Auntie Kate The Resale Expert

Here’s a problem that’s good to have… but it’s still a problem.

A shopowner we’ll call “Overwhelmed” writes:

I’m drowning but in a good way. We have around 1200 active consigners 

and about 10 new ones each week. I am children’s consignment with adult clothing, no house wares, books, etc.. I have around 50 drop offs a day and more on weekends.

I can’t keep up. There are 3 people working, one at register, one hanging, cleaning up store and helping customers and 1 intake/tagger. I can’t get the items on the sales floor fast enough. My store is always full but it can be a few weeks before items reach the floor.

I don’t know how to get it faster. I have a limit of 30 articles of clothing, we take the best of them, sometimes more because they are too good to pass up, we don’t have a limit on non clothing children’s items.

I know this is a good problem to have but I am overwhelmed.   I think I need a new set up. 

Kate says:

No one person can handle 50 intakes a day, even with your last-ditch-effort of a numerical limit, if she is responsible for checking in, selecting, entering into database, tagging and placing on sales floor. Is that the situation now?

“O.W.” answers:

I am the intake and entry data person. I have one employee that can data entry and tag when I’m not there. But I’m usually there.  What can I do to keep up?

Kate:

Here’s what my scenario would be in your case: Owner/mgr makes decisions re accepting & pricing, which involves entering items and hitting the “print tags” button. All the rest is done by staff, from greeting incoming consignors to tagging, changing hangers and so on, to putting things out on the sales floor. So my short answer is HIRE MORE HELP.

“O.W.”:

I wish it was in my budget to hire more help… after paying 3 people already and bills, when there is nothing left over I don’t have the money.

Kate has some suggestions:

There’s a lot to unpack here. We’ve already mentioned that the intake/ decisionmaker needs to spend her time doing that, not easy-to-teach other duties like tagging. Let me list some areas I’d examine in closer detail if your were a consultee of TGtbT:

Is the intake system as smooth and TIME-STINGY as possible? Small details, like how much description is needed, how quickly a pricing decision is made, even how often the item is touched/ moved, all add up to a LOT of time that might be trimmed.

I’d also like to call your attention to the SPACE these un-entered incoming consignments are taking up. If it can’t be sold, you are basically paying retail square footage rent that is making you NO money. You’re a storage unit until those things can be sold. And I can only imagine the time and energy it takes to move, tuck away, get back out and find consignments that were dropped off days or weeks ago.

And if you are overwhelmed with incoming but are not making enough money to hire the right amount of help, you need to take a closer look at your balance sheet. Why, with so much potential merchandise, is there not enough room in your budget to handle the business that’s walking in the door? Are you spending all your energy getting things in, at the expense of selling them?

Take a look at your sell-through percentage and your turnover rate. Improving these should give you the income to not only pay for sufficient help, but to put more into your pocket as well. See the Manual for more on this, as well as discussion on this next idea:

Another suggestion, if you are not already using it, is buyer’s fees. With a healthy number of sales every day, this alone can go far in allowing you to bring staffing up to the level you need to maintain good consignment service (and your cool too!)

“Overwhelmed” continues:

How can I control drop offs? Appointments? I feel that wouldn’t work. Idk. It’s very overwhelming and my employees are getting burned out. After 8 years of dropping off whenever I’m not sure how appointments will do. And everyone who drops off buys. So that would be a loss if they didn’t come in.

Kate shakes her head big time:

Controlling drop offs usually results in a loss of business. Partly because you would be unknowingly refusing items which would be saleable, but also because you would be losing good will, slowing turnover which slows repeat visits by your regulars… and having fewer happily-fulfilled shoppers to spread word-of-mouth about how awesome your shop is will deter future growth.  And fewer clients bringing in also results in fewer sales because, as you mention above, they too are customers, or their companion is, or they see something a friend or relative has been looking for. 

Now, that said, you MIGHT consider establishing a bottom price that you will use to define what is worth handling. It takes, basically, the same time to accept and sell a $1 item as it does a $10 or $5 item. Some things simply are not worth your time. If you NEED the lowest-priced goods for whatever reason, buying outright might be an option, if not now, after you solve the “overwhlemed” problem.

Limiting your consignors is never the answer. Training them, educating them, expecting respect, not caving to unreasonable demands for your services is part of the relationship, of course, but controlling, setting limits and so on? Sure it works… it succeeds in limiting the potential your obviously-popular shop has for growth, service to your community, and your wallet.

More? We talked about this issue here as well as here and we talked about when some items simply are not financially worth it to accept here.