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Archive for the ‘Shopkeeping talk’ Category

How much does a supplier cost?

Posted in economics of resale, Shopkeeping talk, tagged , on May 11, 2011| 18 Comments »

Are you blowing off consignors?Most consignment and resale shops pay good money to obtain their consignors or sellers.

So why do they then limit their ROI by (more…)

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5-Minute Fix: Enlivening your Shop

Posted in 5- Minute Fixes, Shopkeeping talk on May 10, 2011|

If we’re real lucky,

(and if we are talented consignment, resale, thrift shopkeepers as well) we keep selling stuff off our displays and ending up with blank spots.

a lot you can do in under five minutes.

Case in point:

Instead of just balancing (more…)

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Consignment & Resale Strategic Planning: The Final Dregs

Posted in economics of resale, Shopkeeping talk, tagged , , on May 9, 2011| 3 Comments »

Recycling at its extreme at a consignment, resale, or thrift store.Last week, we asked readers about their merchandising strategy for the very tail end of their clearance sales: goods which hadn’t sold during a scheduled markdown, then didn’t sell at the seasonal clearance sale either. For

the cheapest of the cheap,

what’s their (more…)

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Happy Mother’s Day

Posted in Shopkeeping talk, Slices of (my) life on May 7, 2011|

Whitman's Samplers came adorned with a pink paper carnation to give to mothers who had living mothers; with a white carnation for those whose mothers had passed on.

For those who still have their mothers, or who are mothers themselves, or who mother others who aren’t their children,

Happy Mother’s Day.

To my mother, thanks for having me. If you like, you can read a little bit about my mother’s life as a mother here and her life as a consignment shop owner in the 1950’s  here.

Don’t miss what mothers have to say about consignment and resale shopping. It’s here.

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Really, is free worth it?

Posted in Shopkeeping talk on May 6, 2011|

IIt's enough to make you want to bite! just saw an immaculate pair of

Gucci white patent pumps,

marketed by a very sleek consignment shop.  Beautiful shoes. I saw these shoes because of a tantalizing tweet. But oops… the shop directed me to a photo of these shoes on yfrog. Apparently, yfrog is a free app.

Too bad.

1- There was no way to buy these, or ask the shop to hold them until I could make it in. All I could do was drool.

2- There was no link on yfrog or the tweet back to the shop’s (very professional) site. Heck, there wasn’t even a CLUE as to where these shoes could be obtained. So the business didn’t gain an ounce of recognition for having these incredible shoes.

And on top of THAT? Turns out, in fact, that said site says “back soon” (I guess they had to take it down to redesign it? NOT. Any web master that says so is either lazy or not attuned to marketing or dumb.) Site message says nothing about how the shop could still be followed on FB or Twitter.

3- Meanwhile, their FB page (found only because I was doing my Sherlock Holmes impersonation) didn’t say diddley about the site being unusable. The Twitter site sends folks off into the unusable web site (don’t they know that just in case, this can be changed for a length of time, if necessary?). What a fiasco. Especially because this shop has a big fashion show coming up the day before Mother’s Day (Marvelous promo…great day for a fashion show… what a nice M-Day gift for their clients to give!)

4-The ad right next to the photo of these elegant shoes on yfrog? It read:

Need help with your itchy, scratchy, smelly dog?

Not the image they were going for, I suspect.

Bottom line: Free ain’t worth it if it devalues your goods or makes the potential customer gnash her/his teeth in frustration.

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