Featuring ~ PantySalad.com

Submitted by Greg Wishart, owner of PantySalad.com, an on-line panty boutique

Panty Salad got its name from my favorite music station, Groove Salad, a SOMA FM online music station based in San Francisco. I thought the name was perfect because everyone likes panties, everyone likes salad, and I have so many brands and styles that they kinda look like a salad of panties when on my desk and lined up ready for photography 🙂

I started buying and selling in 2000 and 2001 on eBay. I remember going to bargain stores and buying 15 or 20 (sometimes hundreds of dollars) of panties that I thought were nice. I didn’t care about the prices. I used to sell them in bulk in those days (50 smalls for $99, 50 mediums for $99, etc.).   EBay used to allow animated GIFs back then (they no longer do). They were all different, so just for fun; I laid them out on the grass on a sunny day end-to-end and made a video to show. I converted that 30-second video into an animated GIF and got a great response from buyers about how crazy yet effective my little video was. I could be the reason eBay stopped supporting animated GIFs.

I made a bunch of sales and even made a friend in New Zealand who asked me to find Brazilian-style panties for him.  He and others really gave me an idea of what people were looking for.  Why just panties?  Because I don’t know much about bras other than they’re more expensive and come in more sizes.

As a full-time Software Engineer, I had a lot of experience with digital video and graphics, but in this career you need to constantly learn new things. Back then, I needed some web experience so PantySalad is really a combination of 20 years of computer experience and my lingerie affliction.  I found lots of panties for my friend in NZ and would send photos asking “Is this OK?  I remember emailing him 4 pictures of each panty at different angles then realizing that was stupid. I could easily combine the 4 into one animated picture and send that.  He loved the idea, so I bought a mannequin, an eCommerce platform and in 6 months had a crude web site with 8 angles of about 100 panties. My NZ friend said “every site should be like this”.

In about 2008 I attended Lingerie Americas in New York (now called CurveNY) and started ordering wholesale. I was SO grateful to get into the show and finally meet the companies who make what I love… it was like meeting my idol! I remember taking home 60 lbs of catalogs from the trade shows, pouring over them, filling out orders, and being so excited when my order arrived six months later! Of course, I ordered too many of some things and not enough of others, but I’m much smarter now.

I still get some inventory from stores in my area because some panties are just too good not to share with the world, but I go to every trade show I can.  I’ll be going to Mode City in Paris in July and repeating the same process… love it!

If I have any regrets, it would be that I should have started the business much earlier but money and technology and time just wouldn’t allow it.