On yesterday’s post, How would YOU price that? one of our viewers was moved to ask why the shop shown
didn’t iron the clothes.
So let’s have a poll!
This poll will be for those resale stores who consign only, since buy-outright and thrift stores have a real stake in making their owned/donated goods worth more… since all the added value goes directly to the bottom line. I assume BORs and thrifts do prep items as needed… but if I’m wrong, please tell me so in the comments section of this post.
Consignment shopkeepers have to share the added value created by preparing clothing with the consignor.
Or do they?
So, consignment shopkeepers, take the poll. The “other” choice is there in case your situation is different. Then everyone, scroll down to Comments and tell us more. What selling price is “high enough” to warrant steaming or ironing? Or is there another parameter you use to decide? Which do you prefer… the ironing board or the steam wand? How often do you actually perform these tasks, and what do you do when a whole consignment is great… but wrinkled? Do you charge the consignor for this and if so how much and when?
If you don’t sell clothing, imagine I’m asking if you wash baby equipment or vacuum sofas or polish tables… you get the idea.
Auntie Kate The Resale Expert 
You would be amazed how an iron can improve the look of the item, it melts away sweater balls, and re-vitalizes chino materials and many more. I did nto get the same results from steaming. In my opinion ironing is quicker and more effective, and yes I do love fabric refreshner!
Oh thank you Diane I had no idea about allergies to spray starch. We only give it just one quick sprize, just to neutrlize small odors. I’ll have to rethink our using this. But we won’t stop steaming. I’m amazed everyday what people think they can consign and how wrinkled it is, or how old it is and they actually think I can make it look brand new again. I keep telling them I don’t have a magic wand. If I really push the rule of bring it in wrinkle free we couldn’t fill our poles
Beware many customers are allergic to Spray Starch!
We have a large store of everything from clothes to home decor and furniture. We usually have 8,000 – 10,000 clothing items on consignment at any given time. Yes everything gets sprayed with Niagra Srpay Starch Fresh Linen Scent and steamed; it freshens up the fabric so well. My husband and I have pride in our store and we want to present all of the items in professional and clean manner. Even though we ask consingors to bring everything in on hangers wrinkle free, clean etc….so many of them don’t. We average less than 1,000 items per month that don’t sell on the clothing side. I think it pays to spruce them up as here they sell quickly.
Furniture and home decor here too. We consign gently used items that are squeaky clean and ready for a new home. …and 95% of our consignors bring things in just that way.
When things turn up in not-so-ready shape, we make a judgment call. If it’s not too bad and just a few items, we offer to give them a wipe down (usually dust is the issue) with a request that in the future, they please get them ready before they bring them in. If the dust is too thick or too many items for us to handle quickly, we let them know how much we appreciate the time they took to bring things in and that we’d love to consign them if they would like to take them back home, give them a once-over and get them ready for the sales floor. ~most times, they will turn back up a day or two later with everything all done.
Hope it helps and thanks for sharing.
To Fashion Safari, you are so right, and charging consignors is not the answer!
I’d say that we probably end up steaming about 70% of the clothing that comes in (even though our consignment guidelines state that clothing must be pressed prior to bringing it in). We believe that appearance is everything and we don’t mind putting in the extra effort to make the clothing look as good as it possibly can. Our consignment agreement states that we charge a $2.00 fee per item if something needs to be steamed, but we have never charged any one the fee and we just do it for free. We also clean the inside and outsides of every pair of shoes and handbags before putting them out on the sales floor. Our customers like the fact that our merchandise is always neat and clean and that’s just one of the reasons that we were voted Best Consignment Shop in our County!
We have a very busy furniture consignment shop. We only take items that are floor ready. It is too labor intensive to vacuum and spot clean furniture. We only have 2600 sq ft so no room is wasted on anything not ready.
We spritz wrinkled items with a spray bottle that’s about 1/3 Febreze, 2/3 Water, just a couple squirts, swipe with your hand and most items are wrinkle free. Most items we take in are floor ready, but sometimes the fabric holds wrinkles really badly and sometimes the consignor just had the items boxed or bagged up for awhile before they made it in! We used to require hangers, but recently moved and don’t have a closet pole ready for hung incoming items at the moment, so we fold them until we are able to process them.
I am a very busy consignment store with over 2000 sq ft of mainly clothing. We have our ironing center set up right at our counter and can chat with the customers as we iron. We alcohol all shoes, clean all jewelry and alcohol all childrens toys, equipment etc. We do this for several reasons!
1. Stains, you would not believe how many stains pop when an iron hits it (we did not find this with a steamer).
2. Appearance is everything!
3. Most teenagers would just dump their stuff at a box if we did not do it for them, and we all know their clothes sell within days.
4. It is nice to assure my customers that the shoes they are trying on have been cleaned in 91% alcohol and their clothes have been ironed and checked 3 times for stains, rips etc.
We go through the clothes when they come in and then iron all clothes within 1 day and get them out on the floor. it has increased my electric bill, but the benefits have been WONDERFUL.
And yes, we generally only have one person on at a time, but when need be I just come in at 7 to catch up :).
We recently created a new policy about that issue. Most of our consigners bring things in a great condition. We got bombarded last week with some consignments that not only needed ironing but also washing. Obviously some of these items had been sitting outside or in a garage for a very long time. (We are considering going through items piece by piece with consigners but this is quite time-consuming for a two person operation) Our new policy tells consigners that we will dispose of items we cannot immediately put out on our floor, and if we do end up washing or cleaning these items they will become store property. We will give a copy of this policy to every new consigner and to repeat consigners that it applies to.