HOW many designer handbags can one women possess? In the case of 41-yearold mother-of-three Gerry Campbell, the answer is several hundred at any given time. They crowd her Newton Mearns living room in a galaxy of star names: a Miu Miu fringed black leather bag, purchased in May for GBP795, a hugely fabulous chocolate brown leather Fendi dimmable led light bulbs Bubble bag whose price tag was GBP975, and a Louis Vuitton Triangle bag that cost GBP500 . That is just to name a few. Gerry's own favourite is a plum leather Balenciaga bag at GBP595.

Each one is exquisitely crafted, and remarkable for the smell of its top-quality leather, the hue of its colouring and the click of its closures. Most are roomy enough to carry the kitchen sink in, though they're destined to hold not much more than a mobile, a credit card and a lipstick.

These bags are sheer shoulder candy - and, even in these straitened times, they're being snapped up like hot cakes. Not, you understand, all by Gerry. Within hours, these and hundreds of other bags will be sold on to women throughout the UK at a fraction of their original price through bagnificent. co. uk, Gerry's new company, and the UK's only online designer bag store. The pre-owned Miu Miu, which is in spotless condition and used only once, will go on sale, online, for GBP425. The Fendi will sell at GBP695 and the Louis Vuitton will cost GBP295. Her own Balenciaga would have gone on sale at GBP395.

Gerry sells brand-new currentseason bags sourced mostly in Italy by a network of local agents who scour independent shops and boutiques which want to make room for the next season's stock. She is about to patent her cutely-named "Loved" range of pre-owned bags, the part of her business that is performing best since its launch last year. These are designer bags that have been offered to her by friends, relatives, friends of friends and complete strangers who want to sell on their prime purchases in order to fund another. A "Loved" Mulberry Bayswater bag originally purchased for GBP495, for example, sold within hours of Gerry putting it online at GBP250. Even a Louis Vuitton "truly loved" bag - Gerry's term for "trashed" - that was fraying at the seams and had loose handles was sold within the day.

Monogram Dentelle Handbags

"Women's love of bags doesn't seem to have changed, even in the economic downturn, " says Gerry, who launched bagnificent from her home last September.

She sold 18 bags in the last week of October, a respectable tally helped along by a private handbag party and a charity lunch.

Normally, she sells an average of 12 a week. Having paid her overseas agents an up-front fee, all the profit from the brand-new items is hers, while she splits the proceeds for the "Loved" range 65/35 between the donor and herself. She never sells new-season designer stock because she would be unable to discount it.

Her own overheads are minimal.

Business is so good that Gerry, a management accountant who studied at Glasgow Caledonian University when it was called Glasgow College of Technology, and wanted a change of career when her three children came along, is convinced that discount bags have the potential to be very big indeed. "I make enough to keep me going without much promotion, and it's more of a lifestyle business at the moment, " she says. "With more marketing, I'm sure it would really grow.

But then I'd need more staff and separate premises, which is not what I want."

WHAT does she think is the attraction of handbags? "It can chan
Other articles:
http://www.xxxp.cn/Blog/View/?1028
http://www.shuhuajiaoliu.cn/Blog/View/?541