Northern Express - September 14, 2020

Once Upon a Child

Resale is the New Black

By Craig Manning It’s a common tradition at this time of year: parents flocking to clothing stores in the last weeks of summer to get their kids new duds for back-to-school time. But what happens when the economy is in shambles, when many people have been out of work since March, and when the return of inperson, face-to-face schooling is a tenuous proposition at best?

For many parents the answer has been simple: Skip the name-brand apparel retailers and hit up secondhand clothing shops instead.

Jen O’Brien and her husband, Chris, along with his brother, Tim, own Once Upon a Child, a shop in Traverse City that “buys and sells gently used kid’s clothing, shoes, toys, and baby gear.” According to Jen O’Brien, the store has rarely seen as many new faces as it has over the past few months.

Customers who might normally shop for their kids at stores in the Grand Traverse Mall have found their way across the street to Once Upon a Child instead. O’Brien believes the pandemic is the primary reason.

She says that, with some parents out of work and with less discretionary income, more families are choosing to save a few dollars by giving secondhand stores a try.

CONVERSION RATE Secondhand-store owners are betting that the sudden need to save money will transform first-time customers into loyal customers of shops like Once Upon a Child, simply because it’s helping shatter some of the preconceived notions that people have about secondhand stores and the products they sell.

“A lot of people have commented about the [good] condition of the clothes, or about how new everything looks,” O’Brien said. “They wonder why they haven’t been shopping like this all along.”

If that’s the consumer takeaway, then it’s more bad news for major apparel retailers in a year that has already brought plenty.

According to the retail consultancy group Wood Mackenzie, sales “at apparel and apparel accessory stores” in the United States were down 87 percent year-over-year in March,

and 63 percent in May. The bad year has led more than a few apparel retailers to declare bankruptcy in 2020, including J.C. Penney, J. Crew, Tailored Brands (the parent company of Men’s Wearhouse and Jos. A. Banks), and Neiman Marcus — to name just a few.

That’s not to say the pandemic hasn’t impacted resale or consignment stores.

As part of the stay-at-home order, these businesses — like many others — were forced to close their doors for several months in the spring. Since then, customer behaviors have shifted slightly. At Once Upon a Child, O’Brien says her customer count is down, but the average size of transaction per customer is up. Instead of stopping in “just to browse” or to buy an item or two, parents are shopping more purposefully and deliberately. Average transactions these days tend to land in the $200 to $300 range, and some have been over $1,000.

“It used to be, ‘Oh, I have a reservation at Olive Garden; I’ll stop in and have a look around.’” O’Brien told Northern Express. “Now it’s ‘We have a babysitter for an hour; we have our list of what we need; we’re going to buy everything for our six kids at one place.’”

NICHE DEMAND Another major driver for Once Upon a Child has been the store’s COVID-19 mask inventory. O’Brien has been vigilant about keeping kid-sized (and kid-themed) masks in stock, knowing that, if schools start and maintain in-person learning, parents will likely need to have 3–6 masks per child. (For K–12 students, the CDC recommends that masks be washed after every day of use.)

O’Brien says even keeping masks in stock has been a challenge; she recently ordered another 3,000 to keep up with demand.

Local resale shops have dealt with other pandemic aftershocks, too. A major one was the influx of inventory that came in after stayat-home orders started to lift and business was able to resume. Charlette Steinhebel, who owns The Roost Consignment Boutique in Suttons Bay, says that many customers took the shutdown as an opportunity to do some extensive spring cleaning. As a result, many people were armed with lots of items ready for consignment when The Roost reopened.

16 • sept 14, 2020 • Northern Express Weekly

Plato’s Closet

“I would say that a lot of people had cleaned out and organized over the couple of months that the stay-at-home order was in place,” Steinhebel said. “I heard from many consignors that they were cleaning out closets, garages, attics, and more.”

Once Upon a Child has seen the same trend. O’Brien says her store normally buys about 1,000 items a day for resale. After the stay-at-home order lifted, that number just about doubled.

MARIE KONDO EFFECT The “spring cleaning” pattern ties into a larger trend that resale shops across the nation have experienced in the past several years — a trend that has been labeled as “the Marie Kondo effect,” after the famous author and TV show host who has written multiple books about organizing. In January 2019, Kondo reached a wider audience with the Netflix series Tidying Up with Marie Kondo. Kondo spends each episode of the show working with American families to declutter their homes.

Kondo’s strategy for organization is known as the “KonMari” method, which involves gathering one’s belongings and getting rid of anything that doesn’t “spark joy.” In the weeks following the debut of the Netflix series, TODAY reported that Kondo’s viral fame was inspiring people across the country to declutter their households — and triggering big business for resale stores as a result. One Goodwill donation center

in Washington, D.C. tracked a 367 percent increase in donations, compared to the same time the previous year.

“When Marie Kondo’s Netflix special came out, we got a ton of people coming in [to sell us stuff],” O’Brien said. “She’s been very good for business.”

More donations or consignments, in turn, can pave the way for more people shopping secondhand. Steinhebel says that, in many cases, the customers who visit her shop for the first time to consign “end up becoming frequent shoppers.” Just as the pandemic has led some parents to discover the quality of the lightly-used kids clothes at Once Upon a Child, Steinhebel believes the increase in consignments at The Roost in recent years has clued shoppers into some of the treasures that might be hiding on the racks of a resale shop.

“Customers prefer to purchase higherend brands secondhand than something lower quality that is new from a store or online,” Steinhebel explained. “There are those who maybe can’t afford a cashmere sweater new but can buy one from The Roost at an affordable price. Customers also like to shop consignment because of the unique items they find. A lot of times, items like furniture and décor are older. Antique and vintage is very common too, and some people prefer older items so as to have something one-of-a-kind, or something you can’t find in every store.”