Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Patricia Gillmore. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Patricia, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What can you share with us about the story behind how you found your key vendors?
In the resale industry, we rely heavily on local foot traffic and online presence. When I first started GGirls Closet in 2013, it was a stand-alone storefront off of Broadway, in Denver. The local scene and word of mouth were huge for us to sustain. I started thinking about the possibility of having a wider footprint and finding different vendors or sites to offload the back inventory. I chose the resale business because I always loved recycling the old and bringing it to the new, and I wanted to help reduce the carbon footprint. We, as boutiques, are usually left with unsold goods, which means unused inventory. However, just because the inventory did not sell locally does not mean it cannot move. I started branching towards online third-party sites like E-bay, Posh Mark, and others. We even started offloading at the local Flea Market. Though they are not ideal vendors for margin profits, Flea Markets are good vendors if you are flushing inventory. Since branching into the online world, our bottom line has increased. We then chose to leave the stand-alone store and only go e-commerce style, which allowed us to gain an angle with less overhead. When leaving the storefront scene, we still needed a way to reach consignors due to no longer having a storefront location. When 2020 hit and many stores and businesses closed, I had an idea of an in-home consignment option. I ventured to a booking service, the same style of booking service as if you would book a table at a restaurant or a spa service. With this idea, I opened up the ability to have people serviced at their homes, which allows the clients to not only have more inventory that can get consigned but also learn about what items would sell or not sell. This in-home process removes the hassle of clients needing to haul items and gives us a larger advantage to get more inventory from them, making more revenue for us all. Many vendors are out there, but it is important to find the right one that services your company’s needs and direction.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
I took a leap of faith. I was a new mother and always knew that a 9-5 desk job was not meant for me. I started looking at ads for local businesses for sale. I had a business background, as I originally went to school for Business Marketing and Interior Design. I also knew that I wanted to do something with clothing or fashion. I saw an ad on CL (Craigslist), which was risky, for we all know CL can be a hit or miss. I chose to look at the store and gained knowledge about that store and what they were doing. It had an antique look, and I fell in love with the tiny shop. I did some additional research and made an offer. There I was, 25 years old, with my first commercial lease, a 2-month-old baby, and my mother, who is my rock in life. She was my private investor, and I would never be where I am without her support. Together we opened the doors to GGirls Closet, aka the “Gillmore Girls” where the business name originated. I am proud to say we are not only a local re-sale boutique, but we also do a lot of community work. We support and donate to local ministries and food banks. We are very proud to service Title One Schools with Clothing Drives. We connect with the community liaisons and set up events where the families from the schools bring in clothing. We then sort through it, consign them an account, and provide a 60/40 profit split. This profit split allows the school to generate 40% on clothing items sold and helps the school get extra fundraising dollars. In business, it’s ok to take a risk on new ideas, and it’s ok to see what works and what doesn’t. I have resilience, a vision, plus faith that can move mountains, and it has only helped me mold. I feel that footprint-wise, GGirls Closet will keep growing into the new, non-traditional resale business of retail.
Have you ever had to pivot?
The best shift GGirls did business-wise was opening up the in-home consignment option. Where we go to our clients instead of them coming to us. We started that back in 2020 and have continuously booked since then. To this day, we are always about 90 days booked out and overwhelmed by local community support. Having the ability to go to Our clients are huge because we get to know them on a personal level, as we are in their space. We get to hand them our brochures and explain what we do in the community. We take the time to educate them on what we will take and won’t take. We can also haul away donated items we don’t consign, or the client doesn’t want. That helps to declutter the clients, and in hindsight, our repeat business has doubled because our clients have a personal connection through getting to know the faces and names of the people they are doing business with. Having the booking services has been a huge turning point for us, and we have gained more clients across the Colorado Front Range. We currently offer services from the border of Wyoming down to Colorado Springs.
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
I look at Social Media as free marketing. Some view it as personal growth, ideas, profit, or a place to unload their life and feelings. Social Media has provided small businesses like us the ability to post about our store, share inventory, backlink, share third-party apps we sell on, and more. Content is huge; marketing, other than through your employees, can be a heavy expense for a business. It’s nice to know you can grow organically online. Being authentic in your post and what you say in your captions to your hashtags can help boost better growth. The more you interact online, the more you will have a presence. Finding the apps that allow you to toggle and mainstream posts are a time saver. Posting can take a lot of time. If you do not have dedicated staffing, another way to mass-grow your audience is to find inexpensive online platforms and services. For us, Social Media is not the only thing we rely on. However, it has been an extremely helpful tool for expansion.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.ggirlscloset.net/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ggirlscloset/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ggirlsclosetllc/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patricia-gillmore-b5323975/
- Other: Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/ggirlscloset/_created/ Posh Mark Store: https://poshmark.com/closet/ggirlsclosetllc Ebay Store: https://www.ebay.com/str/ggirlscloset Etsy Store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/GGirlsCloset?ref=seller-platform-mcnav
Image Credits
Photo credit my daughter Zoe Williams