Auntie Kate The Resale Expert

When you first started out, you probably based your business plan for your consignment or resale shop on what you wanted or thought you’d want if you were a customer. And that’s okay, ’cause you had lifelong experience as a customer. Your gut instinct (along with the advice in Too Good to be Threw Complete Operations Manual) got you started.

But now, whether you’re a year in or twenty years in, you have lost something… and it’s for the better.

You are no longer a “typical customer”… and you can no longer go with your feelings when making decisions about how your shop will grow and develop.

So stop asking yourself “What would I like?”

Instead, ask “What would my target customer like?”  For example, you may have, back when you opened, chosen to have business hours that ended at 5pm. After all, we need to be home to get supper on for the family, you reasoned. Women haven’t got the time to shop after work. But if you continue to close at 5pm, because that was your decision way-back-when…. and don’t use your recent experience to observe that many of your shoppers want to shop on their way home from work… at 5:15 or 5:45 or even, depending on your market, at 6:15… you may be hampering the growth of your business.

In other words, once you become a shopkeeper,

your typical-shopper instincts wither and die.

You no longer can walk into a new-merchandise store, whether it’s a department store, a boutique, or a hardware store, the way a typical shopper would. Instead, your shopkeeper mind is cataloging a hundred things: what their signage says. Whether your ease of passage is impeded upon by displays. And so on. You are no longer, and never will be again, the typical shopper. Your personal reaction is no longer a reliable indicator of the right thing to do. But that’s okay, because you have turned into a retailer. A retailer who can ask, instead of What would I like?,

“How can I make their shopping experience more delightful here than anywhere else?”