How to Start an Ukay-Ukay Business in Cebu: Bales, Suppliers, Prices and Permits

More people in the Philippines search for “ukay bale” and “ukay ukay supplier” than search for any single thrift shop. Those are the searches of someone about to open a stall. If that’s you, and you’re in Cebu, this is the guide we wish had existed: what a bale is, what it costs, where the suppliers are, what you legally need, and what the arithmetic looks like once the sack is open on your floor.

We run Dara, a marketplace where people in Cebu sell clothes, and a fair number of our sellers started exactly this way. We’ve tried to give you the real numbers, including the unsellable third of every bale that nobody mentions in the TikToks.

What a bale is, and what a bundle is

A bale is a pressed, strapped sack of one category of used clothing. Men’s tees. Ladies’ blouses. Kids’ mixed. Jackets. Jeans. Shoes. It comes in standard weights, usually 45, 80 or 100 kilograms, and it’s sold by origin and grade. Open a 45-kilo bale of tops and you’ll count somewhere between 120 and 180 pieces, depending on how heavy the fabric is.

A bundle is the beginner’s version. Suppliers split a bale into quarters or halves, sometimes pre-sort them, and sell the portion for a few hundred to a few thousand pesos. Cebu Ukay Bundles in Tisa calls theirs a “starter prepack”. You pay more per kilo than for a full bale, but you can start with ₱1,000 and find out whether you like sorting clothes before you commit to ₱15,000.

If you want the longer story of where bales come from and why the trade is technically illegal to import, read What is ukay-ukay? first.

Origins and grades

Two words on the sack decide the price. Where it came from, and how it was sorted.

• Japan. The most expensive and the most wanted. Clothes are generally in better condition, sizes run small (which fits Filipino frames), and the pieces are trend-led. The sorted thrift shops on Mango Avenue and Molave Street lean heavily on Japan bales.
• Korea. Similar to Japan on size and trend, strong on knits, blouses and womenswear. “Cream Korea” is the top of the market.
• United States. Cheaper, larger sizes, heavy on tees, hoodies, workwear and denim. The vintage-tee hunters live here.
• Australia and UK. In between on price and size. Australia bales get praised for dresses and summer pieces, which suits Cebu.
• Dubai and others. Less common. One Lahug shop, Maby’s, advertises “fashionable thrifts from Dubai bales”.

Grades vary by supplier, but the usual scheme is:

• Cream, or premium. Hand-picked before baling. Near-new, branded, the top five to fifteen percent of what the sorter saw.
• Class A, or Grade A. Wearable, clean, minor wear. One supplier guide puts Grade A at “95%+ premium wearable items”, which is optimistic. Budget for less.
• Class B. Wearable with faults. Stains, missing buttons, fading. Cheaper to buy and slower to sell.
• Mixed, or unsorted. Whatever went into the sack. The cheapest per kilo and the most work.

What bales and bundles cost in 2026

Prices move with the peso and with the season, so treat these as a snapshot from September 2026. They come from Philippine bale guides (Sukifinds and Hissen Global), Shopee and Facebook listings, and supplier posts.

One supplier guide sums up the starting capital as “PHP 15,000–30,000 for a small bale from a local supplier”, which matches what Cebu stall owners tell us once you add a rail, hangers, a table and a tarp.

What a bale actually yields

The number the TikToks skip. A bale is not 150 sellable pieces. The Sukifinds guide gives the split most sellers recognise:

• Cream pulls: 5 to 15 percent. The branded, near-new pieces you hang at the front at ₱250 to ₱500 or more. Most of your profit is here.
• Good, sellable: 40 to 60 percent. Clean, wearable, ₱50 to ₱200 on the rail or the table.
• Unsellable: 25 to 40 percent. Stained, torn, dated, wrong for the climate. Rags, donations, or the ₱10 pile.

Their worked example is worth copying into your notebook. A ₱5,000 Class A bale, about 45 kilos and 150 pieces, landed for ₱5,500 to ₱5,800 after freight. Around 90 pieces sell. Your cost per sellable piece is ₱61 to ₱64. At an average of ₱150 to ₱250 a piece, gross revenue is ₱13,500 to ₱22,500. Before rent, transport, hangers and your own time. It works. It works better the more bales you turn over and the better your eye for the cream.

Where to buy in Cebu

Cebu has its own supply chain. You don’t need to import, and as a beginner you shouldn’t. The suppliers below are on Google Maps as of September 2026. Message first, because stock is by container and a shop that had Japan tops last week may have Australia dresses this week.

Leon Kilat and Colon

The historic heart of it. Ukay shopfronts line Colon Street near the Leon Kilat and Sanciangko junctions, and the supply rooms sit upstairs in buildings like the Gochan Building. Our ukay guide covers the retail side of the strip.

Tisa and Guadalupe

Lahug

Lapu-Lapu and Talisay

Also worth knowing: Facebook groups like “Ukay-Ukay Bundle Market Cebu, Lapu-Lapu and…” where Cebu suppliers post bales and bundles daily, and the “Ukay ukay bodega” listing in Bakilid, Mandaue. Sugbo.ph reported in 2025 that a Carbon Market vendor of twenty years said the new curated shops buy their supplies from stalls like hers. So the market itself is a supplier too, if you buy in quantity.

