24-year-old Melbourne woman buys home with $80k dress hire side hustle

The 24-year-old’s fashion obsession fielded her an extra $80,000 every year, allowing her to break into Australia’s booming property market.

The 24-year-old’s fashion obsession fielded her an extra $80,000 every year, allowing her to break into Australia’s booming property market. 

A Melbourne woman has managed to break into the city’s booming property market in part because of a lucrative side hustle which brought in more than her full-time wage.

Brittany McQuade, 24, was making decent money from her day job in her family’s confectionary business.

But she wanted a second stream of income so tried her hand at modelling side gigs and even a clothing label.

However, it was when she came up with the idea of hiring out her dresses that things really started to take off.

For the last several years, she’s made an extra $80,000 on top of her normal salary from allowing people to “rent out” her wardrobe. In her best month, she made $12,000.

Using the money she made, she invested it into more stock and estimates she owns at least 300 fancy ball gowns.

And the best part? She gets to keep all the dresses.

Now the young woman is set to become a homeowner after securing a two-bedroom, two bathroom townhouse in Altona for $660,000.

“I had so many dresses that I’d only wear once,” Ms McQuade told news.com.au. “There’s such a big market, who wants to pay $800 to wear a dress once?”

Brittany McQuade celebrating her property purchase.

Ms McQuade stumbled across the side hustle back in 2017 but it was a “slow burn” as the idea didn’t have much traction yet and she also didn’t have many dresses.

She created an account on the Volte, an Australian dress share website. Since then, she also uses similar sites as well as her personal Instagram.

However, now, four years later, the Volte is much more well-known; more than 70,000 are listed nationally on the website the country.

Volte co-founder Bernadette Olivier said: “Renting is also becoming more mainstream, you can rent a beautiful dress and give it back – it’s not just for weddings or black tie events, now we are seeing a lot of women rent an outfit for lunch out with the girls.”

Ms McQuade also believes she “stands out” because she’s “been around for ages” on the platform.

It all started when the then 20-year-old wanted to sell her dresses but realised the best she could get for them was half the original price.

Instead, she hired them out and has made back at least twice her money while ultimately getting to keep the dress.

She estimates she started out with 25 dresses but using the early profits, has managed to expand that number to an impressive 300.

Her dresses range from $200 to $400 in price. This gives her a large profit margin.

To hire out her Paris Georgia Yellow Marlo Daffy dress, for instance, is $155 for four days or $195 for eight days.

Ms McQuade says she “knows what girls want” and is able to spot the trends ahead of time. She also uses the poll feature on Instagram to gauge her audience’s likes and dislikes.

Ever the business woman, she buys up multiples of her most popular dresses so that she can offer them in all different sizes.

Brittany’s dress obsession has made $80,000 most years since she launched her side hustle.

Ms McQuade settles on her home in April next year, with the off-the-plan property currently being built.

She’s already put down a 10 per cent deposit to secure her spot in the development and needs another $66,000 by settlement time.

The entrepreneur plans to turn the garage of her new townhouse into a studio to store all her dresses and also a space for where customers can try on the clothes.

She also wants to hire makeup artists to work from her garage to turn the process of buying into an experience for the customer.

“I think this is going to be my main income (in the future),” she said.

At the moment, part of her profit goes towards paying a driver to bring dresses to clients in Melbourne so that they don’t have to wait for the mail.

She currently has a room in her house which is set up for clients to test out the products.

Ms McQuade settles on her property early next year.

Most of her clients come from Sydney or Melbourne, and only a handful are from Queensland, which spelled disaster during 2021’s winter when both cities were stuck in lockdown.

“There was one stage where everyone was in lockdown, I really struggled, no-one would go out, I obviously wasn’t making any money,” she said.

However, when the two embattled states dropped restrictions, customers came back with a vengeance.

“When everything opened it went crazy,” she explained.

Have a similar story? Continue the conversation | [e-mail]