Opening Our Consignment Shop - Why We Love It & YOU!

Why did we open a consignment shop? Well, that's a great question.

When someone new comes into the boutique, and asks us how long The Reloved Boutique has been open for, they are quite shocked to find out that we were initially scheduled to opened March of 2020. Unfortunately, we had to postpone our grand opening, pivot online, and reschedule to open May of 2020. Two months in and off to a great start - LOL.

With however many lockdowns we’ve been going through and the limited capacity to our shop, we are proud to say that we are still here. It hasn’t been an ideal situation for anyone, and we obviously didn’t know that there was going to be a global pandemic when we opened, But we are still here as a business and that says a lot about the perseverance of our little family and the need for places like The Reloved Boutique in our community.

There are many answers that explain why we opened a consignment store and I felt like it would be great to share them with you.

Firstly, one of the main reasons that we opened the shop was to do our part in the fashion industry. All of us love clothing, and dressing to suit our own style. That being said we also recognize the fashion industry as one of the leading polluters in the entire world. (F.Y.I - SHIEN fashion monster releasing 6000 new items daily - https://www.bbc.com/news/business-59245708)

Our part is creating a space where you feel you can trust us in reselling your clothing and extending it’s lifecycle, while also providing a great second hand shopping experience to those making a conscious effort to shop sustainably. You get a great deal on fashion, and together we keep clothing out of landfill, extending the lifecycle of each garment.

Now, if your garments don’t sell during their season, we take pride in partnering with local woman’s shelters in the community by donating quality pieces that can go to someone in need (and make them feel good, in quality and stylish clothes).

You should see the reaction of people who run these spaces, when we show up with all the donated goods, you can see the appreciation on their faces. We partner with, The Good Shepherd, The Native Woman Shelter, and Hamilton Urban Core Community Health Center (to name a few).

One of the best parts about having a brick and mortar space, is that we hold physical space in our community. That being said, we want to be (as much as we can with all the restrictions) an important and positive addition to our community.

With the hopes of the world being able to freely interact again, our future plans include hosting workshops, guest speakers, pop-ups, life drawing sessions and more (I’m sure). We want to provide our space, to be able to get to better know you! If you have any thoughts or ideas of what our space could help achieve, please feel free to reach out here - we’d love to hear from you.

Our family has been shopping secondhand for as long as we can remember - whether that is due to affordability, or the thrill in finding the perfect item at a great price! (The best benefits of shopping secondhand in a nutshell). Growing up we found ourselves in places that are usually not curated so you have to dig through so many items to find even quality items. We wanted to bring some positivity in shopping secondhand, making it not only a beneficial thing for you AND the earth, but also having an overall elevated shopping experience.

As much as we love our little boutique - it doesn’t go without saying that it comes with its challenges. There are the fair share of difficulties that arise when opening any business.

For us some of our challenges so far are managing inventory (it’s difficult sometimes when you guys all bring us is amazing items), maximizing our retail space, and navigating a global pandemic. But we have over 300 consignors and we love the part you all play in our boutique - we are expanding our little retail shop into the basement of our store (Have you heard about our Clearance Closet?) AND we are happy to be brightening your days in light of the Covid-19 pandemic.

We always say this, but truly do mean it - we wouldn’t be us, without you! Our customers are lovely (with great taste), our consignors are just awesome people (with great clothing) and we’ve been able to grow our network (with our local community). But definitely the best perk about owning a consignment shop, is just getting to meet you.

Thank you for reading our little blog, we are happy you are here!!

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