A couple of weeks before Cherry Consignments big grand re-opening i dropped by the store to find that they had new owners... and learned from one of the owners that they were interested in expanding their inventory of quality "tween" sizes.. not quite plus but not small either.
since i had moved and reduced my closet space by over 2/3, I pulled some of the clothing i had stored and took it in for consignment before their grand re-opening.
The young woman i talked to was thrilled and promptly took everything i had brought with me.. approximately 45 pieces of brand name clothing.. much of it never worn...cleaned, pressed and mostly hung on the type of plastic hangers used by the store.
that was approximately the last week in august... Their grand reopening was the following week.
http://westseattleblog.com/blog/?p=20373
I checked back regularly, buying a piece or two from their limited stock in my size range ... but the clothing I had consigned never made it out of the back room.
Every time i inquired, the person working would check the book and then physically check the inventory in the back and tell me that they had limited space and that all of my inventory would make it to the floor soon.
Somewhere around the last week of November (a full 90 days after i had consigned them), about half a dozen of the pieces i had brought in made it to the sales floor... among them an unused Nordstrom purse originally tagged just under $400 that my daughter bought for me on sale at Nordstrom Rack in June for $100+.
When i checked mid December (a couple of weeks later) and asked to pick up my items since they had been at the store over 90 days and were not being marketed, it was the only piece that had been sold. It was marked at $24... and discounted to $19.20.
In spite of a written email exchange agreeing to pull the few pieces of clothing that I had left from the sales floor in mid December, when I arrived today to pick them up, I found that another half dozen pieces had been pulled for display shortly after our correspondence.
They pulled those items from the floor as i waited and i picked up my check for a little under $8 for the purse they sold and the clerk who took my clothing on consignment apologized... my property was returned.
I am assuming all my items were returned. They didn't "cheat" me, so you might wonder why i am bothering to write and why it is a rant.
I have two reasons... the first is economic. When you consign items to sell, you do so with the expectation that they will be offered for sale in a timely manner for a reasonable price. The most expensive items i consigned were seasonally appropriate during the heat wave at the time i consigned them... not around Thanksgiving when the first of my items reached their sales floor.
But i also consigned sweaters, jean skirts and jeans that never reached the sales floor.. items that did reach the floor weren't available for sale longer than 2 weeks. I was denied the financial opportunity that was one reason for consignment.
But more than that, i am ranting because i was not dealt with fairly. I made an effort to bring consignment clothing into the store before their grand opening based on the conversation I had with one of the owners requesting inventory in that size range.
If the other owner who ultimately controlled the inventory decided to focus on smaller sizes, maternity and men's clothing, they should have notified me of that decision and asked me to retrieve my items. I would have been more than glad to do so.
Today, when that same owner helped the clerk pull my items, she could have apologized to me for wasting my time, energy and sales opportunity. She didn't. She made no attempt at all to retain my business either as a vendor or a customer. She didn't even speak to me... She didn't go through the items or check the inventory with me... she simply handed me my check.
In spite of the owner's choice not to attempt to salvage the situation today, i still might not have posted a rant today had i not posted such a rave for them months ago.
Cherry consignment won't be on my list of favorite places to shop... aside from the fact that they just don't carry much in my size range... i am plainly not too impressed with the way they do business.
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