The absolute worst time of year to be a consignment or resale shopkeeper is the holiday season.
You’re not overwhelmed with shoppers, because you can’t convince the entire world to shop secondhand for Christmas. You’ve done your best, but there are still those folks who, although they happily shop with you all year, are afraid of what their sister-in-law might think if they gifted her with something wonderful from your shop. So your regulars are out shopping the malls.
Or maybe they’re just too busy to come in and browse like they normally do. Come to think of it, you’re too time-pressured, too… it’s really hard, keeping your shop going when it’s slow and your family and social calendar is wild crazy. Feels like nothing you do is right. (Especially if your Christmas cookies look as lopsided as mine. And you totally cannot think of what to get that darn sister-in-law if it has to be NEW.)
So I offer you, today, the most-pinned graphic from AuntieKate the Blog. It’s a good thing to mull upon, this time of year. Everything’s gonna be alright.
You are and continue to be a success.
Visit the TGtbT.com Pinterest site for shopkeeper ideas, and see what Auntie Kate is telling YOUR future customers about resale on HTC’s Pinterest site.
Auntie Kate The Resale Expert 
I am in my third holiday season, selling Women’s clothing, shoes, handbags, jewelry, home decor, and such. Each year, I have made ‘Gift Tables’ for the holidays. I fortunately get a lot of NWT clothing and misc. items in, and promote to bring those items in for the holidays!
I set up tables, cover them with holiday tablecloths and decorations, and wrap unused shoe boxes with holiday wrapping paper, and use them as risers. Then, I put ALL of my New Items, on the tables, and put clothing racks with ALL of my NWT clothing at the ends, or nearby with signs that it’s all NEW and makes great gift ideas/stocking stuffers.
I will also put maybe a new shirt folded neatly in a gift box, or a new pair of gloves displayed with a gift bag, ready to go! I add 50 cents to my already 50 cent buyers fee, to cover costs for the bags and boxes, but my customers love that the entire gift is ready to go!
I also get a lot of baskets in, so I put tissue paper in them, with maybe a cookie recipe or something, with a sign about being a perfect Grandparent gift.
Being a “used” store, I feel that, especially during the holidays, you have to give your customers ideas to work with, like crafts, recipes, etc., then they’re imagination will continue on its own, with the other things they find in your store!
Hope this helps!
We normally don’t see any decline in sales in December. Here’s four ways we boost our December sales…
1. When you sell a gift certificate during the holiday season be sure to get the buyers name and address. Then every year around Thanksgiving send them a personal note reminding them of their past GC purchase. We’ve been in business for 10 years so our list of holiday GC buyers is pretty big, but you have to start sometime! We get a huge response to our mailing and big “thank you’s” from the buyers for making their Xmas shopping a little easier! We also promote GC’s on our FB page, Twitter and our email campaigns.
2. We always have a Xmas party. We have the party mid-week, usually from 4-8 PM so as to not interfere with the busy holiday weekends. We combine the party with a one-day sale for the whole day. We give out prizes every hour and have a nice selection of sandwiches, sweets and drinks (non-alcoholic). Over the years this party has grown to be an important part of our December sales and our customers always look forward to it.
3. We include a coupon in our November email campaign that can only be used in December.
4. We give “double stamps” for our Savvy buyer card every weekend in December.
Hope this helps your December sales. Merry Christmas everyone!
Denna, great tactics, thank you for sharing them with us. Re Tactic #1: Years ago, my sweetie and I spent some time… not much, maybe a weekend, in a B&B on Lake Erie. The next year, 10-11 months later, came a photo of us the owner had taken in her parlor, reminding us what a relaxed and careful time we’d had there. PERFECT marketing!
It would be nice to be able to see your business marketing, but alas, you haven’t shared with us your business name and URLs. Perhaps you’d rather not; if it was an oversight rather than commercial privacy, we’d love to know!
Thank you, thank you, thank you! We just came off our best month (six months after moving to our new location) and were CRUSHED with how slow this month has been. We are so stressed out that and your post, and the knowledge that we are not alone, helped boost our spirits a bit!
PS – One of the things that was a big hit for years, and really helped sell our previously loved merchandise was providing small postcard sized ‘notes’ to the recipient to help the giver get over their worry about ‘gasp’ giving something ‘used’. The J Peterman company was big back then (now they are up and running again after going bankrupt I hear). They seemed to have pioneered the chatty, sort of world-traveler, talking-to-you kind of commentary in their catalogs…we played off of that. For example: one card read something like,’While hunting through my favorite, secret little jewel of a shop I happened across these gorgeous boots. I immediately thought how fabulous they would look on you! I knew only you would appreciate such fine craftsmanship and style. That a well-known local fashion diva took the time to break them in a bit for you was just icing on the cake right? Oh to be able to shop her closet right?’
The boots would have been standing in a gift box of tissue (which went with them) with the card clipped to the front. (Hint: Put a thing in a box with tissue at Christmas and no matter what it is it will sell much better!)
I wish I could lay my hands on the cards – but you get the idea. People loved them and it really helped get them over their ‘problem’!
Such wonderful ideas, Cynthia, many thanks from all of us for your wisdom! I wish all resale shopkeepers could look ahead and plan ahead like you do.
I do remember the aggravation in our early days of knowing all our customers were out spending their money elsewhere at Christmas. I was so aggravated I decided to do something about it. We knew this would take a year or two – but it has worked. December is our third busiest sales month.
We planned for this. This before the internet, desktop publishing etc. We sell everything – clothes, furniture, decor, jewelry etc., but that year of the first big effort to garner Christmas trade the stores were separate. Clothing in one space, everything else diagonally across the street.
In the fall we made a huge effort to decorate the stores, and keep them decorated very well. Started preparing for Thanksgiving and helping our customers with that holiday (in clothing big displays of fall themed sweaters, signage geared to relatives expecting children to visit, entertaining/cooking stuff grouped together etc) and, talked to our customers and consignors encouraging them to bring in last years unwanted and unused gifts, and took a lesser commission on clothing new with tags. We have a 30 day consignment period. We asked some consignors if we could ‘hold over’ their NWT and unwanted/unused stuff and not put it out until mid-November – and why. We don’t buy outright normally,but some we did. People love to help.
The entire year before we kept the goal in mind and bought and stored odd, cheap lots of stuff we knew our customers would love to purchase as gifts for both shops. We bought stuff at estate sales. We stored it up all year just for this purpose. We looked at it as an investment in future Christmases. We also dropped ‘consignments’ as the tag line under our store name (which doesn’t have the word consignment in it)
For the odd but cool, collectible sort of thing we made quite an effort to display and group things together in the non-clothing store geared to hobbies and interests (For the Gardener, For the Fisherman, signs with quirky little notes below to spark their imaginations). In the clothing store we bought gift and jewelry boxes and tissue, assembled them and had them ready, played up the new stuff (slippers, pjs, robes, sweaters and accessories) and happily everything else sold right along with it.
Think like the majority of your customers, make a plan and work the plan and be consistent for a year or so and you’ll see each December getting better and better. HTH
Merry Christmas everyone – Cynthia
love…thank you
Thank you! We thought it was something we were doing!
Thanks, you are so right about the holidays being hard on consignment store owners. I try not to bring it home. Thanks for the beautiful words of wisdom. Marsha Beach, Prissy Peacock Consignment.
Thank you, Kate. You are a constant source of solace and inspiration, and I’m grateful this time of year for YOU!
very beautiful and yes Tara timely
So true…and so timely. Thanks, Kate!