Auntie Kate The Resale Expert

I was reading Rick Segel (a man whose wisdom is so clearly expressed, I wish I could be him!) and here’s a part of what he had to say re Black Friday: (bolds are mine)

Along with the 4:00 AM openings… More and more stores were listing their “Door Buster” specials online… you could actually order the same items online. So why even bother going out shopping? BUT people did. WHY?

When answering that …we will be answering the…future of brick and mortar retailing. Black Friday became an event, a happening that people wanted to be apart of. It was the thrill of the hunt. It was a contest, a reality show, and people want to say they were involved..You were there.

We have to make our stores exciting, event driven, and the place to be if we are going to keep customers walking through the front doors.

These words are doubly-important in the consignment, thrift, and resale retail world. Let’s stop and think.

Is your shop exciting? I haven’t been excited in a consignment or resale shop since… well, since some shop in the chi-chi area of St Louis (help me here…) which had style and verve and elan. It wasn’t “just” another secondhand clothing store… it inspired, it provoked… one might even say it titillated. The photos of Carolyn’s old location of Baja Rosi’s do that for me too (I am sure her new metamorphosis is even better, but I have no photos). Doyou scoff, saying your shop is operating on a shoe-string, and exciting means big bucks? Take a look at Bargains Galore, a thrift shop in the teeny town ( population 10,676 ) of Waupun WI.

Don’t think you can make your shop be exciting? Then, how about event-driven? Everything from a bag sale or BOGO deal (you read about them at Too Good to be Threw) to something unique to your shop (we’ll talk about buttons soon I promise 😉 ) gives folks a reason to come to your shop…and once they are in your shop, you can impress them with your selection, style, customer service, and shopper-driven amenities.

So how do you make your place the place to be? With style, class, and above all: with making your shop the dream that your shoppers dream. And that means: showing them what their lives “could” be like. After all, that’s a major reason Ralph Lipschitz, a working-class boy from the Bronx, has succeeded so well. We all want to inhabit the world that Ralph Lauren has dreamed up.

Is your shop all it could be? Maybe this might be your goal for the upcoming year…

To read more of Rick Segel’s down-to-earth help, visit his site.