Today, I want to hear from you, my shopkeeper readers.
Tell me what you’re struggling with.
What makes your shop less than an exciting, rewarding, fun place to work? What do you wish you could fix so that your shop can support and bring joy to you, your family, and your staff?
Or if you are not currently a shop owner or manager of a consignment, resale or non-profit thrift, tell us what you struggle with as you try to support your local resale business.
What do you wish would be different?
Or tell me why you subscribe to my blog, and what you want to hear more about, or what I have totally ignored. What I have not covered completely, and what still puzzles you about the business.
It’s your turn to have the floor. The spotlight. The say-so.
Auntie Kate The Resale Expert 
Auntie
I’m in the business oh reinventing, restoring, re painting, mostly wooden furniture. My inventory is colorful, painted, clean and I new upscale fabrics when recovering my prices. I’ve been working and struggling for the past year. Last summer I moved to a upscale fled market about an hour away. Sales were OK but had to move back I spent more than 40 hrs a week getting organizing for a better space. I hired a family member (sister) who walked out before it was completed this was a major setback.My husband does most of my repairs if any.I built a wall and shelving myself. I now feel stuck and need advice on if I should press on or just gives. I love my store I’m having trouble getting customers. Everyone seems to love my work but no sales. I’m next door to a bingo hall so it seems like no one has money afterwards. How do I capture their attention.
Well, SOMEone’s winning at Bingo, right? They gotta have money to splurge! LOL
Let’s see. You mention nothing about how you are attracting customers into your store. What advertising, social media, email are you using? How often? What’s the message in your advertising? Do you have a web site and a blog? Maintain a wish list? Send press releases? Invite local bloggers to see what you’re doing? Have some useful info to disseminate? Blog entries, handouts, even YouTube videos?) How many business cards or shop brochures do you personally hand out every month?
What DOES sell? Are you concentrating on what folks are buying, or are you sidetracked by what YOU like to do? When looking at what sells, think about price point…. item (shelves vs chairs? for example)… even colors and color combinations. Have you considered adding in some things that people need more often than furniture (after all, I might LOVE that kitchen table, but not need/ have room for it.)?
How about expanding your income base by giving classes? Selling painting supplies? Offering private parties where, for example, the participants can paint/ decorate their own birdhouse or step stool?
Are your business hours a good match to when your marketplace wants to shop? Does your store front make stepping in irresistible? Do you accept credit cards, offer layaway, do custom orders? Does your business phone have a message on it for when you’re closed? If folks type in, oh I dunno… “painted furniture YourTown” do they get your web site and your Facebook?
SO many ways to succeed! I’m sure, with some thought, attention, and productive work, you can! Be sure to write back as you try some of these ideas.
Got another issue we are struggling with at our store- decreased revenue over the past few months. We have noticed our furniture sales have decreased- which was a huge money maker for us. Clothing sales have been good as well as home decor. Our cold weather hasn’t helped us at all. Any helpful advice? Thanks so much!
There are so many factors that go into buying furniture vs. home decor and clothing… not the least of which is “how will I get it home in a blizzard?” I don’t know if your shop is located in the areas that have been hit so hard with the weather, but if so, I’m sure that’s impacting incoming furniture as well, leading to less turnover and fewer sales. It’s hard, I know, not to sell the big-ticket items, and it takes a heap of clothes to equal one sofa or dining room set, so all I can suggest is to gird your loins, work that want list and your advertising and social media, and look forward to spring and the inevitable re-decorating that it will bring!
Hello Kate. Thanks for your response. Our customers do seem to be procrastinating with their big ticket purchases lately. This icy and cold weather in Mississippi has been a shocker for sure! Consignment has been a little slower too with our Spring / Summer clothes. We are all in Winter mode!
We do provide a pickup service for our consignors for furniture and have had 3 so far this year. I love your ” Gird your loins” comment. I plan to! Thanks for the encouragement! Melanie!
We have a mix of furniture, home decor, clothing, etc as well. Our furniture has always moved a bit slower. We only accept good quality/style pieces partly due to the fact we have to be particular because we have under 2000 sq ft. Your question peaked my interest in terms of what is the average amount of time that you expect, let’s say, a kitchen table/chair set to sell? I’ve always wondered if our average time is slower than most. We focus on getting the smaller accent furniture, which seems to move quicker and the prices still move us quicker toward profitability.
