Does your consignment, resale, thrift shop ever attract tourists? Visitors? Seasonal residents?
Or are there folks you run across in your store who might want to know (more…)
Archive for the ‘economics of resale’ Category
Insider Knowledge: Your Hidden Talent
Posted in economics of resale, Shopkeeping talk, tagged advertising, customers, shop local on February 5, 2011| 4 Comments »
Does your consignment, resale, thrift shop ever attract tourists? Visitors? Seasonal residents?
It’s all relative. And nowhere will you learn that better than in a consignment shop.
Posted in economics of resale, Shopkeeping talk, tagged consignors, HowToConsign.com on February 2, 2011|
I had a consignor whose husband owned a local, large, and public company. One day, this woman consigned a NWT item she’d bought mere weeks earlier for $1300. She couldn’t be bothered, she implied, to return it to the luxury merchant where she’d bought it, so she’d just let me sell it…for whatever.
I was stunned. $1300 was more than a month’s rent to me, and she was willing to take the small percentage I could get her for this?
That night, I did some back-of-the-envelope figuring. I knew how much her husband earned as a salary because the corporation was public. I compared it to what I was earning.
That $1300, as a percentage of her family’s earned income, was the equivalent of a 59-cent candy bar to me.
No wonder she couldn’t be bothered to return it. I’ve never returned a Hershey’s bar in my life.
Here’s hoping some consignors like that find your shop through your listing on HowToConsign.com’s Clickable Map & Directory.
Parker’s photo from http://fashionuncensored.blogspot.com. The chocolate bar is gently-bitten.Return policies: Are you ticking off 99.9% of your clientele?
Posted in economics of resale, Shopkeeping talk, Teeny Tips, tagged daily operations, resale shopkeeping on January 28, 2011| 8 Comments »
A TGtbT.com Teeny Tip:
An interesting discussion on how to set a return policy, from Groupon.
What might you change, to make your business more customer-friendly?
How much of your return policy is designed to “protect” yourself from the one-in-a-hundred PITA…and is it worth it, to cut into every possible sale that goes south when the customer realizes “all sales are final”?
And how much do you think a return policy costs you…in terms of fulfillment, and in terms of reaching out to your customers and building their confidence in your business… and in terms of advertising expense. Since I have always maintained that the cost of satisfying a customer is PART of your advertising and marketing budget. Satisfy her for a $15 cost, or spend $1500 on TV ads… hmmm…
Just something to think about….
Read more Teeny Tips from Too Good to be Threw
What it’s worth. There…and Here.
Posted in economics of resale, Not-for-Profit Resale, Shopkeeping talk, tagged buy-outright, profit, resale shopkeeping, success on January 27, 2011|
“It’s worth nothing in your closet…your attic…your basement.”
How often has any consignment, resale, or thrift shopkeeper said that phrase. After all, if something’s sitting, disused, in someone’s home, it is worth precisely ZERO to everyone.
This is the persuasion we use to get folks to give these items a chance to gain value, to be used…and to make the owner and the shopkeeper a bit of money.
We also use the “It’s worth nothing in your closet…” approach to emphasize that we are adding value to their items by providing a shop, customers, heat and light and showroom and credit-card capability. The amount of value we add depends solely on our skills, knowledge, and retail talents.
And our skills determine our profits.
So why, oh why, if you are buying outright, would you gift your seller with more than her item is worth to her, because of your work and expertise and ability to make money?
That’s what you are doing, if you base the price you pay on a percentage of what you can sell it for. . . rather than the value the seller assigns to her items. Pay X% of what you will sell it for? What you can sell it for to one of your shoppers has nothing to do with the seller’s subconscious appraisal of her goods.
Let’s take a look at some Traveling Pants. Josephine has them. She wants to sell them to you. How much does she value them?
Maybe she bought them on a whim and paid too much. Or bought them on sale or even at a garage sale. Maybe they were a gift from someone. Maybe she swapped the Pants with a friend.
Maybe she loves them and hates that they’ve never fit right. Maybe she hates the color. Maybe they have happy memories or unhappy memories.
Maybe she’s motivated to bring the Pants in to you because she’s a fervent recycler. Or maybe she’s really hard up for money. Or….
The point is, the Traveling Pants have a value to her, and that value, high or low, must be met before she will agree to sell them to you. Are you following me so far?
Now, consider. None of the above has a farthingsworth of influence on what the Pants are worth to YOU. Because what they are worth to your business has everything to do with the business you have built, that you run, that you finance.
In fact, the better a shopkeeper you are, the smaller your buy-outright cost of goods will be.
The smarter you are about your business, the more profit you are going to make. And that’s how it should be, right? The Traveling Pants aren’t worth more to Josephine because you are talented and pay attention your business. So why pay her X% of the value you have created?
Suspect that you’re not adding enough value to your incoming goods…whether you consign, buy outright, or turn charity donations into funding? Here’s a Product for the Professional Resaler that you need.
Ah, the lost art of customer service.
Posted in economics of resale, Shopkeeping talk, tagged customers, small business on January 26, 2011| 2 Comments »
“Tell me what it is you do for a living again?”
A real-life scenario of customer service.
Scenario: I get yet another “time to renew” letter from the Hearst Corporation, publishers of such fine magazines as Popular Mechanics and Seventeen. We will set aside for the moment, their strong-arm tactics that so many have complained about (1.11 million and counting) , and the fact that they never tell you precisely what you have already paid for and what they are dunning you for today…
Right now, all I wanted to do was renew.
As much as I (more…)
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