Posted in Shopkeeping talk, tagged merchandising, perceived value on April 7, 2009| 2 Comments »
You know I preach Add Value don’t Reduce Price. Whether 
you’re a consignment, a buy-ouright, or a donations thrift shop, constantly telling folks you’re cheapest…or you are for today at least with a 20% off everything! sale…simply leads to a “I’ll wait until they mark it down” mentality in your clientele. And when that price reduction effectively erodes your entire profit margin (and then some, in many cases), it’s unsustainable.
You don’t want people to come to your shop (more…)
Posted in Shopkeeping talk on March 26, 2009|
Designing your consignment shop web site? Want to have a great resale store web page? Take a look here. UPDATE: They’ve changed their site, and it’s no longer visible. I love the way they’ve “illustrated” their partnership on this site, with the 3 revolving photos. Something you might use on YOUR site?
It almost gives the impression of video, but with a much simpler technique of swapping out related photos. If you don’t have a partner with whom to interact, how else could you see this simple technique used to make your site more engaging?
Posted in Shopkeeping talk on March 22, 2009| 3 Comments »
Wow, and I get to use this logo on my sites… Too Good to be Threw, HowToConsign.com, Auntie Kate The Blog and even my poor little step-child of a web site, TheResaleGuru.com which I SWEAR is next on my to-do list.The thing is, though, I don’t (more…)
Posted in economics of resale, Shopkeeping talk, Slices of (my) life, Used Stuff in the News on March 21, 2009| 5 Comments »
Back in the 1950’s and the ’60’s and even later, it was not at all uncommon for a woman to have little or no spending money under her private control.This was brought home to me as the only girl-child of a fiercely independent woman, most vividly in my mother’s consignment shops.
One of my mother’s shops, called Pin Money, was in Roslyn, an affluent New York suburb. I started going to “the shop” with Mom when I was just 8. I loved to eavesdrop on my mother dealing with her consignors as I swept the dust-bunnies from under the racks, straightened hangers on the back porch, or lined the index cards on which consignment records were kept.
“What do you need?” the ladies would ask my mother. They stood there in their lovely expensive chic ensembles, with matching hosiery, shoes, even gloves, and asked my mother in her wraparound Madras skirt. They’d take out a little gilt notepad with a cunning little mechanical pencil attached (how I lusted after those!) from their alligator handbags and write down “size 12 lavender tweed suit” or “Jantzen swim ensemble, greens mostly, size 8” and off they would go.
The next time I saw them, they were picking up the proceeds from the sale of these items. They had gone directly to Bonwit Teller’s or Saks or Bergdorf Goodman from my mother’s consignment shop, there to purchase on their husband’s charge accounts specific items…then back to Pin Money to
These women were controlled by their husbands, my mother explained to a wide-eyed little girl, by being given very little money of their own. But, on the other hand, they had free access to their husband’s house charge accounts at local stores. So, for these women to have even a modicum of freedom and privacy on how they spent their money, they would charge a sure-seller on their husbands’ accounts, consign it, and receive a small portion back in cash.
As a matter of fact the very name of my mother’s businesses, Pin Money Shops, was a reflection of that era. Pin Money is the term for money given by a husband to his wife for private and personal expenditures. So Pin Money, the shop, served to supplement, her personal expenditures for some women with clueless husbands. Makes you view “Mad Men” in a new light, doesn’t it?
Another definition of pin money is “a small amount of extra money earned to buy small luxuries”, which is much more gender-neutral, but not near as much fun.
Vintage handbag photo from vintageskins.com which has some great stuff.Posted in Shopkeeping talk on March 16, 2009|
…is that where you are looking for your resale shop pot of gold? Following a rainbow can lead to a pot of gold, but only if you really work at it. What with all the current media interest in consignment and thrift shopping, it’s feeling like we’re all having the luck of the Irish!
But it’s important to remember that one must make hay while the sun is shining. 
Harvesting a crop only works when the weather’s right…and it could hardly be righter, now that the media has decided for the public that “it’s smart to be thrifty” or “Green is the new black” or “Conspicuous Consumption is so yesterday…it’s chic to consignment shop.”
Now is the time to bolster your business and give it a giant step 
forward. The time could not be more right to get your shop noticed, whether you want people to consign, to donate or to sell to you, as well as to introduce the concept of secondhand shopping to all those people who have never explored the option! That’s what I was thinking when I answered a comment on one of my earlier entries.
Okay, enough cliches on this most-cliche-ridden holiday. Get out there and do something to take advantage of the window of opportunity you’ve been handed on a silver platter.
Ouch.
Happy St.Patrick’s Day!
Too Good to be Threw is the flagship site of the TGtbT Family of Sites for the Professional Resalers
Auntie Kate The Resale Expert 