Auntie Kate The Resale Expert

Read Part 1: Seasonal sales and their consignors

Vital at Seasonal Sales: The Volunteers

Volunteer spot-checkers...and spots they did find, but surprisingly few.

Today let’s look at how volunteers are a crucial part of making a seasonal sale workable, how they use and how they reward volunteers.

Can volunteers a part of year-round shops? You betcha. Read on.

The key to the success, both in smooth operation and in profitability, of seasonal sales is recruiting, training, and cherishing volunteers. Volunteers are needed for set-up, intake, sales, cashiering, reclaiming and break-down sessions.

Not everyone who wants to help can, or can find the time, to work a sale. Thus, bartering is a possibility at many seasonal sales, and a way for consignors to earn a pre-event pass. They simply donate something off a specific, web-posted list rather than their volunteer labor.

I saw two barterers at the pre-sale I attended:

a consignor brought in card-stock paper, and another supplied the specified amount and mix of drinks for working volunteers. Depending on the local sale, pre-event passes can be had for the loan of rolling racks, off-season storage space, even placing fliers about town or loaning one’s husband for set-up and tear-down.

An aside: Volunteering is such an important part of seasonal sales, I have even found sales which deduct a substantial amount of money from a consignor’s cut if she doesn’t volunteer.

Pre-public shopping is the tasty bait most seasonal sales offer their potential volunteers. Christina told me that the pattern of sales suggests that the larger items are those to go first. Thus, if you haven’t volunteered or bartered, you might miss out on that plaything or gear that you really want. Other offers include a higher percentage on sold items, crediting the consignor sign-up fee which is standard practice in most seasonal sales, or including the volunteer’s business flier in the goodie bags handed out or in shoppers’ bags (Year-round stores, take note of this possibility….)

A volunteer places the "valet tagging" items she managed on the sales floor.

Valet tagging personally fascinates me: If a would-be consignor simply cannot, or doesn’t wish to, enter her goods on the web site, decide on pricing, print out and attach tags, then bring her goods in and place them on the sales floor herself, “valet tagging” or “concierge consigning” is a service most seasonal sales offer. Ranging in services from home pick-up to pressing for presentation, these services give the consignor a smaller cut, about the same as a year-round shop would offer. This is where seasonal sales start to approach the business model of a year-round shop.

So far, the JBF Tampa sale has not had a huge call for this service and so has no problem managing the extra chores. And of course, like so much else…valet tagging is actually done by volunteers. I found it fascinating that these volunteers are paid a percentage of the selling price of the stranger’s items they tag: this “cut of the action” gently nudges them in the direction of a reasonable but not under-market-value pricing structure. Set a price too low, they get little. Too high, they get nothing when an item doesn’t sell.

Another aside: I love the angle another, adult seasonal sale took on their concierge consigning service. They offer “crystal clear hangers, professional tagging tails”  (that’s attachers to us retailers!) and other things that year-round shops consider givens.

Pre-public shopping is also available, depending on the franchisee, to military personnel and “first-time moms.” Holly and Christina especially enjoy helping and participating in the joy of those first-time moms. We allow the mom to bring a friend or family member with them. After all, shopping for your first child is a time of celebration, so being able to bring your mother, best friend, or the baby’s dad is a natural.

When I expressed surprise that there still existed so many stay-at-home moms, Christina gently reminded me that currently, there are many moms who aren’t SAHMs by choice, but rather unemployed. Thus, the generally relaxed atmosphere during the take-in day: no one was in a terrible rush to be elsewhere.

Now of course, not-for-profit thrift stores already use volunteers in many capacities (hey, I’m one, every Wednesday without fail!), but even

for-profits have a place for enthusiastic and innovative volunteers.

How about helping at your seasonal clearance sale? At your Bag Sale that benefits a charity? Wouldn’t you love to have a volunteer who operates as your liaison to her charity and its consignment account, wrangling and even managing that account?

Bartering is another angle for year-round shops to investigate. If you already invite your Preferred Shopper Club to get first dibs at a wine-and-cheese evening-before preview of your seasonal sale… maybe there’s folks out there who’d gladly barter for a pass. The manicurist who does your model for the big fashion show at the country club? The woman who prints your business cards? Or how about asking your customers for a free-standing pier mirror or tri-fold screen for your window displays…and bartering store bucks for it?

Seasonal sales abound in time-tested ways to reward volunteers.

Take a Google-trip through the web to see an incredible variety of ideas. (Treasured Sponsors of HowToConsign.com, email me Monday March 22 for your Treasured bonus of seasonal sale links for quick and easy research.)

Tomorrow or maybe the next day: Running a seasonal consignment sale… could a year-round shop do this? How? Why? Stay tuned, and while you wait, remember you could win a full year’s Sponsorship at HowToConsign.com just for participating in this week’s Wacky Wednesday Giveaway before midnight Sunday!