Auntie Kate The Resale Expert

Drowning in incoming consignments?

If your resale, thrift or consignment shop is not yet flooded with fall incoming, you soon will be.

How will you cope? It’s easy to get frazzled and forget that your intake process must be as client-centric as your selling processes are. If you’re drowning, it’s tempting to grasp onto anything that looks like it’ll keep you afloat without regard to long-term consequences. For example, some shopkeepers wish they could tape a sign on the door NO MORE ’til I get done with what I got!…but fortunately, they realize that turning away suppliers is bad for business in the long, and the short, run.

I can’t add hours to your day (which is probably what you wish for), but there are some (relatively) simple ways to not drown in a sea of incoming.

Here’s how NOT to cope:

Don't let a sea of incoming take a chunk out of your business.

Don’t cope by, if you buy outright, setting a daily expenditure limit and closing your buying once it’s reached. A seasonal budget is better. A seasonal, category-driven budget is best. If you stop buying once you reach some daily “”limit”, all you’re doing is disbursing funds to early birds. They get the cash, you get the worm…if you miss out on the great stuff coming in at 4pm because you bought just-average stuff at 11am. Not to mention, “running out of money” is a real good reason for suppliers to feel misused by you, when they show up “too late” to sell things to your business.

Don’t cope by publicizing  how many items you will take from each consignor. The reasons I think this harms your business are in the Manual, so I won’t repeat them here. But there’s another reason: Read about having numerical limits messes with YOUR head. And we all know the last thing we need during busy times is one more brain tangle.

Don’t cope by using Drop&Run in every case. Drop&Run is designed for consignors or sellers who are familiar with and perfectly comfortable with your acceptance and pricing standards. A less-experienced client can botch up the whole works, dropping off flagrantly-unacceptable goods, requiring you to store useless items and probably spend time and energy getting her back in to take these items out of your way.

Don’t cope by going too fast. Not taking your time checking the condition of incoming goods simply wastes time and goodwill. Whether you have to contact a consignor over a flaw, store the goods, or simply “dispose of without further notice,” it’s much more effective to catch the flaw at the time it comes in.

And here’s some suggestions on coping with class:

Keep your business afloat with these coping techniques from TGtbT.com

Do cope by refining your standards in tandem with decreasing availability of space. That sweater that you were happy to see on August first might not make your cut on September 15th when you are up to your…turtleneck…in sweaters.

Do cope by pricing to sell. Keep in mind that the less time ’til something will be out-of-season, the cheaper it should be priced today. That sweater we talked about above? It is literally worth less to your clientele once discounts on fall goods deepen in the “real” stores.

Do cope by actually, ahem, selling. It’s all too easy to spend 10 or 12 hours with your head buried in incoming. But remember: incoming items are worth precisely zero until they’re sold. So don’t neglect the process of turning all your hard acceptance work into cash in the till by getting out on the sales floor and selling.

Do cope by getting help. Even the least-experienced helper can change hangers, straighten the linens, sweep the entryway. Don’t try to do it all yourself.  Recruit friends and family, call in some favors, add hours to your employee schedule. Whether paid or volunteer, I’ll bet you have a handful of current customers who’d have fun helping out here and there.

Do cope by doing “pre-sorts” whenever possible on Drop&Runs. Yes, normally I don’t recommend handling incoming twice. But if a Drop&Run looks like it might have a lot of NTYs in it, and your supplier seems willing to browse and you have 3 minutes…pre-sort. It’ll save you time and your supplier, perhaps, a return to pick up unacceptables. And your shop’s reputation for being easy to deal with.