Golly Joe, don’t know if there is such a thing as “average time to sell”… so I’ll let others answer that! I think your choice of “smaller accent furniture”… especially in a small space… is the perfect solution since it does, indeed, move more quickly!
Hey Joe. Thanks for your questions and info. We started out at 900 sq ft in our first store. We weren’t selective with the size at that point. We took furniture ranging from small tables to armoires and mammoth pieces! Now , we are in a 10,000 sq ft store. More space to stage now. But we are very selective with quality. Average time for selling furniture ? Hmmm…
Our turnaround time for bringing new furniture pieces in is about a week. But if course we have 10,000 sq ft. Don’t know if this helps. Thanks for your comment!
Melanie,
Our nonprofit resale in Chicago sells furniture, as well, and we do two things to keep furniture sales aloft. Take pics and put the furniture on Craigslist. The reach is much farther than just from walk-ins. Take a look at our postings in Chicago CL, by putting New Elephant Resale in the search box. We have about 30+ postings up now, mostly of furniture.
The other way we make it easier to help our customers buy furniture is by offering a reliable, trustworthy delivery service. Our delivery guy is an independent contractor who offers his pick up AND delivery services to antique shops, nonprofit resale shops, for-profit resale shops, and interior designers. He sets his rates, which happen to be reasonable. As we are in the city, not many people have vehicles that can hold furniture, so a delivery service is extremely helpful. Make an effort to find someone in your community that has a delivery service that you can recommend to your customers. Make sure they are recommended by others, as you don’t want your customers to have a bad experience.
Good luck!
Great ideas Heidi. We do use Craigslist and have a great Facebook page. We upload albums everyday and always reach a lot of people. Check out our FB page at Forget Me Nots of Brandon. Thanks for the delivery tip. We do pick up furniture for our consignors- we have a Uhaul truck! Maybe we can let our customers be aware of our delivery service also. Thanks again!
I’ll be opening my women’s and maternity consignment store in just 2 short months! As I prepare, I’m struggling with a lot of things. Here are just a few:
1. Should we have a $5 one-time processing fee for new consignors? I’d read on here several times that a purchaser fee is a better idea, but I think in our location, a fee added to the total price a customer pays would be received very negatively.
2. Will we create problems by using a 60/40 split for cash and 50/50 for store credit? I want to do this to encourage consignors to shop our store, but will this create an absolute nightmare for accounting? The decisions in these first 2 questions are related to my concern that we won’t make enough to cover our expenses.
3. My decision to open this shop is strongly linked to environmental and social justice concerns. If I believe that reduced consumption is an important way to help the planet, how will I balance that belief with the need to try to sell more stuff to more people in order to make sure the shop is successful??
That last one makes my brain hurt!
Hi Jackie, some thoughts.
On Q#1, what is so different about your location? I’m not saying a “processing fee” (? do you mean a registration fee?) is good or bad, just curious as to the marketplace you are in.
On Q#2, I’m a firm believer in people will buy from you based on your marketing and selling skills, not some differing split… but lots of folks do offer this choice. I think it adds a layer of confusion, but that’s me: KISS Kate!
And on Q#3, would you have people go about in ragged clothes or sit on the floor… or offer them a eco-responsible way to make sure that manufactured goods get fully used, rather than tossed when they have lots of life left? And help cut the costs of transport, too, by offering a local way to shop? 😉
Thank you for the replies, Kate! It’s so great to hear back!
Thoughts, by question #:
Re #1: We’re in Chicago in a very diverse neighborhood that has a lot of refugee families and other low income folks. A goal of mine is to keep the prices affordable, so it doesn’t feel right to charge a purchaser fee. In the 15 years I’ve been consigning my own clothes, I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a shop that charges a per item purchaser fee…unless I’m misunderstanding what this fee is. But several places I’ve used have charged a one-time $5 new consignor fee (processing fee/registration fee/what have you).
Re #2: Yeah, I’m not excited about the level of complication this will add to the accounting. Eventually, I want to have a 50/50 split for cash or store credit, but I want to make sure we’re making enough $$$ (covering our expenses at the least, and paying ourselves something at best) before we go to that.
Re: #3: Good points…thank you! 🙂
I think you misunderstand the buyer’s fee, Jackie. It’s explained in the manual, and it is not something that will make your goods unaffordable. On the cash/store credit debate, I don’t truly believe it will make enough of a bottom-line profit difference to be worth not only the accounting, but the confusion and potential misunderstanding by your consignors. My opinion.
I’ve been struggling with having time to price everything, and getting our back room cleaned out.
