Auntie Kate The Resale Expert

If you’re in a college town

Here’s a way to put your shop on the mental maps of students. Does the student bookstore or a private shop in town sell used textbooks?

If they do, and if students complain about how little return they get when they resell their textbooks…and if you have a few bookshelves worth of space…

why not consign them at your place?

• Let the students set their prices (they’ll know better than you!),
• make sure your consignment period for these is carefully crafted to fit ONLY the time period that students will be buying textbooks,
• (Even if you BOR, consign these…you want the consignor to benefit, you want those return visits, and you don’t want to be stuck with unsold books! One of the benefits of being an adult is never having to think of Analytic Particle Theory ever again 😉 )
• and send text messages, Tweets, FB entries or email about this service. You can even announce specifically which books you have available currently.
  

  

• Put the text books in a place that exposes the book browser to the best in college-student merchandise in your shop.
  

• Your consignment cut for these should be the bare minimum you can bear,
  

  because your goal isn’t to make this service a PROFIT center,

but rather a customer magnet and reason for word-of-mouth.

Depending on the political stances of your student market, you might even donate some/all of the proceeds of these textbook sales to a charity they feel close to.

College students aren’t your target market? How can you adapt this idea to YOUR marketplace?

What solution could you offer to a problem your ideal customer has, and how can you do it at little cost (time, money, effort, space) in a WOM-worthy manner, that will draw more customers, more often, into your shop where you’ll be able to sell more to them?