Buying online without getting scammed

Bale scams are common enough that guides exist for them. The Sukifinds red flags, which match what we hear from Cebu sellers:

• A price that’s too good. A “premium Korea bale” for ₱1,500 is not one.
• Comments turned off on the post.
• GCash, Maya or bank transfer only, with no protected checkout.
• Photos lifted from a known bodega’s page.
• No DTI registration you can check, and no address you can visit.

Safest: a Shopee, Lazada or TikTok Shop checkout where the money is held until delivery. Riskiest: a Facebook post and a GCash number. Best of all, for your first few bales: a Cebu supplier you can walk into, where you can squeeze the sack, ask to see a sample piece, and carry it home yourself.

The legal part: RA 4653 and your permits

To open a stall or an online shop legally you need four things, in this order:

1. DTI business name. For a sole proprietor, register at bnrs.dti.gov.ph. It’s fully online. Fees depend on the scope you choose (barangay, city, regional or national) plus a ₱30 documentary stamp, and the certificate lasts five years.
2. Barangay business clearance. From the barangay hall where the stall or your home office is. Bring the DTI certificate and an ID. Fees run about ₱100 to ₱1,000 depending on the barangay and business size, and it’s usually same-day.
3. Mayor’s permit. From your city’s Business Permit and Licensing Office (Cebu City, Mandaue, Lapu-Lapu and Talisay each have their own). DTI certificate, barangay clearance, lease or proof of address, and the fee, which scales with your declared capital. Renew every January.
4. BIR registration. Get a TIN if you don’t have one, register the business for a Certificate of Registration, and get official receipts printed or use the BIR’s digital option. Since 22 January 2024 the old ₱500 annual registration fee is gone.

A market stall on a tabo day is often run under the market operator’s permit with a daily fee, which is a low-risk way to test before you register anything. Ask the market administrator.

Setting up: stall, online, or both

Three models, and most Cebu sellers end up running two of them.

• A physical stall. A garage, a rented frontage, a tabo table. Cheapest fit-out: two rails, hangers, a folding table for the pile, a tarp, a mirror, a full-length one if you can. Location matters more than fit-out. Near a school, a terminal or a market beats a quiet street.
• Online only. A Facebook page with live selling, or an Instagram account with drops. No rent, but you pack and ship every piece, and you compete with every other page. The Sugbo.ph culture piece and the Frontiers study of ukay entrepreneurs (17 owners interviewed, published March 2026) both note that trust and customer service are what keep online buyers coming back.
• Both. A stall for the bulk and an online page for the cream. This is how The Great Finds started in 2019, online first, before opening at Raintree Mall in 2025.

Sorting and pricing your first bale

1. Open it on a clean tarp, not the floor. Bale dust is real. Mask up if you’re sensitive.
2. Three piles, fast. Cream, good, reject. Don’t agonise. You’ll re-sort the good pile later.
3. Wash or steam the cream. A steamer pays for itself in a month. The good pile can go out as is, with a note that it’s unwashed, or go through the wash if you have the capacity. Our washing guide covers the bale smell.
4. Price in bands. ₱250 and up for cream on hangers with the brand visible. ₱100 to ₱150 for good pieces on hangers. ₱50 for the table. ₱20 or three-for-₱50 for the rest. Fewer price points means faster decisions for the customer.
5. Photograph the cream. Plain wall, daylight, front and back and label. These are your online pieces. Our selling guide has the photo and description checklist.
6. Keep a notebook. Bale cost, freight, count in, count sold, revenue. After three bales you’ll know which origin and grade works for your customers. Nobody can tell you that in advance.

Where to sell what you sort

Your stall or page sells the good pile. The cream deserves a wider audience than your street.

• Facebook live selling is the workhorse of Philippine ukay. Carousell’s 2024 data says Filipino sellers on its platform averaged around ₱39,000 in sales that year, with women’s fashion the top category.
• Carousell for branded cream pieces with national demand.
• Dara, our own marketplace, for cream pieces you want delivered to buyers across Metro Cebu without doing the courier run yourself. You list, set your price, and a rider collects when it sells. You receive the price you set. It’s built for individuals selling their own wardrobe, and it works for a small ukay seller listing their best twenty pieces a week.
• Markets and pop-ups. Ukay ta Bai and the Molave Community Marketplace sell table space. Our pop-ups guide lists them. A weekend table is the fastest way to move a hundred pieces and meet the customers who become your sukis.

The numbers, honestly

Here’s a first-month budget for a small stall in a Cebu barangay, using the prices above. Yours will differ, but the shape won’t.

So a first bale can pay for the set-up if you sell most of the good pile, and the second bale is where you start earning. The people who make it work turn over a bale a week or more, know their customers by name, and put their cream pieces where the whole city can see them. The people who don’t usually bought a premium Korea bale for ₱1,500 from a Facebook page with the comments turned off.