Heidi, there’s nothing that feels quite as good as an empty intake area, is there? I find, when I do consultations, that quite often, there’s a lot of wasted time in pricing. Maybe this post on Making Money or Wasting Time? will inspire you!
I’m struggling with sales currently. With the really bad weather we’ve had the last 2 months, fewer people are coming into the store, either to bring things or to buy. I’m posting often on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and send out emails every 10 -15 days besides radio, direct mail, and newspaper. What more can we do to get them out of their cocoons this time of year?
Hey Kitty. I’m having the same problems you are. I’m anxious to know what more we can be doing also! Hand in there.
Kitty and Melanie, finding a motivation to get out in the weather and over to your shop ain’t easy. But there is one thing that is, above all, the greatest motivator of all time! Read about a Delicious Idea for a Shopping Event here.
Am struggling with eliminating optional pickups for clothing consignments. Would like to eliminate pickups completely. It has become too time consuming and consignors have lately been very demanding ..if we canfriends’t seem to locate an item! How would you suggest we implement this change/transition?
We don’t have very many people actually remember to ask us to pull them…its up to them to call and give us 24 hours notice at the end of their consignment period. With several thousand consignors, we only have a handful of people per month actually make that call. Thank goodness! It’s a huge waste of time and the items they might actually want back are sold, of course. Anything we end up pulling are items we should not have taken in the first place:)
Brenda, I agree with Stacie that there’s a silver lining: seeing what hasn’t sold is an excellent learning tool! 🙂 I am not a fan, though, of claiming all unsold goods as store property, though. The option of retrieving unsold items is a comfort-point to consignors, especially new ones. There are lots of ways to deal with this issue rather than putting such an obstacle in the path of your business growth, and I would suggest you explore these options before making your decision. Check out that section in Too Good to be Threw, The Manual, and then see how you feel.
Space, space, space!! I started small because I didn’t want to get in over my head – also because I live in a very small town and didn’t know how much traffic/consignors I would end up with. I could easily use 2 or 3 times the space I have now! But there are no viable locations available 😦 I feel so claustrophobic sometimes!
Oh my, Kristy, almost every shopkeeper has had this lament! It’s amazing how much STUFF comes out of even a small town’s closets once a shop opens. Here’s a few things to think about:
* Eliminating slow-sellers (I see on your site that you have already done exactly what I did!)
* Shortening the consignment period. 90 days is simply too long, I feel, in this day and age
* Encouraging more rapid turnover (wouldn’t it be great to sell every piece within days instead of months?)
* Using your space to the max. If you need inspiration, try The Essential Guide to Using ALL Your Space in our Products for the Professional Resaler
I’m currently in the planning stages of my consignment shop, getting together polices etc… I want to here what other shop owners think about charging fees. In researching I’ve seen 10.00 admin fees, .25 tagging fees, 8.00 processing fees, 1.50 check processing fees. It does sound like a way to have extra income but is it a turn off for new customers?? Thanks for your feedback
CoSign, here’s hoping some shopkeepers will click the “Reply” button above your gravatar and let you know how they feel! Personally, the only fee I would go with, as we discuss in the Manual, is a buyer’s fee… which is not paid by the consignor but the purchaser.
We only charge a buyers fee. Since meeting with Kate, we increased it from .$50 per item to $1 per item and it has made a huge difference! Because so many shops charge consignor fees and/or seasonal fees and such consignors seem delighted to hear we don’t charge them anything to consign with us! (Although, don’t get me wrong, I would LOVE to, and I would LOVE to charge extra for the ones that are a PITA!!)
As far as check processing fees, pay as much as you can in cash (so they spend it on that item they spot on their way out, of course!) and you won’t feel like your drowning in stamp and envelope receipts.
This is still something we are trying to ‘master’…keeping enough cash in store to pay consignors!
Also, if you DO mail checks, use it to your advantage. Send your upcoming sale/event flyers, a letter letting them know you just got in an item you know they would love, what season your currently accepting, etc.! Using it as a direct mail tool is a GREAT benefit I also learned from Kate and her manual! 🙂
It amazes me how some people treat my staff when I’m not there. I used to wonder if my part-time helpers were exaggerating things. No one is ever rude to me, only the poor kid behind the counter. I’d like to find a nice way for my staff to be able to stand up for themselves. I don’t know what to tell them.
