Saving Money

[Patricia Bell]

With over 100,000 layoffs around the country this week, many people are trying to find ways to save. Many people want or need new clothes, either for job interviews or a new job. You can go to interviews with just two or three new outfits, but how to put these outfits into your budget, especially since you are trying to cut back because you don't really know how long you'll be unemployed?

What some people don't know is you can get name brand clothes from thrift stores. ABC news had a piece on this during the week. A $1000 coat was selling at the thrift store for $49.00. Now that was New York, but thrift stores around the country get clothes that are name brand and generally don't cost more than $50.00 at the most. This includes suits, handbags, shoes, coats, etc.

My idea is website that takes pictures and or lists from various thrift stores with prices? More business for thrift stores and a small commission to run the website. What do you think? I would love your comments.

[Leonard Knight]

I think this could work if you make it extremely easy on the store owner. Provide the tools to take the picture, upload, price, track, etc. Your online storefront will represent multiple stores and you may get into requests to ship items if it really gets popular. You may want to limit it to, select here, pay here, pickup there. Kinda like a circuit city model except your front is for all the various consignment shops in the area or around the world.

I would stress the fact of little to no additional work on the store owner...just preach the benefits.

[Tina D. Shang]

You need to make a site where the owners can upload their inventory themselves.. this will save you heaps of work and all they will need is a digital camera and internet access to upload the photos and input the inventory. I would agree with Leonard that you need to keep it simple for store owners and decide upfront if you are going to be willing to take orders/payments online and ship product or not.

[Leonard Knight]

...are going to be willing to take orders/payments online and ship product or not

I hadn't considered the option of not handling funds at all; I guess you could just be a marketing site with instructions of going to the shop to close the deal. You then need to consider how to get paid on the back end.

[Patricia Bell]

If we go outside of the Knoxville area, you would have to have shipped products. I guess you would need to start small and get recomendations from some of those thrift shops and then try to market it further. Many of these shops are affiliated with chairities such as The Salvation Army, Goodwill, Knox Area Rescue Ministries. It will be tricky to provide value to those as well as other thrift shops that are business concerns and not charity. I'm not sure I could market this well or even run the business, but I would be happy to help and contribute.

One way to make it easy for the business is have them take a picture on their cell phone and send it with a text message on what, how much, etc.

Any body interested in working on this?