Auntie Kate The Resale Expert

Introduce your staff.

Here’s the perfect weekend project for consignment, resale, and thrift shopkeepers, assuming no one’s graduating or getting married this perfect June day. It’s advertising, it’s PR, it’s a way of pulling your business out of the dreaded Sea of Sameness, and it’s fun as well: create your store scrapbook, update the one you have, or start afresh if you’re ambitious.

A store scrapbook is a great way to get your story in front of the public.

Tell the story of why you started your business.

Set it by your husband chair (AKA “shopping companion seating area”) for casual browsing, take it to your next merchants’ association get-together or local resale group meeting, use it when you give a talk in the outside world as a way to introduce your shop and its community involvement. It’s a visual, attractive way to show how much people love your shop, your support of local groups…and a fun way to record your business history as well!

And if you are planning to attend Conference the end of this month, bringing your scrapbook is a real boon…we can see what you mean!

Include thank-you notes from the charities you help.

Your scrapbook doesn’t need to be fancy but it gets pretty hard to stay plain when you start looking at your options online or in hobby stores.

Plan what you’ll include: the beginnings of your shop (from your inspiration to the painting!), exterior and interior shots you can be proud of (see TGtbT.com’s pages on photographing your shop), special events from your Bag Sale to the holiday dinner you treated staff to, community involvement projects, thank-you notes and photos from the charities you support, and of course, happy customers showing off their treasures (with permission natch.)

Whether plain or fancy, remember: this is a positive public documentation of your shop.

For more customers at your next event, include past events!

Keep it light and happy (those negative letters or embarrassing back-room photos stay in the back room.) And keep it current…at least a few pages per year.

Tips, ideas, help from the scrapbooking fiends:

• This site has more scrapbooking info than any sane person needs.
• Scrapbooking Magazine
• Ideas for any kind of scrapbooking you can imagine.