People have been writing, emailing, calling, twittering, and sending those weird messages from Facebook, asking me
Posted in Shopkeeping talk | 1 Comment »
If your market area includes kids who live in dorms, student housing, or rentals, and if they’re leaving town, how can you consign or buy outright or receive as donations the stuff they don’t consider worth moving or storing?
.
Whether it is called Chuck it for Charity (works whether your shop is an NFP thrift or if your consignment shop maintains charity accounts) or Move-out Recycling or Make a Clean Green Break, it’s a great way to
- get merchandise (you’d be amazed at what college kids don’t want),
- help the school itself (you can set up a charity account for whatever cause the school has going),
- teach that generation the values of recycling,
- introduce them to your shop,
- save the college Dumpster costs,
- and avoid filling up the landfill.
What could be more WIN-WIN?
Photo courtesy of Drew Saunders on Flickr
Posted in Shopkeeping talk | Tagged accepting, buy-outright, charity, ecology | 3 Comments »
Maybe you’ve already seen this shot I took of a children’s consignment shop. Their peeky-bear Continue Reading »
Posted in Shopkeeping talk | Tagged advertising, sea of sameness | 2 Comments »
Yesterday we talked about burying bad reviews of your consignment or resale shop. Now, let’s take a little time and enhance those listings on directories. That is, let’s tend our garden of internet mentions. For the most part, it’s easy and free, and you never know who might be reading that info and wondering if your shop’s worth the trip.
I’m going to take advantage of a “breezy” visit last week to Fifi’s Fine Resale Apparel in Amelia Island and owner Jessica’s good nature to use a blank/ dormant/ unattended review of her shop just to give you an idea of the difference it can make. Here’s what I was presented with when I asked Yahoo Local for consignment in Amelia Island then clicked on her shop name:
Which is more appealing...this entry...
Ten minutes later, here’s what the NEXT person looking at her free listing would see:
...just a photo helps make this listing more interesting! And those red stars? Be still, my heart!
And WAIT! THERE”S MOORE! See that “4 Photos” tab? Click it to get:
Now I know what I'm looking for...and what it's like once I get in there too!
This whole “tending the garden” , including the captions* on the photos, took a total of 10 minutes. The exterior photo is from Jessica’s Facebook page (she doesn’t have a web site, just FB and MySpace), the interior shots were mine.
Hope Jessica doesn’t mind my “dolling up” her Yahoo listing. See it in action here. It’s the law of proximity…the last great consignment shop I was in!
* Have I ever told you how important captions are to pix ANYwhere, even Facebook? Of course I have.
Posted in economics of resale, Shopkeeping talk | Tagged advertising, profit, promotions, web | 7 Comments »
Peer reviews, social media, whatever you want to call it…if you want your business to gain customers from the web, you need to manage not only what you say about your business (watch those Facebook entries!) but even more, Continue Reading »
Posted in Shopkeeping talk | Tagged advertising, consignment, web | 6 Comments »
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