Behind the Scenes - After Buying

Hi Friends! People always ask

me what my day looks like, or what I do. So I thought I’d give you a little tour of the buying area. And what a typical Monday looks like after a crazy Saturday of buying.

Here we go - this is our buying suite, where all the magic happens. This is where we will evaluate the merchandise our clients bring into to sell. We buy from the public on Wednesday's and Saturday's by appointment. And each client is allowed to bring 25 items per visit for us to evaluate.

The office is set up with outdoor lighting and a long table to lay out clothing. We are looking for stains, rips, missing buttons and signs of wear. If we are interested in buying an item, we hang it up on the wall hooks where it will sit until our offer has been accepted. Then it moves to the "closet" area to get priced.

Although we try and price merchandise as it comes in. Some days we just get too much in to stay on the ball. These are the items that are left to be priced after Saturday’s buy. This week we purchased just over 100 pieces of clothing, 19 bags, 7 pairs of shoes, and a boat load of jewelry. Everything will be priced today and the office space will clear out for Wednesday.

Once the item has been priced, we move it to a rack on the sales floor where it will get steamed. Yes! Steaming kills most germs and removes wrinkles from items. And for the record, we've been steaming our inventory since day 1. Once steamed and wrinkle free, we place it either on the sales floor, a display or the rack to be photographed. What that means, is it's officially for sale :)

So friends, what do you think? Is this what you thought a day at the shop would be like? Would you like to see more behind the scenes of other days at HIPS? This blog writing thing is new to me, and I thought it was fun. So let me know what other parts of HIPS you'd like me to show you.

XO

V-