It’s Wacky Wednesday again!
All you have to do to be entered into our random drawing is add your helpful comment to this post. What’s your thought, your idea, your angle on today’s topic?
Today’s topic: Broadening your Shop’s Appeal
One out of ten consumers shops resale. That’s right: you could double your sales if you could make your shop appeal to another 1 out of 10 shoppers. Share with us your plans or actions to broaden the appeal of your shop by commenting here, and you could win:
A $50 Gift Certificate for any Products for the Professional Resaler or choose a Treasured Sponsor Listing thru 6-30-10 at our consumer-oriented site HowToConsign.com.
This prize is proudly sponsored by Encore Ltd. of Canton Ohio, a long-time supporter of TGtbT and its mission to assist all resalers in making their shops be all they dream it can be!
Add your best suggestion on today’s topic here on this blog.
Entries must be received by the following Sunday midnight. One entry per person please.
What happens next: If the minimum number of replies is received* we’ll choose the winner randomly and announce it on Monday. If there aren’t enough entries to award a prize, no prize will be awarded. *The prize is only given away if at least 20 shopkeepers enter. So Facebook, Twitter, email, or even call your resale peers and encourage them to enter.
To recap: Check Wacky Wednesday on Wednesday. Add your contribution here (not via email, not on Twitter, not on Facebook, not even on Sharing!) and make sure your industry buddies do too. Enter by Sunday.Check back Monday to see if you’ve won.What could be easier?
Last week’s winner, of the business book best-seller Why We Buy, was KerriR.
How are you broadening the appeal of your shop?
Update 1/25: The winner’s announced!
Auntie Kate The Resale Expert 
I sell women’s and children’s clothes, shoes, purses, and toys and limited equipment in my store. This year I am going to try to be more consistent with buying new jewelry to sell in my store. It seems the more I have, the more I sell. I also joined Consignment Chic last year, but I have not taken full advantage of all it has to offer so I’m going to try to do more marketing of my store, instead of just day to day operations. Plus I would like to do more with Facebook and emails in terms of marketing. I have lots of to do’s, just not enough of me to do them. 🙂
Simple things I’ve added in the past month:
*A friend of mine donated a chalkboard which I put outside my door. Rigt now says “Check out the $1.00 rack”. This is something I just added to get rid of expired items that just need to go.
*Located a bench to put in the front of the store and have big stuffed animals sitting on it to draw attention. (Actually sold my gorilla)
*Purchased a cabinet to display jewlery and have a local coming in to display and consign her merchandise. (She cancelled her appt for today, hope she didn’t back out!)
*Displayed one of our rental strollers in the store and added a sign to ask about other rentals.
*Lots of stuff on my “to-do-list” that will hopefully come into play in the next couple months!
We have always left flyers about our change of season events at day care centers and have had good success with them – lots of people tell us they found out about us at their day care. However, this year we have been turned away by several – I guess some of them are cracking down on flyers. However, we have had good success with other stores that appeal to children – some of the bounce places, the pizza buffets, even the Starbucks bulletin boards. We always take their flyers back as well. Cross-marketing.
I am experimenting with Twitter and Facebook – hoping that it broadens our reach.
Also, looking forward to a teens & womens resale store opening a few stores down in our shopping center in Kennesaw. I am hoping this gets even more people in the store.
I’ll be taking down the snowflake garland hanging in the windows next week and replacing it with valentines. All are lighted so they shows up after dark and can be seen by passing traffic for some good curb appeal.
I sell Mineral Makeup as well as Avon on the side of my Resale/Consignment store… I use this to help promote my store and draw in customers who may not have been interested before by having customers come to the store to pick up their orders. While I am getting their bags together and double checking invoices, they browse the store, and often they will buy something, many of them have come back when they aren’t waiting on an Avon or Mineral Makeup order, and buy more clothing or become consignors.
We have started a clearance section which has worked out great! It brings in customers every week looking for those great bargains and they are consistently checking the new items coming onto the racks as well.
Hi Kate,
Thanks for all the help!
My idea on how to bring people in is a new Spring slogan on flyers that I am handing out all over the place:
“Spring forward… to your summer vacay!”
Start bringing in your sping & summer items now, and by the time summer vacation starts, you could make enough money to cover a nice little family vacation!
These flyers have pics of the beach and a theme park and other summery stuff with $ signs all over it!
I plan on handing them out at parks, restaurants, while I’m shopping, etc.
I hope this brings new people into the store!
Holly Jo
I recently took over a consignment shop in Oct. 2009. I had previously worked there and managed it for 19 years. This is the slow time of year, so I am having a white tag sale–20-50% off. This will be a monthly thing, I have ordered colored tags for each month. So far it is working out–just a few glitches to work out.
Looking forward to spring and see how it works out.
We are a childen’s store that is getting new products in that no one in our city has to draw customers. The focus is on useful things and staples like new potties and then gift items. We are also focussing some marketing on Grandma’s too, they are taking more active roles with grandchildren and love being a hero having a spare outfit or pj set on hand when the grandchildren need it! Who doesn’t love being a hero.
Broadening the appeal of my shop–that makes me think!!
I stopped my display ad in the yellow pages to save money, but now I’m trying some newspaper advertising with that money. I did a quarter page ad with a coupon–$10 off ANY purchase”–there was no minimum. It was good for a week–we got 73 back. Yes, so I gave away $730 dollars, BUT–it got me new customers who had NEVER heard of my 29 year old store. Now they know about it, and hopefully I can count on them to be frequent customers. They now know that we sell not ony secondhand things, but that we sell lots of new stuff too. I have more and more people coming in for baby gifts, and birthday gifts. Did a smaller ad–no response. Medium ad–ok response.
