Can you think of a holiday better suited to consignment, thrift and resale shops than Valentine’s Day?
After all, don’t ALL of your customers always say Continue Reading »
Posted in Shopkeeping talk | Tagged customers, holidays, promotions |
Happy Friday the 13th. I’m a great believer in making your own good luck, so today seems like a good day to talk about an inexpensive but sadly overlooked way to do so.
Your good luck… that is, your attracting attention to your thrift, resale, or consignment shop… starts with Continue Reading »
Posted in Shopkeeping talk | Tagged resale shopkeeping |
Perhaps you’ve noticed the consignment, resale, thrift shop exterior photos on my Pinterest board called
Favorite Consignment, Resale, Thrift Shops
I’ve had a good time finding and posting all these for you.
I’ve had an even better time imagining how much more focused some of these photos could be without the extraneous stuff in them. After all, we can’t always change the real world… but with pixels, we can edit them!
Here’s an example. I’m using Photowipe which is free and easy, but I’m sure there are scads of other programs out there.
Nice photo, but the blue pavement painting distracts our attention from Vena’s shop, Selective Seconds in Indiana.
So I “erased” the handicapped signs (and the car to the left), just to focus on the shop. All I had to do was “draw” with my mouse over the areas I wished weren’t there. Result:
Neat, huh? And the pavement reflects the shop so nicely. If you really look, the “blotch” of the car is there, but who’s lookin’? We’re admiring the shopfront!
Now, I can get a little OCD. This is such a nice photo that I’d like to see it be usable year-round, so let’s downplay that Valentine’s Day lettering in the right-hand window. Erase, erase!
And it’s done! If you look carefully, the window display’s a bit blurry, but it’s still bright and colorful. Pretty good for an amateur, with a free program, in less than 5 minutes.
So if you have photos that are pretty good, but you’d like to erase some things from them, try Photowipe. Warning: Large ugly things like ex-spouses are not easily done away with, no matter how much we wish they were!
Now for a final tweak, let’s make sure this photo really motivates people to remember the shop. I take the final photo over to Picnik (you’ve heard me rave about this before) and add a little WIIFM to the picture.
UPDATE July 2012: Google bought and killed picnik.com (way to go, Google.), but an almost-identical program is now available at ribbet.com and there’s also picmonkey.com
This might be a little more than you’d really want to add to a photo, but I wanted to show you that you can have different colors, different sizes, even angled text. Total time, using Photowipe and Picnik, less than 10 minutes. Click the picture to go to the live link to Vena’s shop.
Sometime soon we’ll talk about all the resale, consignment, and thrift shops who don’t take the opportunity to put a photo of their shop on their site. Cryin’ shame.
Update August 2012: See WHY you NEED a photo of your shop on your web site, in our mini-series, Optimizing your web site for real shoppers.
Posted in 5- Minute Fixes, Shopkeeping talk | Tagged advertising, resale shopkeeping, web | 3 Comments »
Eavesdrop on a consignment experience.
This video is a great case study for shopkeepers and accepting staff. If we look at it not as “how to consign”… but “how to treat a potential consignor” we can take the opportunity to fine-tune our shops.
See if you can spot the lessons to be learned (I’ve listed some after the video.)
Okay, in order of occurrence:
At 0:30 she recounts a bad experience… hope you never react with “disdain”!
At 1:00 the consignee actually introduces herself to the incoming consignor. Do you and your staff do the same? It means a lot… makes the interaction between two people, rather than a person and a business.
At 1:15, the consignee gives the consignor a compliment on her items. I’ve bolded and italized that because you know? It seldom happens that a consignor hears a positive before a potential negative.
At 1:30, consignee takes the conversational opportunity to put in a plug for larger sizes by saying “big is great ’cause we don’t have enough.”
At 1:50, consignee passes on a NTY, without volunteering a reason. I’m sure she had one, but the CONSIGNOR (as seen by her video editing) didn’t consider it important. So if the consignor doesn’t care why, the consignee needn’t throw negative comments into the mix like “out of style,” “fake,” or “are you kidding, this is SO 20th-century.”
At 2:00, the consignee gives the consignor a good reason/excuse not to be concerned with unsold items at the end of the consignment period. Notice the lack of “if you want unsold items back, you must pick them up at X days”… because all most consignors hear is “you must pick up…”
At 2:10 the consignee has a great spiel about the charity the shop uses. Sweet!
At 2:30 the consignee might develop a good spiel about using store credit. The consignor had to ask, and the reply was not as motivating as it could have been.
Did I miss any lessons to be learned? Comment below!
My thanks to verygoodlooking.com for creating and posting this video. A blog I’ll be watching daily. I like Ms. Horchow’s presentation. Usually, these types of commentators are so smarmy and self-important, but I actually like Sally!
.
Posted in Shopkeeping talk | Tagged accepting, buy-outright, consignment, resale shopkeeping, Thrift | 3 Comments »
Click the image for more Deja Vuesday posts that are too good to be threw from TGtbT.com
Is “Get Organized” #1 on your To-Do list?
Posted in Shopkeeping talk | Tagged daily operations, resale shopkeeping |
The Blog of
Too Good to be Threw is the flagship site of the TGtbT Family of Sites for the Professional Resalers
-
Join 2,063 other subscribers
Let’s be Social
Meet Kate
What Kate said about:
When Kate said it:
Read more about:
accepting accessories advertising blogging buy-outright christmas competition consignment consignors customers daily operations display email employees Facebook Halloween holidays home decor HowToConsign.com learn a lot markdowns merchandising NARTS Conference perceived value Products for the Professional Resaler profit promotions resale shopkeeping sea of sameness selling shop local small business social networking starting a consignment shop success thought for the day Thrift Twitter web word of mouthMost Popular Posts
Auntie Kate The Resale Expert 