My Honest Experience with Consignment
In Dec 2023, I was approached by Curbside to do a consignment program with them in 2024. I signed a 4 month lease for consignment from Sept - Dec 2024.
And I have to say the results were disappointing.
Some background information:
I started my first booth at Curbside in 2022. Back then I had a meagre selection of products but I filled a table all on my own. The weekend rental fee was $180 if I recall correctly. Even with my limited product range, I had no problems covering the rental fees and cost of production for my items.
Fast forward to 2024, I have expanded my product range to 3x what it was and have always covered rental, production costs and even made a profit. I have never had problems with at least covering the rental. This was an event I did in August, it was a one day only event and lasted around 5-6 hours. I did spectacularly well with my new range of keychains and stickers.
This is my consignment section at Curbside Crafters.
The consignment fees were $270 a month for 1/3 of a table, or to be exact 56cm, not inclusive of other admin fees and credit card fees. I brought my entire range of products yet I have been bleeding money every single month, unable to even cover the rental fees.
Let’s go through all the pros and cons of my experience there.
PROS:
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Place is air-conditioned
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Overall a clean and pleasant environment
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Table cloth is provided.
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You can basically decorate your section any way you see fit as long as it’s within your allocated space. I really like that because I can go all out and did not have to compromise on my brand image.
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There was a vendor deck and a contract which I appreciate. It formalizes things. For context, I enquired a bookstore’s consigment programme last year and they expected a product catalogue from me (which I had provided) but they did not even have a basic vendor deck. Everything was verbal and I did not like the ambiguity of it. For the purposes of doing business, always get things in black and white. Clarity should not be a nice-to-have, it’s minimum requirement.
CONS:
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Foot traffic was dismal. A friend went down on Friday evening and she told me there were children doing homework at the back tables and most of the crowd was just there for the food. Saturdays on average have the most sales, Sunday sales are a rarity and if you get weekday sales, that’s practically a miracle! But if it rains that weekend, you can say goodbye to all potential sales. Its not unusual to go an entire week from Tues - Fri (they’re closed on Mondays) with no sales until the weekend. I average maybe 1-3 sales per weekend, three if it's a good day but honestly it’s usually one. Ouch I know.
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Lighting is a tad dim at the spot my brand is at. It’s not dark, but its a little in the shadow and could be a bit brighter so that the products look nicer.
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They charge a 5% commission of your monthly sales on top of the monthly rental. This fee basically covers for the job of the cashier, however the cashier is not always at the table. Often when I go to restock, I see no one at the table. I have had customers DM me to ask how to purchase because there is no one there. As I’m not always on my phone to instantly respond to every DM, there is a likelihood I lost sales thanks to the fickle presence of the cashier.
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The staff do not help to clean up your display if it’s messed up by customers. The point of a consignment is to be able to sell in peace without me going down to fuss over my display all the time like a regular market event. But I noticed that my display gets messed up alot when customers browse - keychains falling off the display hooks, hooks are displaced, cards all jumbled together, prints falling in between the racks etc. It doesn't make for a great shopping experience when the display is messy, and I take great pride in designing my display for easy browsing and keeping it neat and tidy as well. I once went to restock on a weekday night and my display was all messed up as usual so I cleaned it up. I went back again 2 days later to restock a product because it was sold out within 2 days, and my display was super messy again. I usually go down 2-3x a month to check on inventory and my display is ALWAYS messy. It makes me wonder how long before it gets messy again. If not for the fact that I was going down regularly to check on things, my display would have just been a chaotic mess of products.
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Christmas, being peak shopping season and usually my strongest sales season as well, was also a flop at my consignment. In the last few days of the year I managed a few more sales which pushed my overall sales up to my best month out of the 4 months, but I still did not cover my rental (why am I even surprised at this point).
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Curation. It feels like brand curation is still not too bad but there are some hits and misses that kind of dilutes the handmade theme. For example when I first set up my consignment, there was a table to my left where someone was just reselling Chiikawa plush toys they ‘hand carried back from Japan’ along with a mish mash of other products without a common theme or any indication if they were just other products they were reselling. It’s hard to maintain the image of a location that sells handmade artisanal goods when there are so many resellers operating under the guise of selling handmade goods.
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Brands disappearing before the 4 month lease is up. The plush toys reseller that I mentioned in Point 5 disappeared somewhere in the middle and the table was empty when I next visited. Shortly after it was changed to a shelf. In Sept when I first set up, the brand sharing the same table on my right side suddenly disappeared before the 4 months was up as well and it abruptly changed to someone else.
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Email correspondence is rushed. They’ll send over the sales sheet for your checking and expect a response within 2 - 3 days, even if 2 out of the 3 days are actually weekends. If you do not respond in time, they will take it that numbers are confirmed and final. Not everyone checks their emails on the weekends so I don’t think this is a very reasonable expectation.
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Variety. There are too many crystal or crystal adjacent products and accessories there. I think there used to be more and there’s already an improvement but it’s still one too many.
- There is always nobody at the cashier no matter what time and which day I popped by. There is also no obvious signage that this is the cashier nor is there a bell for you to ring if you require service.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, the foot fall is really dismal and I really cannot recommend their consignment programme. In-store sales and market events have different dynamics and while we cannot expect the same results, I don’t think it’s normal to be losing money every month either. My sales records for the duration of the programme indicates that there is sufficient interest for my products, but even when I’m selling a lot, it’s still not enough to cover the rental fees. At the end of the day, no matter how good your work is, you can’t sell if nobody even sees it. For the record, even at the worst market event I’ve ever done, I did not make a loss at all despite everyone complaining about not being able to make back their rental fees. So if I’m not doing well, I don’t think others are having an easy time of it either.
Sometimes when we work with an external party, there will be things that are outside of our control. That is inevitable. I made a decision with whatever information I had at the time I signed the contract and I can only hope for the best. It would appear that in between the time I signed the contract until it’s time to onboard the programme, foot traffic has went down a lot in that area. I’m not sure there’s anything else the shop could have done to prevent or circumvent this either. Unfortunately things don’t always happen the way we would like it to, and that’s life. I guess I am moving on from consignment programs for the time being until I can find a place that is the best fit for my brand and can also generate enough foot traffic to ensure people do see my products. At the end of the day we’re all running a business, and it’s important to make your own assessment about whether a place is a good fit for your brand, be it for markets or consignments. The worst thing you can do for yourself and your business is to become easy rental money targets for other businesses.
