Young entrepreneur running a successful online thrifting cloth shop

“I love to work with ASGB as it offers daily loans and loan officers come to my place and collect payments so I do not need to travel to the office…Thank You Very Much! ASGB for trusting me and offering a loan…It is really convenient and nice to work with ASGB.”

Reselling second-hand clothes is known as a “Thrifting Business”. In Myanmar, bales of clothes are imported in big packages, which include a variety of fashion wears, and sometimes branded fashion from all over the world.

Nowadays, thrifting businesses are becoming popular in Myanmar as thrift sellers advertise second-hand clothes on social media by washing and ironing them. People in Myanmar also love to buy and wear those clothes at a reasonable price.

Mrs. Yu Mon, a young entrepreneurs and ASGB member, has run a wholesale thrifting business since 2018 and is utilizing the Business Recovery Loan with ASGB. At the beginning, she was a retailer of second hand clothes, and usually buys those thrift packages from a large wholesale supplier shop in Thaketa Township, Yangon.

In those times, Mrs. Yu Mon and her husband faced many challenges and difficulties especially with financial management, like balancing income and expenses, because they were just start doing thrift business after they resigned their regular nine to five jobs. It was a difficult time for them and after one year running the business, they didn’t make any profit, and had to close their shop.

Thus, Mrs.Yu Mon and her husband almost gave up on their business. There were one or two MFIs in the place where she lives so Mrs.Yu Mon and her husband considered borrowing money from those MFIs, but they offered group loan. From their personal point of view, taking a group loan has some risks such as taking responsibility for other people’s debt in a group.

At that time, one of her friends referred her to ASGB who offer individual micro credit loan to its clients. When they heard that information, they felt like ASGB offered the only hope to them. Then they started with ASGB’s Individual Daily Loan in 2019. In those times, Mrs. Yu Mon was running her shop at Botahtaung Kan Nar road. With that micro credit loan from ASGB, she bought a big package of clothes, and started their business again.

Later the COVID-19 pandemic was happening in Myanmar. Due to the social distancing, she started selling thrift clothing to both retailer and wholesaler via social media (FB page name: A & Y Korea,Japan Used Clothings Shop | Facebook) by posting sale content and FB live sales. With some profit and they were investing back into buying more packages. Her shop is now better known because of FB live sales. As a result of trying their best, saving money and investing, their financial situation improved. Now they only sell thrift clothing as a wholesaler. Mrs. Yu Mon has been using loans from ASGB about two or three times – going towards investing in more packages.

“Giving a loan with affordable interest rate from ASGB is really a great thing and useful for those who can use those loan effectively and efficiently together with his or her constant effort and hard work.”