How Too Good to be Threw happened:

The introduction to
Too Good to be Threw
The Complete Operations Manual for Resale & Consignment Shops

In August I got fired. It was only the second time in my life that I was ever fired. Both times I cried. But the second time, I did something much more important—I got mad. I got so mad, in fact, that I sold the stock I had in the company and opened my own business.

In September One More Time was open for business. The first week, I had fifty women bring in "gently-used good clothes" (a phrase coined by my father, an advertising executive, for my mother's consignment shops back in the 1950's) for me to sell on consignment. Twenty years later, those fifty women became over 20,000, my shop had grown from 750 square feet to 3300 square feet, and I sold in a six hour day what I sold in a month my first year.

How did I do it? There was no magic involved. You can do it too. That's what this book is all about: how to set up, and operate, a resale or consignment shop. One More Time sold clothing and household decorative items, but you could sell anything from furniture to sporting goods to electronic equipment. It all depends on your interests and abilities.

The sale of that company's stock netted me the grand sum of $900, which was all the money I had in the world. Out of that $900, I paid one month's rent and a security deposit on my store location, utility deposits, and had enough left over to furnish the store with racks, tags, sales books and receipts. ($900 back then had the buying power of about $3550 in today's dollars.) I spent some money on fliers and postcards and bought a small display ad in the two local newspapers. I used grocery bags for merchandise and scraps of paper pinned on the clothes for price tags. Our sales counter was a door on 2x4's, my stool and some shelves were borrowed from my father, and my display props were a few pieces of furniture taken out of my apartment.

Within six weeks, I was in the black. I bought real price tags and merchandise bags first. Then I bought more racks, a few display pieces, and some card files.

A month later, I was able to pay all my personal living expenses, and not rely on eating dinner at my father's house every evening. The experts advise you to have at least six months worth of business and personal expenses set aside to start your own business. I never did. I had to make money immediately, and keep on making it, and I did. You can, too.

One More Time wasn't fancy, but it was clean, bright, and cheerful. It did have all the amenities of a "real" store, and at prices that are irresistible to my shoppers.

I had enough time to edit and publish a monthly industry newsletter, speak to groups, and write this book. I also had a consultation service for consignment shop owners, belong to community service organizations, and took vacations several times a year, knowing that my shop was well-cared for in my absence.

You can do all this, too. All it takes is work; not even necessarily hard work, just smart work. And that’s what this book is all about... how to work smart, improve your shop daily, and provide the public with a service that they are willing to pay you for.

One of the most important points you will learn here is the necessity for regular routines. Not only are routines necessary to simplify your business for yourself, but they will prepare your shop for the day when you have employees. Consignment shops are often unnecessarily confusing, simply because there are not standard routines used every day. With a routine, clothes are not mis-tagged, misplaced, or mis-entered. With a routine, sales are not lost through negligence. And finally, with a routine your shop will be a joy to operate every day of its long and fruitful existence.

So take this manual, read it all the way through first, find yourself a location, and then go back through each chapter slowly and do what it says. The systems in this manual are not the only options in resale—but they are time-tested, workable, and successful ways to run your own shop for fun and profit. Don’t re-invent the wheel. Mankind dragged things around on sleds and sledges for millennia before the wheel was thought of.... but they sure didn’t move around as easily as we do today!

You are starting off right, simply by sitting down with this manual. Now continue, and let me know how well your shop is doing by visiting the Too Good to be Threw web site at tgtbt.com. I’m happy to share my years of experience with you, because I know that you can do it!

Kate Holmes

Sarasota Florida
June 2016

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