Learning to Sell

It's been a while since I've done one of my what I'm now calling, "becoming a designer" posts. So I continue from where I last left off a few months ago.

Once the fall knits were produced, I shipped them to a couple of boutiques (including KrisTees in Astoria and Item in the Upper East Side) who had agreed to carry them on consignment. For those of you who don't know, consignment is when the designer basically bears all the risk. As opposed to the traditional arrangement where the buyer buys an order of a selection of pieces, usually paid on delivery or on 30-day terms, on consignment, the designer ships pieces to the buyer and is only paid for the ones that sell. The ones that don't are returned to the designer.

There are obvious cons to this arrangement -- since the designer is bearing all the risk, there is less incentive for the buyer to sell, and if pieces don't sell, the designer is left with inventory. However, consignment arrangements are one way a designer can convince a hesitant buyer to give the line a try in the store. The stores that carried my pieces were able to move the pieces. It was interesting to see which items sold better than others.

I also checked out the Young Designer's Market in NoLiTa and managed to sell items there. I only went a few times, but felt that my pieces weren't necessarily the best fit.

Meanwhile, I still had my online site up, where I occasionally sold pieces from time to time.