The Art Of Finding What Others Can't Ft. Gab Waller & Lauryn Bosstick

**Lauryn Bosstick** (0:00)
Gab Waller is here, the Australian entrepreneur who pioneered the luxury fashion sourcing industry. She has built a global business. I get to pick her brain one-on-one in this episode. With that, let's welcome icon Gab Waller to the show.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:16)
Welcome to The Bossticks.
Starring Lauryn Bosstick and Michael Bosstick. Together, they are The Bossticks.

**Lauryn Bosstick** (0:29)
Is it all vintage?

**Gab Waller** (0:30)
No. I would say about 80% of our sourcing requests are new season. So just styles that are immediately covered, whether it's off the runway or in the lead up to the collection dropping, it sells out pretty much almost even prior to it hitting the shop floor or doesn't hit the shop floor.
So those are 80% of the business. The other remaining percent is vintage. I will say vintage has only increased in the past two years. So prior to that, nobody was really at least coming to myself for vintage sourcing. So it's really blown up.

**Lauryn Bosstick** (1:04)
Why?

**Gab Waller** (1:06)
I would say there's a couple of different factors. I would say that price point, you know, over the past few years, luxury prices have increased pretty significantly. So vintage, slightly better option. And then I would also just the rarity of the item. If you get a vintage bag, the chances of someone else having said bag is much smaller compared to new season. So I would say that those are the two big factors.

**Lauryn Bosstick** (1:29)
Is there anything that you can't find?

**Gab Waller** (1:33)
Yes, as much as I hate to admit it. But yes, I would say that there are, I do believe in a world in which nothing is ever sold out. And there are pieces that I have had open for, you know, quite a few months. I'm still on the hunt for, but I believe every item exists and it's out there. It's just a matter of when I can find it. And sometimes it's the quantity. So I think that when I get a request, it's, you know, hi, Gab, can you find me this bag? And it's like, absolutely, I can get you one. But if 20 plus clients all want the same bag, that's when it can get really challenging.

**Lauryn Bosstick** (2:07)
And what about celebrities? How do you handle all the celebrity outreach?

**Gab Waller** (2:10)
So everything is inbound, always has been. So I remember even my first celebrity client, the whole business is all on social media. So it's fully run on Instagram.

**Lauryn Bosstick** (2:21)
Oh, cool.

**Gab Waller** (2:22)
Yes. And so over time, they have, you know, followed my page and they slide into the DMs and, hey, Gab, can you get me this? And that's where the at least the initial conversation starts. And then I move it over to text.

**Lauryn Bosstick** (2:35)
When you wake up in the morning, is the first thing that you do check your DMs or do you have a process to even get there?

**Gab Waller** (2:42)
I would say that every day wake up, or a ring, number one, I'm addicted to my aura ring. So that kind of always says how my day is going to look.
So check my app and then yes, it is straight into DMs. I just kind of like to gauge how things are overnight. Every client is global. So even though the US is my biggest market, I'm sourcing with clients in Australia, Dubai, Singapore, you name it. So I kind of like to see what attractions come through overnight. But then immediately after that, it's WhatsApp because WhatsApp is really where all the sourcing happens. And I wake up to just absolute influx of messages that have come through overnight.

**Lauryn Bosstick** (3:19)
And what's the process? Walk the audience through the process of how you source. So say there's a huge celebrity, say Hailey Bieber wants to get this bag.
How do you go about it? Do you put your feelers out? Do you have a process? Is it the same formula every single time?

**Gab Waller** (3:37)
So DM comes through. From there, I screenshot that request and log it in to Sourced By, which is the infrastructure that I built to really help scale this industry. Prior to that, because of the volume of requests, things were going missed and forgotten and I knew that I had to find a solution, which is Sourced By and a platform that is being built. Once it's in there, it's exactly that.
I always have my finger on the pulse as to what is available when and where at any given time. It's super important so that if someone like Hailey jumps into the DMs, I immediately am one step ahead of knowing where that bag could be. So depending on what it is, I've just sourced quite a few things for her recently, but most recently was this beige Chanel handbag. And when she requested it, I already knew that Paris had it. So it was a super quick secure, lock it in from there, ship it from Paris to LA.