From Wardrobe Clearouts to High Street Boutiques: the Women Behind Back-to-School on Whatnot
Summer is coming to an end, and back-to-school shopping is well underway on Whatnot, with “back-to-school” searches up more than fourfold year on year.
In the UK, parents have been searching for “school uniform” at more than three times platform growth. It arrives at an expensive moment. Nationwide research published this month found parents spend an average of £381 a year on uniform and sports kit, and nearly half of parents say they are stressed about the cost of going back to school this September.*
But back-to-school shopping does not have to feel that stressful, or that expensive. Whatnot gives parents a fun, engaging way to discover a wide range of products and deals straight from their phone, with plenty of auctions starting from £1. Parents can buy directly from sellers they trust, ask questions in real time, and see items up close before they buy.
Clothing stood out in both "back-to-school" searches and sales this summer. The median school uniform item, covering trousers, shirts and everything else on the list, sold for £4. Almost two thirds of back-to-school items sold for under £5, and more than nine in ten sold for under £10. "Kids trainers" was the single biggest clothing-specific search term of the summer, which is no surprise when trainers and school shoes are the two priciest items on the average uniform list.
Secondhand is doing a lot of that work. Parents searching for preloved childrenswear were the most engaged shoppers of all, clicking through at nearly twice the rate of general kids' clothing searches. It is demand that a growing number of UK sellers are built to meet.
That momentum is clearest in Baby & Kids, one of the fastest growing categories on Whatnot UK. Active UK sellers in the category are up 222% on last year, with GMV up 656% and orders up 464%.
The past year's growth has come from a wave of new sellers joining the platform and building real businesses on it, and it is mostly women driving the surge. Over this summer alone, women accounted for 90% of the Baby & Kids category's sales. They range from mums doing a children’s wardrobe clearout to established bricks and mortar shops looking to grow and reach new customers across the country. Both sellers featured below joined Whatnot within the last six months and show there is no one way to build a business on the platform.
Philippa Nash, @thekidsclothesclub
Philippa Nash is a mum of two who spent ten years running a personalisation business, making handmade leather dog collars, engraved tags and embroidered baby gifts, sold through static marketplaces where customers found her listings rather than her.
At the start of this year she moved the whole business to live selling on Whatnot, effectively overnight, setting up a studio at home over a single weekend. Despite never having sold live before, her first show took £125. "Honestly, that was the confidence boost I needed," she says and the business has scaled rapidly from there.
Then customers started asking what else she had. She brought out a rail of her own children's outgrown clothes, good quality brands, and people asked for other sizes. One rail became two, then three. Since February she has grown a community of 3,000 and now stocks preloved clothing for newborns to age 15. She runs shows multiple times a week, always at 8.30pm, once her children are in bed.
Six months in she is going all in, scaling The Kids Clothes Club with the goal of also helping other mums build something similar, part time around a return to work or full time, as she has done for a decade.
"What I'd love is to help other mums do what I'm doing, selling from their own home, so you can still be the stay at home mum, but you're working, in your own hours."
Debbie Moliterno, @miameechildrenboutique
Debbie Moliterno has run Miamee Children's Boutique for around 16 years, opening her Castle Road store in Bedford in 2010. In May 2026 she added live selling on Whatnot alongside the shop and her other online channels, bringing branded childrenswear, clearance stock and brand samples to her shows.
Customers constantly ask her to show particular ages and sizes. "That is one of the biggest advantages of Whatnot," she says. "Someone can say, 'Can you show me what you've got in age 3?' and we can actually go through the stock live for them."
In a matter of months she has built a community of 2,000 on Whatnot, alongside the 18,000 strong customer base Miamee has across the shop and its other channels, and reached customers she could never have served from the shop floor.
"Whatnot has given us another way to grow beyond the traditional bricks and mortar boutique model. We can have customers shopping with us live from around the country while we are still serving customers through our Bedford shop."
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*Nationwide Hidden Cost of School Survey
