More consignors, more buyers

Charlotte Seelbach, who owns Sugarbakers with her husband, Jerry Seelbach, said that despite increasing competition, the consignment businesses never has been better, though she sees no link to the recession. “I don’t think it’s a factor.”

For 13 straight years, she said, Sugarbakers’ sales have increased every year by an average of 5 percent per year.

What Seelbach said she does see is history repeating itself.

When she started, there was a boom in the number of consignment shops. Many of those have closed, while her shop, Margaret’s Consignment and Judy’s Finest Consignments in Middletown have flourished because they have top-notch goods, Seelbach said.

“Now, in the last year and a half, I’ve seen all these new stores pop up,” she said, adding that she expects the same sort of attrition down the road.

‘We still shop’

So how long will supply continue to meet demand? Forever, said Seelbach and others.

Recessions and slowing mall sales do not necessarily help or hurt consignment sales, Seelbach said.

In fact, she said, department stores cut into her sales twice a year and always have. January and July are Sugarbakers’ slowest months because the retail stores have summer clearance sales.

Consumers can buy brand new apparel at as much as 75 percent off full retail during end-of-season sales, which might be below what she charges for comparable used items, Seelbach said.

But recessions do bring her inventory, she added, because more people are willing to try consigning during the slowdown rather than donating garments to charity.

Though Americans have decades of overconsumption, that’s not driving the consignment business, said Marianne Bickel, chairwoman of the Department of Retailing at South Carolina University’s College of Hospitality, Retail and Sport management in Columbia.

Consignment relies on consumers — mostly women — outgrowing the fashions in their closets emotionally or physically.

“Very rarely do people — unless you’re a child — physically wear out clothing,” Bickel said.

At the moment, popular sentiment is against the mentality of buying and flaunting luxury products, she said. But that doesn’t mean people aren’t doing it.

“There will always be, a large group of people buying” top-brand goods, people who quickly become bored with them, Bickel said.

Though the number of upscale consignment shops is rising, there are still thousands of Dillards and Bloomingdales, she said.

Even in tough economic times, said Urban Kitty owner Tamara Neal, “women always buy [at department stores]. Now, maybe it’s not as much, but we still shop.”

Where does all that stuff come from?

The key to consignment selling is a steady stream of quality goods, say those entrepreneurs who’ve transformed the business from dowdy shops piled with discards to swank, boutique-like spaces filled with expensive, if secondhand, inventories.

To keep her shelves stocked, Margaret Browning, founder of Margaret’s Consignment, said she has 20,000 active accounts — that is, 20,000 people who bring in goods to consign at least once a month.

Her top suppliers earn as much as $30,000 per year, Browning said.

Charlotte Seelbach, who owns Sugarbakers Classy Consignments and Sugarbakers Plus plus-sized store with her husband, Jerry Seelbach, said her operation logged in more than 20,000 individual pieces at the couple’s two stores, 14,000 items in the main store alone.

And that’s just clothing, not accessories, Charlotte Seelbach said.

Browning, Charlotte Seelbach and other consignment shop owners said they take a small percentage, perhaps only 20 percent, of the clothing people want to consign.

Consignment shop inventories come from a variety of sources, ranging from suppliers who work yard sales, flea markets and thrift shops, looking for underpriced items they can resell at consignment shops to the golf-course pro-shop owner who brings in end-of-season apparel, Browning and Seelbach said.

People bring clothes to consign for many reasons.

Consigners do bring new clothing with tags to Sugarbakers, Seelbach said, “but is that really coming from the compulsive buyer? Or is it someone who’s cleaning out her mom’s closet?”

A significant percentage of clothes come from business owners who get promotional apparel or wholesale representatives who bring in out-of-season samples, she said.

“You have to take it case by case,” Seelbach said.

Some women buy clothing at one size, then lose or gain weight and never wear the items, Browning said.

Death and divorce also feed consignment shops, with women often selling their husband’s wardrobes, said Jerry Mattingly, who owns Evolve Consignments in the Crescent Hill neighborhood.

That can be a problem, Mattingly said, because no consignment shop is going to take clothes with the labels from long-closed men’s stores such as Loevenhart’s or Schupp & Snyder, a tip off the clothing is old and outdated.

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Terry Boyd is a staff writer for Business First of Louisville