GoingTwice

Well, Welcome to Going Twice. At Going Twice, we're known for being really picky about what merchandise we agree to bring in on consignment. And I'm here to tell you that we are even choosier about the people that we decide to bring into our team. So congratulations. Thank you for your patience during the interview process. And we'really happy to have you here on the team. My name is Deborah. My husband, Eric, and I own the store. And today I'm here to kick off your orientation. There's a lot for you to learn in your new role. But today is really about ACLA meeting you to the store and to give you some comfort in being able to be here. So our goal today is that we would You'll meet the rest of them over the course of today we want to learn the layout of the store, help you find t We're also, of course, going to do some necessary paperwork. And finally, we're going to give you a feel for what your training is going to look You were given a workbook earlier, so we definitely want you to have that out and make good use of that. There are places in there to take notes on all the videos, on all your training activities, and please do that. Please make good use of that. I will give you a little heads up that there is a quiz after every section. So, and it's an open book quiz, so you can use your notes, but I encourage you to take the notes. So The three things that we're going to go over Secondly, we're going to talk about how consignment works. And finally, we're going to talk about the business process here at Going Twice and what your role is inside of that business process. So let's get started talking about the brand. The brand is important here and important to us because it really defines who we are to our customers, to our consignors, to our employees, to our vendors. It's who we are. And so when you come to work here, you're expected to behave in ways that both uphold and strengthen our brand. So let's take a look at what that is. The brand at Going Twice is pretty simple. We've boiled it down to three words. It's more meaningful than that, but three words are pretty easy to remember. Our brand is t We believe we are friendly, knowledgeable, and helpful, and we deliver quality, value, and professionalism. There are different behaviors that go into each of those brand attributes. And during your training, after your training, and the whole time you work here, we'll talk about your behaviors and the t We're going to give you training so that In fact, your evaluation, w So you're going to hear a lot more about our brand w Moving on, I want to talk a little bit about how consignment works. I'm sure that you have heard some myths about consignment as many people have, and I'm going to try to debunk some of those myths as we go through t But let'start off with, so what is consignment? How does it work? So consignment's a fairly simple concept. What happens is that somebody decides that they no longer have a need for, in our case, a piece of furniture or some home furnis Now they may have lost their need for that item because they are moving and they don't want to pay the money to s They are moving into a new place and it doesn't fit into their new place. They may be downsizing, so it doesn't fit. They may be combining households. So when one person has a full household of furniture and they marry or move in with another person who has a full household of furniture, they've got an extra household of furniture they need to get rid of. So that could be a reason they no longer have the need for that piece anymore. Sometimes people are just redecorating and that piece doesn't fit into their decor any longer. So when that happens, they contact us and they ask us if we can sell it for them. So when we look at the piece and we decide, yep, that'somet So the next step in consignment is either the consigner can bring it to us themselves or we'll be happy to set up a professional that isn't a free pickup. There is a fee associated with that, but it's a very safe and economical way to move the items to our store. Once the items get in our store, we make them look as beautiful as they ever have. So we might do minor touch-up on the piece. We will thoroughly clean the piece and then we're going to display it in our store in a way that is very attractive. We hear frequently from our consignors that, wow, that piece looks better in your store than it ever did in my house. That's not uncommon. And then we surround that piece with people So those t When they do and they purchase it, they purchase it from our store and we take all forms of payment, credit card, cash, and checks. And so they fall in love with it, they buy it, and then after they buy it, we mail that original consigner a check for their portion of the sale from us selling it for them. And so that's a pretty simple way for consignment to work. You may have heard some myths about consignment and I'd One myth that I t Of all the items that you see in the store right now and ever, there's not a single piece in there that has been donated to the store. We're not a charity and we're not a thrift store. And so we don't have people dropping off they don't abandon them here. And so every single piece of merchandise in our store is owned by someone and once we sell it, we will pay that person for the piece of merchandise. A second common myth or misperception about consignment is that everyt At going twice, you won't find run down dirty, torn, damaged, stained, stinky pieces in our store. I mentioned earlier we're very picky about what we take in and you will find as you go through training