Reprint from Marketplace Magazine - 8-7-07
By Sharon Verbeten
Blonde ambition
Duo turns shopping hobby into consignment career
Best friends Jill Nelson and Tammy Eiting were looking for a way to kick-start their lives when they decided to go into business together a few years ago.
“There are women all over starting businesses,” Eiting recalls thinking. “But what can we do?” After some discussion, Nelson and Eiting – both mothers of three and part-time fitness instructors – realized their answer was staring them right in the wardrobe. The fashionistas would turn their love of shopping into a career.
In summer 2006, they opened Chic to Chic Consignment, a women’s clothing boutique in Appleton.
“We started off gangbusters,” says Eiting. Now just one year after opening, Chic to Chic has almost 500 women consigning name brand and designer apparel and accessories. About one-third of the items brought in are accepted for sale in the store.
Finding consigners, Eiting says, was essential to establishing the business. “The start-up costs were minimal, since the inventory is not ours,” she says. Because of that, they were able to finance the venture on their own.
Nelson says it took about nine months of research and planning before opening their 1,600-square-foot store in a high-traffic strip mall off Hwy. 441 and College Avenue. Eiting handles most of the store’s administrative and financial duties, while Nelson leans toward the more creative marketing side. Learning to delegate effectively was one of the duo’s first business lessons.
“We were both trying to do it all,” Eiting recalls. Eventually, they sorted tasks based on their strengths.
While the effervescent women were upbeat about Chic to Chic’s debut, friends warned them they would likely not take home a paycheck for at least a year. Two months after opening, however, both were able to quit their full-time jobs.
Honing their vision to create what they felt was a much-needed niche seems to have paid off, even in a community bustling with a busy mall and other women’s retailers.
“The goal is to have a niche,” says Eiting, echoing advice she was given from fellow Kaukauna native Don Grissman, longtime owner of Midwest Workwear, a men’s apparel store in Kaukauna. “I felt we could open up this store next to the mall and be successful,” Eiting says.
Nouveau thrifting
Chic to Chic takes an upscale retail approach to consignment – creating a well-organized boutique atmosphere that they feel caters to all ages of women, especially moms shopping with teen-age daughters.
“Our vision for the store is where we would want to shop,” Eiting says.
“We want people to come in and not know it’s consignment,” Nelson says. “We’ve taken all the work out of thrifting,” Eiting adds.
“Resaling and consigning have become chic in the past few years,” says Eiting. But eliminating the stigma of “resale shops” has been one of the women’s main marketing goals. They are quick to point out the difference between consignment and resale. In consignment, the consigners still own the items they bring to the store (at Chic to Chic, they receive 40 percent of the sale price). Resale shops generally purchase items outright from the public.
Clothes stay in the store 90 days; consigners then have the option of taking them back or having Chic to Chic donate them to the Community Clothes Closet in Menasha. The latter then provides free clothing to underprivileged families in Northeast Wisconsin.
“It’s a wonderful collaboration,” says Diane Bishop, executive director of the Community Clothes Closet. “It’s extremely nice clothing…clothing with dignity. It boosts the self-esteem of our clients.”
Ambience is everything
Adding a dose of good old-fashioned hospitality (cookies, coffee and being greeted with a smile) has been a key ingredient in creating the appropriate ambience at Chic to Chic.
“Our number one goal is to make sure we’re friendly,” says Eiting. “We (want to be) a destination,” Nelson says.
And that’s part of the fun of shopping, Nelson and Eiting agree. That’s why they also plan to sponsor girls’ nights out and other events to encourage women to meet, network and shop – lending a bit of celebrity cache to the shopping experience, Eiting says.
“Women like to find the ‘treasure’ place,” Eiting says. And at Chic to Chic, Nelson adds, “The whole store is the ‘find.’”