How Luxury Exchange went from a side hustle to a €4m business

Podcast Ep 262: Caitriona McGettigan, founder of Luxury Exchange, on building a pre-loved designer fashion business from a side project to a €4m turnover company with ambitious growth plans.

In recent months we reported how young Irish business Luxury Exchange opened its first pop-up shop in Dublin. What was particularly interesting was the detail around how the business, owned by owned by Caitriona McGettigan and Cillian Moloney, recorded €1m in turnover last year and is on track to achieve €4m in turnover in 2025.

The Cork-based business resells luxury designer goods from well-known brands such as Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Dior and more.

The business started when Caitriona, an avid fashion-lover, saw a gap in the market for the resale of luxury items in a more affordable way.

The community-focused strategy that has been employed by the young couple and business partners has seen the business build a hugely loyal online customer base.

To date Luxury Exchange has maximised the Instagram broadcast channel to sell to customers with a fresh, community focused approach.

From pre-loved to always loved

The ThinkBusiness Podcast caught up with McGettigan who explained the purpose behind Luxury Exchange. “I really think there are so many reasons to love pre-loved shopping. Everybody loves value, whether you need it or you just want it for that thrill of knowing that you got something and you could have paid double, but you didn’t. There’s also the aspect that you’re getting something more unique. Then, of course, there’s the environmental sustainability aspect, where you’re buying things that have already been made, but you still get that feeling of something new, because it’s new to you.”

So how does it work? “At the beginning, somebody would have something to sell. I’d have a commission. I’d sell it for them. But now we mostly buy items. So I spend a lot of time just scouring… I really think something that I’d be very good at is understanding the customers and what they want. So over time, I said, ‘You know what? I can’t keep waiting for stock to come to me. I want to find these pieces that the customers want and also have better control over the pricing.’”

McGettigan’s foray into selling pre-loved fashion items began as a bit of a side-hustle when she was working at the Brown Thomas department store in Cork. “I had the same kind of ladies coming into me all the time, and they wanted to buy something new, but they would say, ‘Oh, I just feel so guilty because I love that dress. But you remember the last three dresses I bought off you last month? They’ve only worn them once. I’ve dry cleaned them. But am I actually going to add another dress to that?’

“But they also felt guilty to give them away, because these dresses would have been maybe €500 or €600 or more each, and they’ve only worn them once… I just remember thinking, ‘I wish I could buy those because I knew that they’d be perfect.’”

“I started taking pieces from them, or staff members in Brown Thomas… I just had an Instagram page, no website, nothing like that at all. From the get-go, almost everything that I shared would sell. It was very much a hobby, but it just got to a stage where I was so busy because I was working full time, and I was working when I got home, and I was working on my lunch break. I got to a stage where I was like, ‘I need to make a decision here, because this is actually something I really, really want to do … if I want to do this properly, I need to leave my job.’”

Quality and curation

Luxury Exchange owners Caitriona McGettigan and Cillian Moloney

McGettigan is both curator and entrepreneur and she has an instinct for what would sell.

“Everything that we have is stunning. It’s almost always perfect condition or perfect vintage condition. So it might have a bit of wear that adds to it, but everything is described clearly. It’s photographed clearly, and you get the level of service, if not higher, than you would get in any other high-end shopping experience… we have a lot of very professional connections, and that’s typically where we’re buying from. Trust is definitely a huge part of it.”

I put it to McGettigan that the modern, digital shopping experience is changing and many shoppers including Gen Z are happily trading on marketplaces like Vinted or Depop. Does Luxury Exchange fit in this category?

“They’re great platforms, but you do go on them and there’s thousands and thousands of items. You might search ‘Dolce & Gabbana dress’ or ‘Chanel bag,’ but there will be so much come up, and a lot of it will be – some of it will be fake. Some of it will be really bad condition… and you’re trawling and trawling, which when you’re planning to spend, let’s say, €5,000, it’s not exactly the experience that you might want.”

Growth and scale

On the subject of how Luxury Exchange jumped from €1m to €4m in turnover, I asked McGettigan how the business is managing that growth.

“We took on our first hire this year, and that’s made a huge difference. I think when you’ve started a business from nothing, it can be really hard to give somebody else control of something else … but it makes a huge difference. You’re adding horsepower to the business. You hire somebody that’s smart, they know what they’re doing, and once you can just say, ‘Okay, this is theirs,’ you can then focus more on what you’re better at.”

McGettigan manages her customer base through interactive meet-ups and the foray into a physical pop-up might be a sign of things to come.

“We sold over 150 units at our pop-up in Dublin over the space of four days. Each one of those, I had picked individually. We couldn’t have bought more for that pop-up whilst keeping that consistency. I personally loved it so much, because I love people being able to come in and see the pieces. I always think they’re way nicer in person – it makes me quite frustrated sometimes, because you can’t show just how nice they are over camera.

“It definitely has crossed my mind just because the pop-up itself was so busy. But I do think we’ll plan to do a few more pop-up shops first… I definitely love to look into that in the future. But for now, pop-ups will be the main focus, because the customer being happy, being made feel special, and being happy with the stock when they come in is the number one thing.”

There’s a strong sustainability message in what Luxury Exchange is doing, and while it caters to a slightly more expensive niche and well-heeled customer base, it is a counterweight to the scourge of fast-fashion. In effect “pre-loved” items like bags or dresses remain loved into the future.

“One of our most popular bags would be the Chanel classic flap, and that sells currently for €10,000, and we get ones in that are way older than me, some of them, and they’re still perfect. I love the idea of something having had a life, or maybe three lives before it has its life with me… we would sell those pieces for €4,000 to €5,500 thousand depending on condition. So it’s a major saving financially.”

McGettigan admits the start-up experience is all-consuming and says budding entrepreneurs need to embrace the challenge.

“You have to work so hard, especially if you want something that’s constantly growing. Everyone is working hard, so you have to work even harder … if you love what you’re doing, it’s totally fine, because that’s all I want to be doing anyway. But you do have to be prepared to be working all the time.

“I wouldn’t have a fear of failure, because sometimes you will do things, or you’ll trial things and they won’t work, and then you just try something else. And the reality is, if it hasn’t worked, most people don’t even notice. So don’t be afraid to try things and just see if they work.

“If you think you really know your customer, you’ll naturally, most of the time, know what the next best move is, or what’s going to work out best, because you know what they want.”

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