These Pinterest graphics link to
helpful sites for you and your staff to learn about the merchandise
you resell, recycle, repurpose. If you click through, you’ll find a wealth of knowledge.
This blogger (and illustrator!) has lots of good decorator tips on his site… and gardening tips too.
Wow your clientele with arcane knowledge from a site called Be an Antique Furniture Detective:
Surprising how often you have to know this. (Really? A Wyoming King?)
Below, just one of 35 Decorating Secrets from Top Interior Designers:
Now that you’ve got the product knowledge, learn how to display, merchandise and sell your goods with The Resaler’s Guide to Furniture & Home Goods.
If this post has been useful to you, please share with your consignment, resale or thrift peers or even with strangers, (sharing links below) and let us know in the comments! If you have links to contribute to “Things to know: Furniture & Home Goods”, that would be super!
More resources for furniture and hard-goods resale, consignment thrift shops.
And some interesting tidbits in Part 2, Things to Know about Clothing Consignment
Auntie Kate The Resale Expert 
[…] auntiekate.wordpress.com via HowToConsign.com Consignment on […]
I have never encountered a blog publishing so much information about home decors and design! I could use these ideas in redesigning homes which I am selling.
OMG – this is a wealth of information, all in one place. Thanks so much, Kate!!!
I truly enjoy gathering sources of info for resale shopkeepers! Please feel free to add any you have found, so that others can use them. (Just be sure to bookmark this… don’t lose it!)
This is awesome. We recently opened a charity resale shop in Chicago, and are still trying to get our customer base and the shop organized well. I love your posts!
Glad to “meet” you Heidi… my http://HowToConsign.com viewers are always asking for MORE listings in Chi-land! Hope you can become a Sponsor pronto and get that tourist/visitor/new resident traffic into your shop! What charity does your shop help fund?
We benefit three charities right now–Rotary/ONE, TKEN and Jesse White Tumbling Team. The director of the shop hopes to be able to donate money to about 6-8 local charities.
We have been using Craigslist to try to boost our business, and it’s been somewhat successful, but am wondering if any of your members on here have any tips on using that and other free online listing services to help bring in the customers.
Hi Heidi, Some of the free online resources which would work for you are probably specific to the area in which your potential audience lives, so maybe googling for your city, county, or zip code is the way to go. Also, of course, you should ask and indeed EXPECT your charities to use their sites and social media to promote your store. This is an area that I find sorely lacking in tit-for-tat.
Don’t forget, of course (although it’s easy to do!) that there are online spots that might help but cost (e.g. Google Adwords, the Facebook “promote this post” program) and there’s offline: real, places that advertising could be worthwhile. Not everyone is online, natch, and not everyone is always following whatever you’re doing, be it FB, Twitter, etc. Examples: local newspapers or free shopper papers (in some locales these are more read than in others), your benefiting charities’ member newsletters, billboard and bus cards. Also, talk to your charities about their using their PSAs (public service announcements) to promote you.
Using online means of advertising a bricks-and-mortar store is trickier than all the pundits online would have you believe. After all, it really doesn’t do a real store much good to have someone read a Craigslist ad at 11pm… unless that person remembers to come to your shop the next day (Chances of that? Basically nil.) To me, all Craigslist can do consistently is get your name out there and on your potential customers’ minds. Sure, often you do get a direct result there… but I wouldn’t use ONLY Craigslist or indeed, ONLY free online ways to motivate people to walk through the door, then open their wallets.
[…] Read our first “Things to Know” for those consignment, thrift and resale shops who sell furniture and home goods. It’s handy, even if the closest you get to furniture is seating on it. […]