Auntie Kate The Resale Expert

You could even create your holiday window display now, while you still have some free time in your shop.

Before your consignment, resale or thrift shop gets snowed under with the fall incoming and outgoing, take a few days to prep your shop’s plans for the holiday season.

It could be as simple as getting your decor plans firmed up (and maybe even made?) or as thought-worthy as “When will I take holiday-specific items? When put them on the sales floor?” When, how to mark down so that you’re not baby-sitting a lot of unsaleable Santas and funky sweaters?

(Speaking of which, decide if/how you will market those beloved/ reviled Christmas sweaters…. oh, and how will you manage to receive and merchandise as many NWT gift items as possible to help your customers save on gift-giving?)

Make yourself a timetable and checklist:

* Timetable for intake, special event presentation, MDing and getting rid of.

* Media advertising. Have you checked rates lately? Can you decide on a message you want to get across? Maybe your neighboring businesses will want to share a destination or resale-specific ad campaign. This will need some time to pull together, so get started.

* Social media advertising: What, where, and how it will get done when your business and personal schedules will be full.

* Think about shop decor now, so you’re not stuck buying those amateur dollar-store cardboard cutouts. Think about what would be festive, suitable, and most of all, WOM-worthy. Are there community activities you’d like your business to take part in… or even sponsor?

* You could even pre-schedule your Facebook posts, write and set a date for blog entries, gather some great pins to post before and during the holiday shopping season (a secret board on your Pinterest account is great for this!)

Take a look at the TGtbT Pinterest Board for shop ideas, and you might enjoy the consumer-centric HTC Pinterest Board as well. Use the search box on TGtbT.com to search for ideas across all the TGtbT Sites for Professional Resalers.

And then, of course, you could get some profit-making (and fun!) ideas from Holidays in Resale. After all Christmas will be here before you know it.