01/04/2018
Tips to selling at a consignment sale:Selling at Kids Consignment Sales
1. Organize your clothes by sizes.
If you already put away old clothes by size, it’ll make this step easy.
2. Pair up clothes.
Put the pants, sweatshirts, onesies, t-shirts, PJs altogether. This makes it easier to fill out the tags and tag your clothes later on.
3. Once your clothes are organized, put the clothes in piles and input the information (if you're using tags on Excel) or fill out your tags by hand. If you are going to price all the t-shirts/pants/pajamas the same, you can easily input “t-shirt” into Excel and put in a price.
This will make it easier pinning the tags on later on so you aren’t searching for a specific t-shirt to pair the price tag with.
4. Pin the clothes through a seam or tag AND the hanger (make sure the hanger looks like a question mark when you are looking directly at it.)
When I’m a shopper, I look to see where the pin is through. If there’s a pin hole in the top chest of the shirt, I’m not going to purchase it.
Pin the tag where it’s not going to leave a noticeable hole for the new user.
Also, if the pin is big enough, put the pin on the hanger so your clothes don’t accidently drop off the hanger.
5. Do organize everything in an area you can spread out at home, especially if you have a lot of different sizes.
6. Volunteer Volunteer Volunteer
7. Rubberband the like sizes together for easy drop-off
Once you’re done tagging and everything is ready to go, rubberband the hangers together. This will make it so much easier at drop-off.
8. Keep the plastic hangers from buying clothes. If you need more, ask stores for their extra hangers. Or buy them cheap at Walmart. Also you can check with the dry cleaner.
9. Have a bunch of small toys? Put them in a clear plastic bag and tape it shut so the toys aren’t lost.
Make it easy for people to see what’s included but difficult for kids to try to play with while their parents are shopping! If you have an item that comes with small pieces, tape the small pieces in a bag and tape the bag to the big item.
10. Group things together to get rid of more and you can charge more.
Have a bunch of onesies? Sell them in bunches of 5. Have a ton of small character toys? Put them in a bag together and sell them all together. Pants sell well in pairs. You can safety pin them together so the person can see them both.
If you sell a bunch of onesies together, pin it so the shoppers can see all the onesies (Make sure to put the cute ones in front so you catch the shoppers eyes! They’ll buy it if they fall in love with it at the beginning rather than the end.)
11. Make sure the clothes are free of stains and the toys have batteries (Dollar Store)
Volunteers go through each item of clothing and test each toy to make sure it turns on! They only want to sell high-quality items at these sales so that shoppers want to come and can expect only high-quality items!
12. Ensure there are no recalls on items.
Items need to be safe.
13. If you’re going to donate the item after the sale anyway, mark it for half off for the last day!
I see so many item tags that don’t have the half off checked and yet they’re donating the item after the sale. If you’re going to donate, you might as well try to sell it for half off!
14. Price it at a price YOU would be willing to pay if you saw the item…not a price you want to sell it for.
So many people overprice their items. I’ve seen items with tags on them and the person tries to price the item a few dollars cheaper. Shoppers are coming there to save a significant amount of money rather than barely getting a deal!
Big items or popular items, you can get away with higher prices because there is a demand for those. There are so many clothes to choose from, people are going to skip over the high priced items and stick with the cheaper ones!
15. Zip Ties are great to keep items together! If you want to pair clothing items together, zip-tie hangers together if you don’t want to pin them together. Zip tie a small bag to a big item.
Shopping at Kids Consignment Sales
1.The racks and racks of clothes can get overwhelming. Figure out the size you’re looking for and stick to that.
Have a plan when you go in. Know what sizes you’re looking for and what items you are looking for.
2. You can find some great deals on the last day of the sale since it’s half price.
Half price deals are the best! This is a great time to get clothes that your kid can use to play out in the mud. It’s no big deal if you get holes in them because it was only a dollar!
3. Search the book bins…especially on half price day!
There’s an overwhelming amount of books that are put into these sales. Cheap books are the best because they still provide the same story for half the price!
4. Usually, the big ticket items go the first day. If you’re a seller, you get to get in for the preview sale.
Outdoor play items and any of the popular items will go in the first few days the sale is open! Try to go the first day, or if you’re a seller, go to the preview sale! You’ll get in early and have the first chance to look through everything!
Bonus if you volunteer and help set up the items! You can’t set items aside for yourself, but during the preview sale, you’ll know it’s there and you can head directly to the item to claim it as your own!
6. Make sure to inspect the clothes closely for any missed stains or missing buttons during their inspection.
Make sure the items you buy don’t have any stains. Even though all the items are inspected, stains can be missed, or they don’t look closely enough to see a missing button.
You don’t want to come home, inspect your items and find out a dress you bought has a stain on the back!
7. Also, inspect the toys before buying.
Same idea as the clothes, make sure the toys work properly, and a wheel isn’t slightly broken that the volunteer might have missed.
8. Try to go without small kids, it’ll make it so much easier to shop because it gets busy!
The checkout lines get LONG during prime shopping times. It also takes awhile to go through all the clothes. It makes it easier for you to browse all the items when you don’t have to worry about keeping track of your kid(s).
9. Bring a laundry basket or tub. (No large strollers) to make it easier to carry your purchases.
10. If you want a big ticket item, search for the tag that you can rip off so you “claim” it and go about your shopping. Or you can bring it to the “hold” area and continue shopping. Just make sure you get that tag so someone else doesn’t sn**ch it up before you get to the checkout to ask about the item.
