a month and you've worked very hard for very little.

So sell in bundles, and design the shop around them:

Offer	Price	Why it works
Single item	₱180 to ₱350	The entry point, rarely the profit
Any 5 items	₱750	Same parcel, four times the revenue
Size bundle, 10 pieces for one age	₱1,300	Solves a whole season for one child
Free shipping over ₱1,000	—	The threshold does the work for you

The size bundle is the one people underuse. A parent whose child has just outgrown everything doesn't want one top, they want ten pieces that fit right now. Sort a bundle by height range, photograph it laid out together, list the total flat measurements, and price it as one product. It moves stock you'd otherwise photograph individually for hours.

That's also the answer to the plain, unbranded, hard-to-photograph pieces that fill every bale. Don't spend fifteen minutes listing a ₱120 plain shirt. Bundle it.

COD, GCash and how the money actually moves

Cash on delivery is the default expectation here and you should offer it. Buyers who have never met you are far more willing to order when they pay at the door, and refusing COD outright costs you real sales.

Understand what it costs when it goes wrong. On a ₱250 order, a refusal means you've paid the courier out and back, which can easily be ₱180 of a ₱250 sale, and the item has been out of your hands for four days. On one-of-one preloved stock, that's not an inconvenience, it's a stockout.

Two things reduce refusals more than anything else. Confirm the measurements in the chat before you dispatch: "Chest is 32cm, please check it against a shirt she already wears, then I'll send." One message. And set a minimum order value for COD, so a refusal never costs more than the sale was worth. The full economics of running COD as a small seller, including how to track what's actually been collected, are in cash on delivery for small sellers.

Here's the honest limitation. Sailo has no GCash rail. There is no e-wallet payment button, and there won't be one, because it doesn't exist in the product. What Sailo has is a bank transfer option with a free-text instructions field, and plenty of sellers here put their GCash number and name in that field so the buyer sees exactly what to do at checkout. That works, and it's fair to call it a workaround rather than a feature. The catalogue, the options and the address all arrive properly written; the money moves entirely outside Sailo, and Sailo takes nothing on it.

The other half is confirmation. Sailo can't tell you a payment landed, because it never sees it. You check, and you mark the order paid. Ten minutes each morning. The wider picture of how buyers here expect to pay and what a shop needs to look like to earn a first order is in selling online in the Philippines.

Photographing small clothes fast

You have a hundred items and each one is worth ₱200. You cannot spend fifteen minutes on each.

Set up once and don't move it. A plain sheet on the floor near a window, ceiling lights off, phone directly overhead. Then work in batches: press ten items, shoot all ten, measure all ten, write all ten. Doing one item end to end is roughly twice as slow and feels faster.

Four frames per item is enough:

1. Whole garment, front, flat and square. No artful angles.
2. Back, if there's anything to see.
3. The label, showing brand and size. Proof you have it in your hand.
4. Any flaw, close, with a coin for scale.

For a bundle, one overhead shot of everything laid out together plus one close-up of the best two pieces. The flat-lay technique in detail, including how to make a wrinkled garment look like clothing, is in photographing clothes without a model.

Worked example: Jen, Cagayan de Oro

Jen sells preloved children's clothes from home, mostly Japanese and Korean ukay with some branded pieces.

She buys a bale of children's clothing at ₱4,500. From it she gets roughly 120 pieces she'll actually sell, so about ₱38 a piece before washing, and closer to ₱55 once she's counted detergent, hangers, poly mailers and the trip to the market.

She lists about 60 items individually at ₱180 to ₱420, and bundles the remaining 60 into twelve five-piece packs at ₱750.

A good month: 38 individual sales averaging ₱260, so ₱9,880, plus 9 bundles at ₱750, so ₱6,750. Call it ₱16,600 on stock that cost her about ₱6,600 landed and washed. Shipping is mostly paid by buyers, but she absorbs maybe ₱900 across free-shipping orders and two COD refusals.

That's around ₱9,000 clear on a bale, across roughly three weeks of evenings.

Two things she changed. She stopped listing anything under ₱150 individually and put it all into bundles, which cut her listing hours by about a third and didn't reduce her revenue at all. And she started asking every buyer for the child's height before confirming an order, instead of after. Her returns went from four or five a month to about one.

The third thing she did was stop selling used baby carriers and walkers, which had been decent sellers. She'd had one arrive with a cracked plastic clip that she hadn't spotted, and she decided the category wasn't worth the risk of the one she doesn't spot next time. That cost her maybe ₱1,200 a month and she'd tell you it was cheap.

What to do next

Take ten items from your current pile and measure them in centimetres. Chest, length, shoulder, sleeve. Write the four numbers plus one sentence about who they'll fit into each listing.

Then write your four condition words somewhere buyers can see them, and use only those four from now on.

Then go through your stock and pull out anything from the categories you can't verify. Car seats, helmets, cots, walkers, carriers, anything with a battery door that won't stay shut. Don't discount them. Just don't sell them.