Closet Boutiques

A new class of trade is emerging from Tory Shaheen’s closet, reports Jennifer Saranow in the Wall Street Journal (3/6/09). Tory actually has turned her entire Manhattan studio apartment into a nice little boutique where she merchandises designer clothes she doesn’t want anymore. She first drycleans the clothes before organizing them along a big metal rack. She even "offers her customers wine, beer or bottled water and throws in extra free items to her best customers."

Genna Snajkowski displays plus-size garments she no longer needs on a rack in her living room. Like others in her line of retail, she advertises on Craigslist. Like more traditional retailers, she’s quickly learned a thing or two about shopper behavior — that is, that they don’t behave. After meticulously preparing her clothes for display, shoppers wasted no time "picking out merchandise, dropping it on the floor and throwing it back on top of the rack." Says Genna of her newfound customers: "They don’t really care — just like at a regular store."

Tory Shaheen meanwhile has found herself dealing with shoppers who want to return stuff even though she makes it clear that all sales are final. As unlikely as all of this sounds, Craigslist says listings for "clothing and accessories" has more than doubled versus a year ago, to some 715,228 listings in February alone. And consignment shops say they are feeling the heat. "People are now trying to move it on their own and eliminate the middleman," says Raz Damas of the Celebrity Resale Boutique in Las Vegas, fingering closet boutiques as "contributing to a decline in her business." ~ Tim Manners, editor.