We carry “eco-friendly” merchandise and since I live in a very “eco-conscious” area, that gets people in too.
We broaden the appeal of the shop by having a diaper changing table, a fun play area, a “let the kids test out the toys” attitude. We help people to their cars with their packages, we’ll hold things so people can bring in their child to try it on, we do a one week return on clothes and shoes. Small things that the box stores don’t do.
Kate, I never win anything. Not even a dollar on a lottery ticket. Oh well. I plan on adding new merchandise to my store this year. Items that are very unique and hard to find in my area. Rings are a hot seller in my store and I never seem to have enough. I really want to work on stocking up with store inventory in the ring department. Also, I have a “back room” in my store that is too large for my storage room so I have been thinking about how to change it into more floor space. I have been thinking about renting out cabinets (the glass kind that you see in antique malls) to people that have unique items to sell (handmade jewelry, purses, etc) I would charge them a monthly fee to rent the space. This would guarantee a set amount of money each month and help with my rent. I am always trying to think outside of the box. I think sooooooo much my head hurts! That’s why I love this board, I always have another item to add to my list of things to do!
I have been ordering different banners and using them outside on my ‘porch’ area. I put in large hooks and use bungee cord straps to keep them tight and straight.
I have the following so far…
Champagne taste on a Beer budget, Once Again Consignment can help. I used a great blank from VistaPrint with a champagne glass.
Clearance Sale, Jeans $5, tops $2, this one uses a great giant sale tag logo and I put the clothes on a rack attached betwen the wall and column with the sign above.
Great Plus Size Selection-this one is kinda plain just black and white. This one brings in new people EVERY time, we have almost no selection in Roswell for pluses.
I have plans to add a few others. I already know I have had a lot of new customers come in because of the banners.
MollyB!
I am actually using a marketing plan for the first time in 5 years…We will be sending out consistent monthly postcards to remind our regulars about us.
We are also increasing our selection of gifts and new items. I made for a phenomenal December.
[…] And is it time to enter the drawing on this week’s Wacky Wednesday? […]
We are a women’s plus size shop. We sell all the regular clothing and accessory items but this year we are planning the following:
-a move to a bigger location
-adding lay away
-adding maternity
-holding a charity fashion show using our consignors as models wearing clothes from the shop
-new website that allows ecommerce
-newsletter
-and at Christmas I added new 1000 thread count sheets and that was an awesome move! They were such a big hit we even had men coming in to buy them. I sold 4 sets of them just this week. I purchase direct from NY and resale them for $30 set.
So many ways to increase business…. Here are a few we’re going to try this year: We are newly located in a great downtown shopping district where all of the merchants know each other well. We’re giving out “Red Umbrella Dollars” at the shops and restaurants of many of our neighbors and doing the same for them. When people check out, we ask them if they’d like to receive a “dollar” from one of the local merchants and when they bring it there, then that merchant reciprocates with a “dollar” coupon to our store. This makes it fun and we end up sharing lots of customers.
Mixer events with our neighbor merchants – wine shop, local biscotti makers, fancy paper store, table top store, bookstore. Come meet your neighbors theme.
Front window display contest -open to anyone with great ideas. Winner receives a gift certificate to our store and the winning display idea will be showcased on our street for 2 weeks with a spot on our website and blog.
Well, this is something I think about all the time, everywhere I go. I see so many women with their children and I wonder…”Have I seen them in my store yet?”. Usually, my answer is no, so that is what gets me thinking of all those people out there that don’t shop in my store but live in our area. I’m sure they have at least one friend who has been in my store or is one of our 500 FB friends. So our focus is this year is on getting our existing customers to bring a friend. Many of these women are stay at home moms. I see them at the parks, McDonald’s with the kids and other retail stores. We are not changing much with our store as it’s already very kid friendly, just making sure people know it’s kid friendly.(play area, changing station w/diapers). I’m also a mother of a young child so I try to go to all these places and meet mothers and share about the store. We see new customers everyday and many throughout the week that say they have never been to a consignment store. They are always impressed and can’t wait to come back.
We don’t carry new products with exception of some new items that are brought in for consignment. I would like to stick with our plan of being a resale shop and not wholesale items. I think my customers like we have to offer and when they do find those treasures(NWT items) they are even more thrilled of their finds.
This is fun Kate, I like these Wacky Wednesdays. I love to share what we do and hear others opinions too on a specific topic. Thanks:)
I am super new to the consignment business, but it was pretty clear early on that my excellent consignor’s are not necessarily resale shoppers. I recently added some quality handmade one-of-a-kind totes, scarves, pocketbooks. Also have several pieces of new jewelry – happened to be from the AVON line and I hesitated because I am not a costume jewelry lover myself. The consignor is a good one and she brought me 75 pieces in a baggie. It was a bite to list, price, display nicely – for the little bit of return. BUT – I kid you not, half sold in the first week and there are very few pieces left in the shop today.
I feel like even if my customers find a little something they enjoy – they’ll have a fonder memory of my shop then not finding anything at all.
the new jewelry and accessories that we carry tends to bring a lot of customers who may not buy resale clothing. We have a reputation for having unique pcs. and great selection and then when they arrive they automatically see that resale isn’t what they thought it was going to be!
I’ve started looking for home cleaning products, dish cloths, dish towels, scrubbies, etc. to sell in the store. There’s a popular brand of cleaning products that isn’t sold within fifty miles of my store, so I’m hoping to carry that line, and therefore save lots of ladies a fifty mile trip, or shipping costs.