This is the question that I most often hear when I meet with home staging clients and help them prepare their house to be in showing condition. Unless you are a minimalist, and most of us are not, we accumulate furniture, accessories, grandma's old antique clock, and children's out grown items. You name it, I've seen it in someone's, garage, closet or basement. We hate to get rid of these possessions, but we don't use them any longer, and you hate to just throw them out. A yard sale is not an option due to time, energy or enthusiasm and you really hate to donate some thing's, when you know that you may be able to sell these things and put a little bit of "green" in your pocket.
One solution to this particular problem is to contact a consignment shop. Located in Historical Newnan, GA, next to Scott's Bookstore, you will find one of the most charming shops on the square. Owner Janet Elliott Cantrell will make it easy and take the take the drudgery out of selling your unneeded items in her shop, Encore Decor.
I sat down with Janet to ask her a few questions about how all of this works;
Who is your buyer or seller? My seller is someone needing to downsize or either they are remodeling or moving. The buyers are usually new home buyers, newlyweds, anyone furnishing 2nd homes at the beach, lake or mountains.
What are your best selling items? The best selling items, without question are the accessories and home decor. We sell a great many items as gifts for birthdays and weddings. Furniture usually involves return visits for measurements, etc. We offer gift registry for brides and also keep individual gift cards for our regular customer to include in the gift.
Where do you find your merchandise? 90% of our merchandise comes from consignors. I can either go see what they want to sell or they bring items to me at the shop. The shop was full when we first opened with consigner items. People would stop in when they were walking buy and ask what we were doing and they started bringing their treasures in for us to sell.
How does it work? commissions? etc. If someone has enough to warrant a personal visit to their home, I'll go and choose the higher quality items or they can bring things to the shop. It's helpful if the seller knows how much they want to net off of a piece. If I think that I can bring it back and sell it, we offer a 50/50 split between us and the consigner.
Give us a good example of comparing consignment shop purchases to regular retail. With consignment shop purchase you'll find unique items not found at retail stores, or the prices will be greatly reduced from anywhere to 1/3 to 1/2 of retail. And with consignment shop items, there's always a story behind every piece. In Newnan, people will make purchase on items just because it used to belong to someone special that they knew in the community.
How is this different than say, a flea market or yard sale? The main difference is the setting of the store, the way everything is displayed in an appealing manner, we're located in Historic Downtown Newnan and a lot of my customers are walking around our beautiful town and stop in to see us .....I wouldn't get near the traffic that I do if I were on Bullsboro or a busy road somewhere.
What are you looking for when you take on a consignment piece? Unique items that can either be updated with a fresh coat of paint or stain, one-of-a- kind pieces that you won't find in retail stores. We also have great local artist work in the shop. We are the exclusive shop in Newnan that offer one artist unique pencil renderings of Historical Newnan or Atlanta landmarks.
So the next time you either want to unload unwanted furniture or find that special piece at a fraction of what something would cost new, go see Janet at Encore Decor.
To see how you can furnish an entire room using consignment furniture and accessories, be sure to visit the:
Decorators Show House
November 20th
74 Jackson Street
Newnan, Ga 30263
