Congratulations. You’re the reluctant heir of your uncle’s pheasant-themed crystal barware collection. Or maybe you’ve finally come to terms with your new larger (or smaller) belt size. Or you’ve decided to stop forking over for a storage unit. Suddenly, you have a bunch of things to get rid of.
The right answer, as it often is, is it depends. cotton piping 1 2 inch
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For items that have a resale value, offering them to a consignment store is a relatively low-risk way to unload things that don’t “spark joy,” to quote the patron saint of modern minimalism, Marie Kondo.
These resellers only take things they expect will spark joy — for their shoppers. So if your items pass inspection, the odds are in your favor.
“I would say, on furniture, 90 to 95 percent of what comes in sells during the consignment period,” said Rob Murray, the owner of Karen’s Consignment Gallery in Point Loma.
The used goods and resale industry was hard hit during the pandemic when social distancing kept shoppers out of stores. Sales increased in 2021 and 2022 as consumer spending picked up, according to IBISWorld, a market research company. A recent report by online clothing resale platform ThredUP, which did not look specifically at consignment shops, said the brick-and-mortar secondhand market rebounded in 2021 and 2022 to its pre-pandemic level. The online resale market, meanwhile, surged from $7 million in 2019 to $14 million in 2021 and $17 million in 2022.
Consumers wanted to stretch their dollars as prices rose last year, the report said, with 37 percent of buyers spending a higher proportion of their apparel budget on secondhand clothes last year, and 63 percent increasing their secondhand spending in response to inflation. Some shoppers were also driven by sustainability values, it added.
Dining sets at Murray’s store, for example, sell from $800 to $3,500, he said. The seller and shop split the sales amount.
At a shop called Consignment Classics, in the Midway area, sofas on the sales floor this week ranged from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. A blue fabric three-seater was reduced from $599 to $479. At the higher end, an earthy red leather Roche Bobois sectional was priced at $2,495, reduced from $4,995. This store, like others, may slash prices on items that linger.
Consigning isn’t for people in a rush, though. Unlike estate sales, which aim to liquidate entire households in a few days, consignment stores sign contracts with sellers for two to three months.
An upside: It may take longer, but there’s less haggling than with buyers on platforms like Craigslist or at estate sales, Murray said.
Here are a few pointers from San Diego clothing and furniture brick-and-mortar resale experts on how to consign for the first time and how to get more for your castoff treasures.
Murray, who has owned his 9,000-square-foot Point Loma store for 14 years, said people will bring him things that are in a sorry state and hope buyers will see their potential. But that’s not how buyers operate.
Shoppers are looking for solutions — to fill that empty area where the couch or nightstand needs to go — and not projects.
“People don’t want to do anything,” Murray said. “People don’t want to refinish anything. They don’t want to have something to clean. They don’t want to paint it. They want to buy it and take it home.”
The problem is, he said, some sellers don’t want to do that work either. And that can cost them. He used a teak table as an example.
“If somebody brought that table in and it’s all dried up, and I’m just going to put X dollars on it, because this is how it looks,” he said. “But if they had taken 20 minutes to get it dusted off, put a little orange oil on it, it could be considerably higher than that because it looks good.”
If you’re following interior design or fashion trends and getting rid of the same things everyone else is, your first stop should probably be a thrift shop, sellers said.
At Karen’s Consignment Gallery, armoires and wall units — “big, clunky things that used to store a TV,” Murray said — don’t sell. “I can’t even give an armoire away.”
What about dark wood, now anathema, according to today’s home decor dogma?
Murray said that’s also a pass. “Even oak is out of fashion,” he said.
But Susan Appleby, a manager at Ark Antiques in downtown La Jolla, a nonprofit retailer that raises funds for animal welfare charities, had a different take on dark woods.
“For some people it always fits. And when interiors are more eclectic, you can always find a place for those antiques,” she said.
Mid-century Modern will eventually go the way of mahogany, as surely as trends keep getting bumped and replaced.
That day hasn’t come, Murray said. “Mid-century Modern is still very, very popular and very hot. We do really well with that.”
Here’s what else really sells: sofas.
“Sleeper sofas fly out the door,” Murray said. “I mean, that’s probably what we do most of — couches, sofas, love seats. They’re gone quickly.” Also in demand: small dining sets that seat four to six, ideally with expandable tables. Next come “storage staples” like dressers.
Other big sellers: rugs and floor lamps — but not chandeliers.
At Ark Antiques, Appleby said, there are no overriding trends except for these — fine crystal sells and barware is “popular always.”
Imagine two people come to your shop hoping to consign a closetful of clothes they fell out of love with. One presents them folded, in an airy basket. They have that fresh out-of-the laundry scent. The other plops a trash bag full of crumpled — who knows what — on your counter.
Which items would you bet on?
Mara Linderman, the owner of Classy Closet, a clothing consignment boutique in Encinitas, said she’s been faced with both scenarios, and it’s not hard to guess whose clothes she accepted.
She and the others all said presentation makes a difference.
Appleby, with Ark, said before bringing in an item, sellers should email photos and descriptions. The more you share, the better: dimensions, the age, where you bought it. The shop reviews the items it’s interested in on site, by appointment.
“We’re busy, so we’re usually working two to three weeks out,” Appleby added.
Others recommended including price information from Ebay or online retailers, to make a case for an item’s value.
Clothing is very seasonal, more so than furniture and certain decor. So these days, Linderman is taking summer items. Brands that do well year-round at her shop include Free People, Lululemon, Chicos, Anthropologie, White House Black Market, Ann Taylor and Gap.
If you want to get started with consigning, here are a few more pointers:
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