As this year winds down, I wanted to take a moment to look back — not just at what we sold, but at what we built, what we wrote, and what this year truly represented for Backroadpicking.
This blog has never been about perfectly polished thoughts. It’s been about real experiences — the good, the frustrating, the funny, and the lessons that only come from doing the work day after day.
And this year?
This year was different.
2025: The Year We Got Intentional
This has been our first full year of structured work at Backroadpicking.
That may not sound flashy, but it matters more than any single sale.
Blogging became intentional — weekly posts every Thursday (minus holidays).
Marketing wasn’t random — it was planned.
Products weren’t just listed — they were evaluated.
Goals weren’t vague — they were tracked.
Profit and loss weren’t ignored — they were reviewed.
For the first time, we treated Backroadpicking like what it has quietly grown into:
👉 A full-time business.
Before this year, Backroadpicking lived in that familiar space many small businesses know well — part passion project, part side gig, part “we’ll get to it when we can.” In 2025, that changed.
Structure didn’t kill creativity.
It gave it room to grow.
Selling Is About People — Not Just Products
One of the strongest themes I kept coming back to this year was customer experience.
After more than 25 years in e-commerce, I’ve learned this truth over and over again:
It’s never really about the item — it’s about how people feel during the transaction.
I wrote about sellers forgetting that buyers are human. About how complaints are often louder than compliments. And about how the best sellers aren’t the ones who never make mistakes — they’re the ones who know how to handle them.
Good customer service isn’t complicated.
It’s listening.
It’s responding.
It’s fixing the issue instead of defending your ego.
If you missed it, one of the most foundational posts this year was Customer Experience Matters, where I unpack why sellers often forget the human on the other side of the transaction.
Emotional Intelligence Can’t Be an Afterthought
Another recurring topic this year was emotional intelligence in business.
You can train systems.
You can document processes.
You can teach software.
But emotional intelligence? That’s harder.
I wrote honestly about how difficult it is to train empathy, accountability, and self-awareness — especially when businesses ignore it during hiring and then wonder why customers are frustrated later.
Strong businesses don’t just run on SOPs.
They run on people who understand how their actions affect others.
I explored this further in Why Emotional Intelligence Can’t Be an Afterthought in Business — a post that sparked more conversation than I expected.
The “Resellers Under Attack” Era (And Why It’s Nothing New)
This year also brought a wave of online noise about resellers — and some of it was, frankly, amusing.
Reselling didn’t start in 2019.
It isn’t new.
And it isn’t going away.
I wrote about entitlement, bitterness, and the idea that buying low and selling higher is somehow unethical. Flea markets, antique malls, garage sales, wagons, classified ads — this has always existed.
Resellers don’t create scarcity.
We create access, preservation, and second chances for items that would otherwise end up forgotten or discarded.
And yes — we work for it.
If you want the unfiltered version, Resellers Under Attack dives head-first into the entitlement and misinformation floating around online.
Holiday Chaos, Returns, and Calling Things What They Are
The holidays showed up in my writing too — and not in a sugar-coated, Hallmark-movie way.
Returns happen.
Packages get delayed.
Carriers lose things.
That’s reality.
What doesn’t need to happen is the emotional spiral that sometimes follows. I wrote about setting expectations, naming problems honestly, and remembering that there are real humans on both sides of every shipping label.
Holiday chaos is part of retail.
How you handle it is part of your reputation.
The realities of peak season showed up in Holiday Chaos, Returns, and Reality — because pretending retail is perfect doesn’t help anyone.
Leadership, Systems, and Finding My Way Back
Some of this year’s writing was quieter. More reflective, and located on kimawren.com .
I wrote about leadership — finding my way back to it, redefining it, and applying it to a business that finally demanded structure instead of hustle-for-hustle’s-sake.
Running a full-time reselling business means systems matter.
Planning matters.
Boundaries matter.
And writing became a way to slow down, step back, and make better decisions — not just more decisions.
Writing Finding My Way Back to Leadership forced me to slow down and really look at how structure changes everything.
Why Ill Keep Writing
This blog isn’t here to chase trends or please algorithms.
It’s here to tell the truth about reselling, small business ownership, customer experience, and the stories behind the items we sell.
At Backroadpicking, we don’t just sell things.
We sell memories.
We preserve stories.
We give forgotten items a new chapter.
2025 was the year we stopped treating this like a side gig — and started building it like a business.
And we’re just getting started.
Thank you for reading, supporting, and growing with us this year.
Here’s to more structure, more stories, and a whole lot more vintage in the new year ahead. See you in 2026!
— Kim