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Posts Tagged ‘promotions’

Step 3 in Freshening up your Resale, Thrift, Consignment Shop: Liven It Up

Posted in Shopkeeping talk, tagged , , on August 25, 2010| 2 Comments »

Here’s the fun part of Freshening up your shop, after you’ve managed Step 1 and Step 2.

You’ve cleaned up and spruced up so the shop looks, and operates, the way you have in mind. Now, you just have to give people a reason to visit, to enjoy, to talk about your shop and to motivate others to come see. You have to

Liven it up:

Some inexpensive, easy-to-do ideas for getting some excitement going and some new attention focusing on the shop:Amuse them with promotions in your consignment shop

It truly is not enough to simply be clean and attractive. To get the most traffic in your shop shopping and buying, you need to constantly promote it. Whether that’s advertising, social media, events or a combination of all of them (which is what I recommend!), it’s a major part of your job. Not just something to dream about, but something to carefully plan and execute and examine. You don’t think that word-of-mouth just happens, do you? Give them something to talk about. Liven it up!

Oh, there’s SO many ways to make your shop a true destination! Here’s Resale’s BEST Promos with 229 special ideas PLUS how to build the value of your promotion for weeks later!

How do YOU liven up your shops? Participate!Here’s Step 4: Freshening up the TILL.

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Your Consignment / Resale Shop Wish List is WAY more important than you think.

Posted in Shopkeeping talk, tagged , , on August 16, 2010| 6 Comments »

We all (well, except for some very, very misguided shopkeepers and thrift store managers) know how wonderful maintaining and using a wish list, or a want list, is for our shops’ reputations.

We show our care and concern by “keeping an eye out” for special items our customers crave, we emphasize the personality of a local shop, we beat the big-box stores hands down…and we get to collect contact info too!

Wish lists are wonderful. It helps you sell (you have a ready-made customer, perhaps), it helps you price (just HOW many people want a Bottega Veneta bag?) and it pleases a customer at the same time. Even if all you can do is contact her saying No Bottega Venetas in this week…but there’s a spectacular soft Gucci clutch in caramel I think you’d like, you show your concern and probably nudge her into visiting and into giving your shop great word of mouth.

As important as these aspects of Wish Lists are, there’s another, (more…)

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What a delicious idea for a consignment / resale shopping event!

Posted in My Favorite Things, Shopkeeping talk, tagged , , , on July 26, 2010|

Everything goes with chocolate!Everything goes better with chocolate. Who doesn’t like chocolate (well, my stepsister, but she’s weird. Doesn’t like pizza either. Note, STEPsister.)

Coming into fall with its luscious warm colors, what better fun promotional event than exactly that:

Everything goes better with chocolate.

Gather up all your (more…)

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Is your dance card empty?

Posted in economics of resale, Shopkeeping talk, tagged , , , on July 12, 2010| 2 Comments »

Dance cards are those archaic little booklets that were given to a young lady at cotillions and balls. With a teeny pencil tied with a ribbon attached, young men would write in their names on the young lady’s card, claiming her dancing company for each song. Hence the expression “pencil me in.”A popular young lady's dance card, all filled up

Of course, an empty dance card bespeaks a wallflower.

Now I assume you don’t want your consignment or resale or thrift shop to be a wallflower.

So if you use a Google calendar or any calendar on your web site, whatever you do, don’t leave it looking like there’s nothing going on at your shop. You and I known there’s plenty going on…so why not let your adoring public in on it?

This thrift shop's calendar has only 3 entries for the month.

The shop’s calendar only has 3 entries…and all, alas, are negative.

What could this shop have put on their calendar? Well, Happy 4th of July. Fall fashions coming soon. Check out our new book department. And that’s not even counting any promotional events. Or town happenings. Or even inspiring quotes.

Nothing happening at this consignment shop? Hard to believe.

Look at all that image-enhancing space you could use.

Absolutely nothing out-of-the-ordinary happening at your shop? Then list the ordinary things: Come see our new window display or Monday’s a big incoming day…so get on in Tuesday to get first dibs. Or create a promotional event that needs no more than a name and attitude: Wacky Wednesday if every customer wearing a wacky pair of shoes gets a WHACK (Wonderfully Humongously Adorable Consignment Knick-knack, e.g. a pick from your basket full of beribboned little treasures that have been saved from your ODs)

Can’t think of a THING to put on your shop’s calendar? I can think of 229 of them for you…here’s one:

224.    August 19 is Coco Chanel’s birthday. She was the first person to popularize menswear for women and, of course, created the “little black dress.” Use your imagination: what’s the “little black dress” of home decor or kidswear? –Idea #224 from Resale’s BEST Promotions. *

Resale's BEST Promotions from TGtbT.com

* And don’t miss idea #214 in Resale’s BEST Promotions about Encouraging Incoming: #214 is JUST the idea you need in the middle of July, and is the first of FIVE ideas on that topic you can use on your “dance card” calendar and in your shop.

Save

Save

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Now, let’s tend our consignment and resale gardens.

Posted in economics of resale, Shopkeeping talk, tagged , , , on May 17, 2010| 7 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.

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