New here?

Welcome to Auntie Kate the Blog, part of the Too Good to be Threw Family of Sites for the Professional Resale. Don’t miss

Too Good to be Threw/Products for the Professional Resaler For consignment, resale & thrift shopkeepers. All free, all of the time! And our Products for the Professional Resaler help you make your shop all you dream it can be.

HowToConsign.com, our consumer site where we develop your future clients. Join us as we motivate the public to shop 2ndhand first, PRE-educate them to industry standards and show them how to Turn Their Cluttered Closets into Cash.

Got a question? Need some opinions?

Sometimes you want a few options. Get them in our OPEN HOUSE. Ask, answer, offer your suggestions and see how others handle situations you might face. I trust our more-experienced consignment, resale, & thrift shopkeepers will help answer our questions and offer their wisdom. In fact, why not head over there right now?

Then check out our Ask Auntie Kate page. Sure, Auntie Kate’s there, but your knowledge and experience are eagerly sought as well. Go add your opinion & experience.

Bookmark this!

Just got back from a garage sale with a sweet little treasure, looked it up on the ‘net, and found a resource

all consignment, resale, and thrift shopkeepers should bookmark

for future reference: A vintage fashion labels list: photos of the actual labels, short paragraphs of info to help you research further…

The Vintage Fashion Guild’s Label Resource 

Even if you don’t really deal in vintage, it comes in handy sometimes, so you don’t miss what could be a treasure for your shop and your shoppers.

Oh, my little treasure? A Carolyn Schnurer NWT hand-rolled linen handkerchief, never even unfolded from the 1940′s-1950′s. Coral geometric pattern, rather Moorish-tile-like. Paid 25 cents; on Etsy etc for $10-$20. Also has a “Carol Stanley Signature Original as seen in Vogue” sticker on it… can’t quite figure out Carol’s role (retailer? Manufacturer?)… if anyone knows, comment here!

Competition: Deal with it

Here’s a little checkup from the SBA on competition.

I like the last point best, and think it needs to be, actually,

Pushing their WANT button

Let’s face it. If all consignment, resale, thrift shops looked like

Here’s a great way to use Facebook

Jessica of Fifi’s Amelia Island is right on top of marketing at her shop’s Facebook page. Look at this exchange:

Notice, too, how Jessica doesn’t just say “thanks”, but she furthers the usefulness of the Facebook exchange by mentioning an upcoming event. She also mentions the WIIFM: “a ton of fun”  and implies community acceptance: “back by popular demand.” Heck, her reply even “sounds” like her: If you’ve ever met Jessica, you know her enthusiastic laugh sounds just like “Yayyy!” Looks like Jessica’s been reading her Too Good to be Threw Products for the Professional Resaler!

By the way, did you notice Fifi’s TRIPLE listing on the Clickable Directory/ Zoomable Map? Jessica’s taking full advantage of her Treasured Sponsor listing at HowToConsign.com. Jessica’s got the social-media mindset! Yayyy!

Deja Vuesday: Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without

Click the image for more Deja Vuesday posts that are too good to be threw from TGtbT.coM

We resalers are a thrifty lot, are we not? We embody the 21st-century version of the Depression saying

Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without

and we’re

Have you done your bragging lately?

Hey, you do good. For your community. For the earth. For your consignors. Your shoppers. Your clients.

So brag on it.

Humility doesn’t

Random Notes on Superbowl Sunday and Consignment

I am not a televised-football fan. I couldn’t even tell you what teams are in the Superbowl this year… or even whether it’s “Superbowl” or “SuperBowl” or “Super Bowl”… but I am a very big fan of

Furniture consignment shop interview video: Your thoughts?

We viewed a lot of consignment, resale, and thrift videos in our USED ain’t seen nothin’ yet e-newsletter this week, and then a few days later, we reviewed the wonderful tips given to us by a generous and talented resale shopowner/video artist.

Now here’s an interview with a furniture consignment shop in tis second, newly-opened location. See if you can spot, using the tips you learned through our free e-newsletter,

what’s being done right here… and what

Have you filled out all your 1099s yet?

Is your shop’s landlord an individual or a corporation? Are you SURE?

How about that handy person who put up your dressing rooms or laid carpet last spring? And who paid for the materials? Are you SURE?

If you’ve paid $600

Brian’s video tips in action.

Brian Brown, who gave us the video tips that were in our USED ain’t seen nothin’ yet e-newsletter that you received yesterday, ran a video contest for his shop. Notice how he uses all those tips he shared with us in his videos.

Here’s how he introduced the contest.

Here’s the winning submission as seen on The Orange Door’s Facebook page.

And here’s the video Brian made to announce the winner… and to further promote, of course, his store.

Here’s the 2011 holiday contest. Notice much of the footage was already “in the can”, as Hollywood types say.

If you haven’t opened your Used ain’t seen nothin’ yet e-newsletter from Too Good to be Threw, please do, as we are weeding out folks who are not reading them. (Remember, some email providers may have stashed our valuable e-newsletter in your junk mail.) And if you haven’t signed up to get this business-enhancing communique from the Premiere Site for Professional Resalers, join us right now!

Deja Vuesday: Is your resale shop boring your visitors?

Click the image for more Deja Vuesday posts that are too good to be threw from TGtbT.com

This Deja Vu post is the one I personally refer consignment, resale, and thrift consultees when discussing how to build traffic through their doors. Often, they don’t realize what a great opportunity

Ya know that money ya wanna borrow from your family? Read this first.

Ya know that money ya wanna borrow from your family?

.

I {heart} Valentine’s Day all year long in consignment & resale!

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

Your Good Luck Post for Friday the 13th.

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

Edit your world

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.

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.