She started with a bobby pin and ended up with a house. Here’s the story of Demi Skipper, the ultimate saleswoman who’s a little off her mind.
Pandemic. Boredom. Isolation. Perhaps the most ideal recipe for getting yourself a house for the price of a bobby pin (which according to Google is worth 0.099GBP). That’s precisely what Demi Skipper, a 29 year old with nothing to lose and a whole lot to win has managed to pull off. Quite an impressive feat, we must say.
Starting off with that singular bobby pin worth much less than a pound, Demi began trading up towards a house. Even from the very start, her trades were impressive. She traded jewellery, a skateboard, Air Jordans, iPhones, a year’s worth of burritos, several cars, three tractors and a Tesla food truck, and ended up with a house. If she had stopped at the Jordans nobody would have faulted her; it was already quite the rewards from finding a lonesome bobby pin at home and deciding to put it to good use.
She had three clear rules on her pursuit. 1) No trading with family or friends. 2) No spending money (except for a few shipping costs when otherwise unavoidable). 3) No trade backs.
So how on earth did she do it? Thanks to social media, primarily. She joined Facebook groups, posted on Instagram and travelled viciously around the United States and Canada in search of trades. Along the way, she has found sponsors, celebrities and television appearances; a true social butterfly. She even rode down Venice beach in a bike, onto which she plastered a large sign explaining her journey and asking any passerby to trade with her.
The house she managed to get was in Clarksville, a single-storey baby blue place with a pitched roof and an undeniable cottage core appeal. It took her more than a year and a half, and 28 trades to reach it. The most complicated to trade was a trailer, valued at $40,000.
It was the final item before the house, but it was particularly difficult to trade as it was stuck in Canada due to customs and was also a particularly rare kind of trailer, completely customised, refrigerated and solar-run.
So you’d think that after such a complicated and intertwined journey Skipper would be done. Turns out she is not. With her entrepreneurial spirit and ruthless determination, it seems she is not satisfied with being the first person to ever trade a bobby pin for a house; she wants to be the person that does it twice.