I can sympathize with you. I feel like a mother whose child has been picked on even for staff that are older than I. I think (and I don’t do this enough) that we should thank our staff for putting up with the rudeness and remind them that it really isn’t personal. Perhaps brainstorming on how to respond either verbally or nonverbally to each situation that makes both staff and consignor or customer feel comfortable.
I have the most wonderful customers and consignors. My store is in Phoenix and we get a lot of snowbirds. The store is their first stop even before picking up groceries. What a compliment!
What do I struggle with? There’s not enough time in the day. 🙂
The thing I want to work better on in 2014 is marketing of my store. I am in a pretty good place with sales and employees, but I don’t dedicate enough time to marketing. I feel that is the key to growing my business and that’s what I want to keep doing, even after 10 years.
Julie, have I got a message for YOU… and all my way-too-self-effacing peers. Read You are More Special Than You Think, and you’ll have dozens of ideas on marketing your business (not to mention writing press releases.)
We are a buy-outright store and handle 50/50 between clothes and furniture/decor/etc. We’ve been in business for almost 2 years now and desperately need more space! Our current square footage is around 2300–it’s all full, and our back room is overflowing. We definitely want to stay downtown but it’s hard to find anything bigger that isn’t triple our current rent.
I’m going to invent elastic walls for resale shops and become a millionaire! In the meanwhile, Carrie, some of the ideas in my reply to Kristy might help.
Q: What do you wish you could fix? As resale/consigmment shop owners our online reputions are at stake with negative Yelp & Facebook reviews. Although both platforms seem to be under scrutiny, I feel we have no recourse. What do you do to minimize any negative impact you might receive? Can we as a national organization (NARTs) band together to make a difference somehow?
Crystal, I notice you have some excellent replies to some negative reviews on Yelp, so all I can suggest is keep that up. Giving, to those customers who “just LOVE this store” , an elegant business card with info on “how to show your love in our reviews” is what I would do.
I would like to understand and use social media. I need some guidelines for employee reviews and discipline issues. I love your various holiday ideas. thank you!
My consignment shop has been open around 5 years. We’ve been very fortunate not to have had a major problem with theft. Over the years, we have continued to grow, and have recently experienced theft (mainly dept, store cosmetics) which we keep very close to the counter. I have resisted getting a security system, but am inquiring what, if any deterrents other shops use to discourage theft.
Joe, the standard retail practice for curbing shoplifting of small items like your cosmetics is: Behind glass / limited items out so the potential thief realizes you can see immediately that something’s missing/ putting on cards so they’re too big to palm. I love using the wall behind the cash desk for displaying things that are too tempting. Before you go to a security system be sure that the cost of the system is not greater than your shortage losses.
Employees – we have great employees and are working hard at maintaining a positive environment, but it seems that there is always an issue of some sort with 14 people on staff. It can range from someone calling in on a really busy day to a manager making poor choices to a dress code issue from one day to the next. It would be nice to get through a few days without having to put out a fire regarding employees:)
Wouldn’t it? (Yes, that’s all I can say 😉 )
Stacie,
Do you have an employee handbook? If employees know ahead of time what is expected of them, and they have signed a statement saying they have read and understand the policies, it will go along way toward eliminating those behaviors. And for the people that continually exhibit inappropriate behaviors you have a way to discipline them, or let them find other employment. If it is someone that does not usually break or bend the policies, maybe have a talk with them and find out what is going on behind the scenes. Good luck!
Kathy Thompson
I am not a shop owner, but I work at a local children’s resale store (not consignment). My biggest complaint is the “teaser” wall: the wall display behind the register/counter that is dressed to promote the store’s biggest sales at least two weeks early. It teases customers because if one shows interest in an item, he/she is told it is not for sale until the promotion begins. How silly is that?
My goodness, Lisa, I haven’t heard of that twist in decades! “You can’t buy it, it’s our display.” And CERTAINLY NEVER in a resale shop, where there’s just one of everything. Thanks for adding to my collection of head-shaking situations!
Lately I have been so discouraged about our less than perfect applicants and employees. I feel like it has been taking away from our potential. I do feel like we now are on the road to a better month – fired one and one quit. Finding good help is hard! Thanks for your posts!
I agree, Melanie, especially for shops which need staffers who not only sell, but who must deal with incoming merchandise as well. It takes a certain person to relish the “what-will-happen-next” atmosphere of resale, and the multi-tasking needed is very disconcerting to many applicants and new hires. In fact, that’s a thought… maybe in the interview or probation period, you could specifically throw a LOT of interruptions and confusion their way and see if they remain unflappable?