It is an extremely wise idea to get some real-world experience in the resale business before you attempt to launch your own consignment or second-hand store. Even a few days spent at this effort will teach you volumes of critical information that you need to know to make your store a success. In fact, after writing the business plan, getting a bit of resale experience should be next on the list of your must-do consignment store planning.

So, where to get this experience? Here are several ways to go about it

1) Run one to a few garage sales

Almost anyone can benefit from clearing out their house for a garage sale. If your house is one of the very few that have no junk, try to help a friend or a relative. Hunt down used appliances, clothing, sports gear, gardening gear, tools and whatever you can find. Get some practice in marking items clearly and in getting people to come to the sale. See which kinds of signs work best, and carefully watch how people review the merchandise you have for sale.

2) Get a flea market booth

This is a terrific way to ramp up your business before you have to start paying for a retail location (OK, actually, you will be paying for a retail location, but a booth is cheaper than a lease). You will need several portable tables and a clothes rack if you are selling clothes.

Doing a booth for a month will teach you a tremendous amount about pricing and how people shop. If you have a website, or if you are gathering a list of email address to send a grand opening announcement to, be assertive about getting people to fill out their names and information. That customer list will become your best marketing tool.

3) Work in a Consignment Store

Even a short stay and a Salvation Army or a Goodwill Store is much better than nothing. You may run into some issues of competition if you are working in a consignment store that sells similar things to what you want to be selling. Its up to you if you discuss your business plan with your current employer, but honesty generally is the best policy.

Working in the rows will give you intimate knowledge of payment options, stocking, traffic flow, layaway policies, security and a bunch of other issues that you can not learn just doing a garage sale or a flea market booth.

4) Work at an Antique Store or a Antique Show or an Auction House

Antiques are a world unto themselves, but if you are going to be selling furniture or high-end housewares in your consignment store, the issues around antiques are going to come up, and you had better know about them sooner or later. Another nice benefit to doing these shows, or working in a store, is that you’ll meet all sorts of people “in the biz”. One of them who wants to unload a bunch of their inventory for cheap might be a goldmine for your stores startup inventory.

Finding the Software That Makes Business Easier For You

Computers have made our lives easier, and they have revolutionized business in the process. Even consignment stores have found the efficiency computers bring to be incredibly important. While some consignment store owners may wrestle with the decision to computerize their shop, there are many who feel it is impossible not to. Some of the items that can make it easier to run a consignment store include a computer, printer, software, bar code reader, receipt printer and a computerized cash register.

Why Implement A Computer System?

With a system in place that computerizes your store, you will save several days work at the end of the month trying to organize your receipts and finances. With a computerized system, you can actually post the point of sale right into the consignorís account when the item is purchased. This makes it easier for you to manage your cosigners and what they are owed.

When you have a good system in place, you can get daily, monthly and yearly reports on sales, items donated and anything that has not been paid to a consignor. You can see what sells better in the store and what you donít sell much of. In short, it makes your entire store more efficient and easier to run.

Price Tags

Price tag software can help you make price tags that are clear and well-designed to catch your customerís eye. With price tag software, you can program several different formats; including having a single price that is marked down to a different price. An example of this is

Pants $14.99
After 2/27/10 $12.99
After 3/27/10 $ 8.99

With markdown tags that are entered in software and printed off the computer, you can avoid handwritten reductions which saves you time.

Making Managing Consignors Easier

Managing your consignment contracts can be difficult at times, especially if you have a large amount of consignors. For every consignor, you need to assign merchandise to them and you have to monitor when the merchandise is sold so that you can pay the consignor their share. Without a computer system, this can be incredibly time consuming. If not for anything else, having a computer system and consignment software in place will make your life much easier with consignors and their contracts.

You can enter all your consignors into the software with all their merchandise to them. At this point, with your point of sale computer, you can set up an alert so that when the consignor’s merchandise is sold, you know about it. With that information, you can now make sure the consignor gets their share quickly and easily. The easier and quicker they get their money, the more often they will work with you when they have more merchandise they want to sell at your consignment store.

It would take days to sort through receipts and inventory to see what has been sold so that you can get the consignors what they are owed, if you didn’t have the computer software system in place. With this system, you save hours and in the world of business, time is money. This is why more and more consignment shops are paying the extra cost to get systems put in place that make their lives easier and their shops more efficient.

The world is computerized, and consignment shops need to be as well.