Auntie Kate The Resale Expert

When money gets tight thrift, buy-outright, and just about every other type of secondhand business does, it’s true, look the specter of lower sales in the eye. Couple shopkeepers’ gut feelings about the disposable income floating around in their towns with news stories, higher gas and grocery prices and sprouting For Sale signs on local lawns, and yup, you have some worried secondhand shopkeepers around.

But you know what? There’s an UPSIDE to all this negative stuff. And it is two-fold, which means you, as a retail owner, have TWO fronts on which to wage your battle against falling sales.

The two pluses are:
* Increased SUPPLY of wares.
* A wider buying (yes, BUYING) audience for your wares.

Supply:
When there’s less money chasing more bills, consumers tend to realize that there’s some stored value they haven’t yet tapped… in their underloved possessions. From the heiress asking Sotheby’s to auction off her great-grandfather’s Matisses to the prom queen realizing that if she sells last year’s must-have togs (do teens wear togs? No matter.) to the local resale shop, there is a great swelling of…

Stuff. Stuff to stock your store with.

And more and better stuff in your shop means more stuff to sell.

And that’s where we come to a wider buying audience. Said heiress and said prom queen have spent the better part of their lives, like most folks, acquiring stuff. You think they’re gonna stop cold turkey? No way. They are still going to shop and they are still going to buy. But, of course, they are going to trade down… buy things that cost less money.

Now, the heiress whose shopping venues included the “Available At:” listings from Vogue magazine is unlikely to start haunting her local Grungie’s Haus of Bargains, and I doubt that style-saturated sixteen-year-old will be satisfied buying her flip-flops and her hoodies at the dollar store. So that’s where YOU come in. Showing off your shop in a manner carefully calculated to introduce a whole new market to the wonders of gently-used good clothes, home decor, furnishings, whatever you sell. There’s a whole new pool of consumers out there who never thought of shopping secondhand. Go get ’em!

Now all of this requires intestinal fortitude when it comes to grooming new suppliers. You may find yourself dealing with folks mite more desperate than your standard audience (after all, your selling her Tory Burch sandals might enable her to pay her cell phone bill this month) as well as educating your newly-initiated suppliers into CLEANING OUT, ORGANIZING, FEELING FREE!. It can get a bit harrowing to explain to those unfamiliar with the concept, how to make their items more valuable, but you can always blame it on “accepted practices” of resale. (After all, it’s not YOU telling them their stuff needs to be clean, it’s even on the web!)

And you’ll have to bite the bullet on the upgrades you’ve always MEANT to do in your shop: freshening up the dressing rooms, buying better racks, creating an attractive way to hang wall art and so on. The good news here is: you always wanted to polish your image, and there are craftsmen out there who would welcome the work, so a carpenter, painter, decorator might relish the job and you’ll get more than your dollars used to.

(Oh, and those nice racks you’ve always coveted but which were out of your price range? Watch for going-out-of-business sales from stores that aren’t as lean and hungry as you are. One snooty boutique’s loss is one resale retailer’s gain!)

So which front will you address with your advertising, budget, subliminal messages, press releases, blog approach, even your in-shop conversations? I’d work on both. What the heck. Dangerous times call for agile minds. Did someone say that? If not, they should have.

Telling the world how to ReSell, telling the world how to RePlace… which leads to showing everyone how to ReJoice! That’s a ReSponse to ReCession. Did someone say THAT?