that is very much the truth. Consignment doesn't necessarily mean second hand and it certainly does not need to be broken down or old. We do have some brand new pieces of furniture that will be in our store that are on consignment and that happens in a variety of ways but all consignment means is that we are selling it for someone else. At going twice, we specialize in merchandise that's 10 years old and newer so you won't find broken down, run down, outdated, unstylished pieces in our store because we have that quality bar. Another myth or misperception that you might have about consignment is that all of our stuff comes from people who've gone around to yard sales and bought them and they brought them here and that is also not true. That is certainly not how we get the majority of our t We do have a consigner or two who does go through yard sales and freshens t 9 percent of our merchandise is simply somet So those are a couple of common misperceptions or myths about consignment and if you had any other thoughts or beliefs and you want to talk them through you just need to ask the question and let us know. So now that we know what the process is for consignment, I want to really talk about that middle step when the items are at going twice and what our business process is. How do we actually sell it w So let's look at that. Business process at going twice, we break into six different buckets and t Just for ease of discussion, I'm going to start at the top and talk about acquiring inventory because basically what we're doing is we bring t So I'll start with acquiring inventory as the first t So acquiring inventory is where we do a couple of t We meet consignors, new consignors, we talk to them about consigning here at going twice and why that's of value to them. We review tons and tons of photographs that people bring to us or email to us or text to us of t We have a lot of email and telephone discussions with consignors to either make a decision about whether we are the right fit for them or if we can sell their items. We make intake decisions every day all day long. Is t We set up professional pickups, as we mentioned, we need to get merchandise to our stores so there's a whole administrative element to scheduling professional pickups for people. We schedule drop-offs with consignors who want to bring t We take consignment by appointment so part of acquiring inventory is making sure that everybody who brings t And then we do things And finally we also have been a good partner to a n Those are businesses that are going out of business for one reason or another and may have merchandise that they need to liquidate. We also help with that. Those are the ways that we acquire inventory. Once we acquire the inventory we need to manage it. We take in anywhere between 250 and 300 new items a week. That's a lot of stuff and if you t And so if we couldn't figure out from one minute to the next who owns what piece we wouldn't be a very good consignment store and people would stop consigning with us. Managing our inventory has all to do with remembering who owns what so that they're paid appropriately and that we can keep track of our stuff. Managing inventory involves getting contracts with consigners, setting them up with their new accounts. We have a thing we call an addend We have a very robust and methodical 15-step intake process that we use to make sure that every piece that comes in the store is accounted for and designated to the right consigner. We clean every item. We test anyt We enter that inventory into the computer and w So once we've acquired it and we've managed it we have to merchandise it. Merchandising involves of course putting that new stuff out on the sales floor so that it can be sold. You can't sell it if it's not out on the sales floor. We do a t We call defining who the customer is so we don't randomly put merchandise out on the sales floor and surround it with what happens whatever happens to be convenient. All of our merchandising is based on who the customer is who would buy that piece of merchandise and then we surround it with t We have basic merchandising tenants. Now merchandising is somet We merchandising involves ongoing beautification so as you can imagine after 200 people have moved through the store in a day t So once we've acquired the inventory we've managed it into the system and we've merchandise it so it's attractive and it's sellable the next thing we do is we market it and we engage in extensive marketing both for the store and for the items in the store and that marketing involves things We have a website where we keep current pictures of all of our furniture items that are for sale. We do email marketing we do direct mailing were in print we do television advertisements lots of signage we do at least one major promotion every year and of course all of that's going to involve a ton of photography and so you will see a lot of photography going on in the store all the time to help support our marketing efforts. So we acquired it we're managing it we merchandise it we market it and then we have to maintain it w The news is our stuff doesn't sit around too terribly long but while it's here if it's made out of wood we will furniture polish it every week if it's got glass on it we will wind exit every week for any piece of non-furniture that sits on top of a piece of furniture so We make minor repairs to t So we've acquired the inventory managed the inventory we have merchandised it well we've marketed it and we've maintained it or we are maintaining it and that brings us to selling through customer service t