How Little Lupine Finds gets 5 to 6 hours back on every drop
Christi runs Little Lupine Finds, a kids’ clothing shop on Instagram. Here’s how the Sales Assistant took the busywork off her plate, in her own words, and exactly where those hours come from.
Why she started with Thryft Ship
Thryft Ship was actually one of the reasons Christi decided to sell on Instagram at all. She’d always stuck to platforms with shipping labels built in, but she wanted to try the Instagram side, and Thryft Ship gave her a way to do it: manage open bags, grab the cheapest shipping option, and keep everything in one place.
“Once I found Thryft Ship, that’s really what sold me. I’m not having to manage anything besides the link that they give me.”
Before the Sales Assistant: the two-hour tail
Christi would prep a drop the way most sellers do, with photos, videos, and drafts ready to go. Then the real work started. She posted every item to the grid by hand. All day during the drop, she watched the comments, confirming BIN claims and messaging people the moment they got outbid.
Then came the tail end. For an hour or two after every drop, she sat at her computer going through the posts to see who won what and for how much, drafting each winner a message, sending them out, waiting for payment, sending reminders, matching up Venmo names against Instagram names, and doing shipping quotes.
“It was typically an hour or two after each drop that I was just sitting on my computer getting all those things put together.”
The two moments it clicked
Bedtime. It was summer, and Christi’s toddler relies on the sun to tell her when to wake up and go to sleep. Slowly, the drop time she’d used for almost a year started to bump right into bedtime. Instead of lying in bed trying to sneak out each post without waking her, she found she could do it all at once.
“I was able to just click one button and it flies. It posts the whole drop, and the Sales Assistant makes sure every single post goes live.”
The first drop’s inbox. When her first Sales Assistant drop ended, her inbox just went. Everyone was messaged automatically, every item listed at the right price, each with a custom checkout link. She didn’t have to lift a finger, and the feedback was immediate.
“I had multiple people message me and say, ‘I don’t know what I just did, but that was the slickest checkout experience I’ve ever had on Instagram.’”
Even the nerve-wracking part, those last-minute bids where you scramble to figure out who got what, stopped being her problem.
“It’s not me making that decision. It is truly the clock in the system that makes those decisions for me.”
“The shipping saves me a lot of time. But the Sales Assistant has saved me hours.”
Where the 5 to 6 hours go
Posting the drop
She used to post every item to the grid by hand, one at a time, from her drafts. Now a single click posts the whole drop live.
Watching the comments
She used to reply to every bid and BIN claim and message each person the second they got outbid, all day long. Now it comments and responds automatically, so she only steps in for real questions.
Winner messages after the drop
She used to draft and send every winner their message, then chase payment and reminders. Now it compiles everything and sends it in one batch in a couple of minutes.
Matching up payments
She used to reconcile each buyer’s Venmo name against their Instagram name to link payments correctly. Now she just gets an email: someone started an open bag, or someone paid and is ready to ship.
What she does with the time now
- Bedtime with her toddler. The drop runs itself, so it no longer competes with tucking her kid in.
- Real conversations. “I get to spend more time chatting with people, getting to know my buyers and other sellers, and just having more fun on the app and building a community.”
- Room to grow. “I feel a lot more confident that I can do two drops a week. Sometimes I’m like, I could even do a third.”
- Sanity. So many of these shops are run by moms in spare pockets of the day. Getting hours back is what makes growing one actually sustainable.
Her advice if you’re on the fence
Christi was nervous to start, because it was something brand new and you never quite know what you’ll get. Her advice is simple: talk to the people already using it. The more she used it, the more it fit the shop she was trying to build, and the team kept making it better whenever something felt clunky.
“It’s a small investment to gain some time, and some more sanity, back into running small shops.”
Want your hours back too?
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