Do you go out seeking original treasures for your consignment shop? Do you have a story for every item you bring home to your little store? Every consignment should have an online counterpart and this is why. In person, you don’t have the opportunity to tell every customer about every piece in your collection. Online, you have every opportunity to do this.
You also don’t have any way to compartmentalize your items like you can on the web. TinyThingsAreCute.com does just this, by cashing in on customers who are specifically seeking small, tiny trinkets. Can you think of items in your shop that you could create an entire niche online store out of?
Thankfully, consignment shops have a lot of online opportunities at their disposal due to the fact that you collect unique and original items. Why do you think eBay is so popular? Everyone on this earth is looking to find something. Don’t believe me? Check out these wildly popular online stores that may strongly resemble your own physical consignment shop.
FOUND by Susan Walker
FOUND by Susan Walker is a great example of a simple yet extremely intriguing website. In fact, it’s a blog! Susan travels the country to find unique items to sell in her store and tells the stories of her adventures. In every blog post, she shows photos of all her new items along with how much she’s selling them for. At the very least, every consignment shop owner should have a blog and this is an example worth modeling after. Once your blog is up, make sure to make little business cards up and leave them at local businesses because that’s exactly how I found Susan’s blog!
More about this site: FOUND is hosted on Google’s free Blogger platform. Did I mention it’s free?
Christabelle’s Closet
Christabelle’s Closet is a great store to model after simply because they’re great at taking photos. Whenever you sell something used online, you’re going to encounter questions about quality. The last thing you want to do is disappoint, so it’s a great idea to tell the tale of your item exactly as it is. Another site like this that offers designer consignment items is TraTutti.com.
More about this site: Christabelle’s used Xigent for their site design and CactusShop for their shopping cart.
Tiny Things Are Cute
TinyThingsAreCute specializes in small objects. This is an online-only shop, but what’s important to take note of is how specific the shop is. If someone is looking for small unique items online, they know that Tiny Things Are Cute is for them. Is there a way for you to create niche online stores for different categories of your consignment business?
More about this site: TinyThingsAreCute.com was designed by Solid Art Collective and uses the free ZenCart software for their shopping cart.
Once in a Blue Moon
Once in a Blue Moon adds an excellent community aspect to their online consignment shop. With “wish lists”, they ask people to get in touch with them if they’re looking for something specific, and then post those requests on their website. This is a great marketing idea to get people coming back to your site.
More about this site: Gone-Tomorrow.com was designed using Microsoft Frontpage and uses Blogger for their blog.
Etsy & The Arbor Vitae
The vintage section of Etsy.com is where you’ll find tons of other consignment dealers just like yourself. Etsy offers an online marketplace for any small business owner looking to get more exposure and sell more products to a very large craft and vintage-loving audience.
A great example from Etsy is The Arbor Vitae, offering consignment clothes from the sixties, seventies and beyond.
More about this site: Etsy sales dominate when you are able to write enthusiastic and creative descriptions, paired with great photographs of your products. You’ll also get a better response if you don’t clutter the store with all of your items, but hand-select your favorite ones instead.
Whatever you choose to do when adding an online counterpart to your consignment business, just make sure it makes sense to you. If any of these ideas excited you, like creating a shop for all the tiny small objects you have, then go for it. If you go on wild adventures to find unique items like Susan Walker, definitely try out the blogging avenue. I wish you the best of luck in your consigning endeavors!
Just thought your readers would be interested in this shop as well.
http://www.shopkarmaonline.com/
They are a local Rhode Island shop who also has an online store. We think that they are really great! Oh, and we loved your article. When we find a few more hours in each day we aspire to be as fantastic as FOUND by Susan Walker. She’s the bomb!
Thanks for sharing
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