Online or in Store, Where to Sell Thrifted Items
The right answer is different for different items.
The amazing array of items that are donated to thrift operations makes this a constant and complex job. It’s part art part science. A few guides and conventions help reduce the guesswork.
E-commerce should complement and enhance, not compete with a physical store.
The best way to understand that concept is in metrics. I find a couple to watch are turns and price per item; basics. The benchmarks might vary between physical and online but the math works.
A few rules of thumb.:
If it will sell for about the same and as fast in a store as online, sell it in a store.
The online value multiplier has to more than makeup for the extra expense of getting an item online.
If there is an abundance of the same item sell them in both places.
If an item is specialized and has a narrow market, sell it online.
If it’s vintage or unique a larger online market may increase its value.
If an item will sell for more and/or faster online than in a store, it’s an e-commerce candidate.
Here is why:
In our case, everything sold online comes through our stores as donations. Stores have to accept, identify, clean up and value an item. They have put the work in and only have to merchandise it on the sales floor. More time and effort will be required to move it to e-commerce, photograph, describe and list it.
There has to be a higher value online to make up for the extra effort that goes into getting them online. So if an item will sell for about the same in-store as online, sell it in the store.
The least total labor cost may be selling in a store. The least total labor percent may be selling online. Manage your percent and dollars will come.
By abundant items, I mean a lot of the same thing. Someone recently donated pallets of an identical light fixture. Eventually, everyone that might want that one that shops in a store have seen it. Selling the product online opens the goods up to a much larger ever-changing market allowing for the lot to be sold more quickly. That will increase the turn rate of that batch of items. In this case, selling for about the same price online is still a win.
Specialized, vintage and unique items are those that have good value but a narrow use or appeal. The pitless adapter pictured below is fairly expensive and very specialized. It sat in a showcase at a store for a long long time.
Really, how likely is it that some random customer will walk by the showcase and say “wow” that adapter is the exact size and configuration that I need for a project I am working on! It didn’t in months.
We put it online and got 4X what it was priced for in the store and sold it in about two weeks. Our price still represented a great value to the customer.
In not-for-profit thrift, we have a responsibility to (withing reason) maximize the value of every donation. Opening the right items to a wider online audience helps do that.
Thanks for reading!
Tim Gebauer
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A quote:
Fix What Bugs You, Paul Akers. The link takes you to a mouse pad with the quote on it in my Redouble merch art site.