And now is the time for them. They’re popping up all over, both the franchise/license sales and the independent.
How will your year-round store front for consignment, resale, or thrift deal with this? Will these sales hurt your business or help it? It’s not as cut-&-dried as you may think.
Posted in Shopkeeping talk | Tagged competition, selling | 3 Comments »
Getting in the new season’s consignments when your customers want to BUY it, rather than when your consignors want to clear it, is always a challenge.
Posted in 5- Minute Fixes, Shopkeeping talk | Tagged consignment, consignors, resale shopkeeping |
Here’s the pin that started Continue Reading »
Posted in Shopkeeping talk | Tagged display, merchandising | 2 Comments »
Amazing. The four reasons Phil Libin, founder and CEO of Evernote, Inc.’s 2011 Company of the Year, gives as 4 Reasons You’ll Fail at Entrepreneurship are exactly the four that make ME wince, when I hear a would-be resale shop owner declare them as why s/he thinks a consignment or resale shop is just the right thing to start!
I’ve borrowed his reasons and translated them to our industry. So here are my
In retail, the public is your boss. Yes, every single person who walks into your shop. And add to that, those who don’t. When you have a boss, you can refer/ defer/ blame/ hide behind her/him. When you’re our there on your own, you’re on your own. Believe me, there will be days when you’ll long to have a boss. If only so you can call in sick.
Oh yeh. This is the biggie. Unless you have worked in the upper echelons of retail, you won’t understand that retail is the absolute worst career to have if you want to “come and go as you please.” Until you have in place, have trained, can afford and can trust a crew… you will be in your shop for every hour you’ve publicized as open, plus one or two on either end of the day. Without fail.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: The world got along without your business just fine yesterday. It’s not going to start slinging money at your feet from Day One.
A good shop will start paying its overhead after a few months or a few years; a great shop will enable you to take some profit out of it. A magnificent shop will, after a period of time, provide a very comfortable living for you. But it doesn’t happen overnight, and it doesn’t happen without long hours, hard work, and lots and lots of self-education.
The riskiest retail thing in the world you can do is sign a lease, if you do not have every single cent in the bank ready to be given to the landlord is necessary. Oh, no, wait: the riskiest thing to do is to open a shop without knowing everything you can about the business.
At least once a month, I hear a new shopkeeper say “I can’t afford the Manual.” I’ve learned not to reply to them that every week, probably every day, that they operate in the blind, they are losing the cost of the manual and more.Over and over.
Posted in Shopkeeping talk | Tagged small business, starting a consignment shop | 19 Comments »
Posted in quotations of use, Shopkeeping talk | 9 Comments »
Too Good to be Threw is the flagship site of the TGtbT Family of Sites for the Professional Resalers
Auntie Kate The Resale Expert 