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Ben Hemminger

Ben Hemminger

CEO of Fashionphile

Jun 16, 2026

15:17
And so, We kind of, you know, hung out a lot.
15:20
So, yeah, I mean, we met because we're, you know, I was dating my wife.
15:24
We weren't even married yet.
15:25
We were just dating when we started dating.
15:28
hanging out with her sister, Sarah, my wife's sister.
15:32
And then that just, and I think it's interesting.
15:34
I look back, you know, retrospectively to say like, why would I be willing to do a little law swap thing even though I had a full-time job? And why would I be willing to sell stuff on eBay and then jump in with Sarah in 2006? And I was like, oh, it's a no brainer.

15 MINS LATER

31:06
Not like Ben talked about our place in the market.
5:57
Ben, what were some obstacles that you faced in addition to the ones that Sarah just called out, getting this business up and going and actually beginning to get into this circular luxury space?
6:11
At the very beginning, taking it from what was a fairly scrappy eBay business and trying to say, how do we get this to become acceptable by luxury shoppers? and accepted in the luxury space.
6:27
And early on in those very early days, I mean, probably not too honest that we were thinking, we're gonna be the next luxury brand.
6:34
Like I think when we started like selling, well, hey, this is working, let's organize it, let's systemize it, let's get off of eBay onto our own site.
6:41
The first mission when we partnered up in 2006 was, let's take this from eBay and let's put Fashion Files as an eBay handle, put it on a website, let's get a brand on it, let's put nice packaging together.
6:53
And I think just soon after that, we kind of realized, wait a minute, this actually could be a brand and got pretty confident relative to where we were at the time that we could actually stand alongside some of these luxury houses.
7:08
And be legitimate.

40 MINS LATER

47:34
And then if you want more to add on that.

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