I love visiting our clients – so many of them have amazing stores and are super organized about processes that really benefit their customers. And remember, consignors are also customers of your store.
If you haven’t taken your store online, you really should put serious consideraton into doing so because:
- Your consignors can technically put all the items they bring you on line themselves – They can make 80% – 85% of the sale on Poshmark, Tradesy, eBay, Mercari and other selling sites. They bring it to you because they don’t want to take the time to list and cross-post their items and then mail them out. But the truth is, if your sales are down because of Covid or you had to cut your hours or you don’t have enough staff help, soon you won’t have consignors as they literally can do it without you themselves.
- Relying on foot traffic alone, with balloons on Saturdays, or your traditional bag sales as weather permits, aren’t going to continue to get the job done sales wise for much longer, honestly. Your customers spend 10-20 minutes a visit in your shop, but I promise you if you did a survey of how long they spent online shopping this week it would be far longer than the time they spent in your store. You can capture other customers if you put the right processes in place to capture new shoppers who you might never meet in person. They may not have a great consignment shop near them and they can also become your best customers.
I visited with a brick and mortar store this week that is having trouble with their landlord, doesn’t have any parking and getting 1-2 customers a day now. The ladies that worked there told me they were very worried about their jobs – they had worked there for many years, and really wanted to be online, but the owner will never do it.
As we were talking, I was looking around and adding up the online value of what I saw there. They had well over $500,000 in high end luxury items with all the shoes displayed in pairs neatly on a rack, but hundreds of other pairs lined up under the clothes on the floor all across the store. In no particular size order.
All I could think of was how much money was literally laying on the floor that could be sold online in a matter of days. Then they took me to the “back room” which was piled floor to ceiling with new Hermes scarves in boxes, Jimmy Choo, Louboutin shoes, Chanel handbags, Chanel accessories, Celine handbags, Chanel jackets, Louis Vuitton bags….you get the idea.
Truth is, whether you are selling middle market brands or high end luxury items, Internet shoppers buy it all. But they can’t buy it from you if its not on a website, and ideally being cross posted to all the major shopping sites that buyers frequent.
I started Aravenda to help people get their stores online without having to hire outside consultants to help them – If you’d like to see a free mock up of what your website might look like and discuss how the process works, click here to set a time to discuss. We would be pleased to assist you.
Don’t leave money you could be making laying around – put it to good use today – allow your employees roles to change and let them get new skills needed to sell more. Take the plunge and lets get your store online together.
