hi i'm angela frenzy and i'd like to welcome you to the belmont business report today we have with us lisa the stan you know revolves a consignment store up in their first location was a beautiful beautiful i don't how does it work which how does the story work so consignment is great customers can come on and bring us things that are in their closet that they're not using without an appointment they pop in they bring us a bag of clothing and we have a look at it and each time we have somebody there monday through saturday and we go through the clothes and we see what will work for us we start an account for the customer we put the items in the computer and as the things sell the customer seem to be should beautiful dresses designer clothing and so forth what types of what types of items the so we like to say that we look for better label separates items from the past one to two years things that you would still see in the stores if you were to walk t nordstrom's or bloomingdale's we like things from j crew we take things from a lemon anthropology from the better stores we do stay away from some of the mall brands and we always love designer handbags that's probably one of our biggest  sellers a lot of times women will use a handbag for a year or so and then they tire of it but it's a beautiful condition and they'll come on and bring it in and we are able to sell those you know for a pretty good price and a customer will come in and they'll be thrilled to buy a bag a all from you could end handbags designer handbags we're able to sell them for about half of what they will tell for ok so and sometimes even higher you know like for instance if it were a leave it on bag it was a thousand dollar bag it was something people were still looking for we might even be able to six hundred dollars we research we research we're very knowledgeable i will research the prices really well and we just generally do about half of retail now and the clothing we do about a thirty to forty percent of what it's retailing same type of clothing every single store is different because everybody brings us different things you literally never it's hard to find the same thing twice in the store so how did you could you decide you know i come from a long line of well dressed woman you know at an early age my grandmother taught me you know how to feel a good fabric how to put together an outfit and how to identify a good label she used to take me into filings basement of boston as a young girl and we go through the clothes on the table feeling for the treasures you know i loved i loved it and years later i discovered consignment and i found consignment was wonderful because i could get designer clothing for a fraction of the price and i started to think that this was a business that was well suited for me and i became so passionate about it i really wanted to bring it to my hometown i wanted to sort of share my love of consignment with the women of belmont so i looked had been you know thinking about it and my sister was taking some time off from teaching and she and i decided to team up and we had looked in vacant space and pushing square an old rundown space we transformed into a pretty little boutique and we open revolt and the women started bringing in clothing and jen and i both have a keen eye for for quality and for fashion and we were able to really carried a nice collection of things you know within no time it had become a destination people were coming in the store to find their own treasures and we were thrilled it yeah now how would keep it for what sixty days so if you actually days if it doesn't sell within sixty days you can either mark it down at that point or you would return it to the to the exactly what we do is at the end of sixty  bring in we have over three thousand where thirty five hundred so every we can't remember every start for every lady so we just ask that they remember that and if they were there could they give us a call we gathered the things together it's really quite easy and the same with the check if they like to pick up a check they give us a call we write checks on friday we have it ready for now if if if we didn't sell them they may decide that you could donate it to charity or you've got to do program working up coming up in  we're really excited about it i get we call or give back program we over the past five years have had a lot of customers who have just asked us to donate the things that don't sell and so we've been bagging them up and sending them off with one of the pick up services and i just was thinking how can i do something better with these items so what we've decided to do is we take the items we bring into question square we sell them at a drastically reduced price five ten or fifteen dollars it's you know and then we take we open an account for the you know we have a separate account for that and then at the end of the period we donate it to whatever nonprofit we've chosen to work with for that three month period so all the proceeds from the sales of these donated items go to a different organization the last time we worked with a place called on the rise in cambridge it's a it's a day program for homeless women and we just wrote them a check for seven hundred seventy dollars and so now we've just partnered up with u c i and walther am which is a program for developmentally disabled adults it's called work community and independence and we will be starting our program with them and everything we sell over the next three months the money from those sales will go directly to their organization but this is and off i go with my garbage bags but it's great it's a win win because it gives the the not the not for profit organization some exposure it gives them a check which is very nice and it also it's great for our bargain hunters we have some you mention there's no market for these it's very interesting we really we have a lot of people who call a lot of people who stop and that have beautiful mother of the bride bridesmaids dresses that they spent hundreds of dollars on and we just cannot these items you were looking because you're always trying to connect dark we're always trying to connect our customers you know with somebody that to help them out and you know here here here and there maybe a lady in reading might have a shop or i've heard maybe on the internet there's a couple of sites but i haven't really found our dresses are more in the sort of one hundred to three hundred dollars range we don't find that we have things for formal occasions we really don't although we did have a beautiful oscar de la renta gown that was sent to us by a national celebrity who actually sends me her clothes from d i can't you can't carry your name but she does ship me her clothing and she did send a beautiful oscar de la renta ball gown and i know that that dress was in the white house i know that that you know the story but it actually didn't sell is that interesting and we had it marked at like three hundred dollars was probably a five thousand dollars bond so it was a special occasion dress as a kind she would have to do it it ended up and it ended up going to the questions course toward someone did buy it and then the money was donated to charity so it all worked out but i think it probably wardrobe does revolve people call me in the say i'm coming and then they'll drop off three or four bags you know when i put it in their account and then they'll come in and they'll pick up a check i mean i write nice checks to people and they're thrilled their closet is empty they get to go shops more fill it up i have customers who are thrilled at the beautiful new things that are coming and we have get new things i have to tell you about every hour and i'm not exaggerating here we don't require an appointment so people are coming in any time so we're for instance i don't want center stores open from nine thirty to seven so i have people coming we have a bad back entrance they're coming right in the back they're dropping off their bags on their way to work and off they go i have people coming after work dropping off their bags i mean we are processing clothing all day long so it's a kind of thing i mean  where to go and write an hi how are you they go right to the back they know the rack they flip through it and they know and the other thing they know that if they see something that they like they really should buy it because it may not be there an hour it may not be there could be there in a week but it may not be there you know things go quickly particularly the you know nice handbags or some of the some of the more current pieces you know i get a lot of clothes that come in that still have the original text from the store on them i mean that's never been used so i mean we really have yeah the location that you've got in you know shopping areas centers of town it's a you know it's a growing it's a growing industry i mean they literally it's they're popping up everywhere now they're all over new york new york has the best consignments shop is literally there on every corner well it's a great way to shop it really a full time she puts together shows all of our windows she also works with customers helping them put together outfits helping them dress for occasions you'll see a lot of her work here we have those are all tory burch pieces there are designer shoes shoes as well as well i never thought but i'm very surprised at how well they've done and we do well with costume jewelry now