Why Consignment Is Style Rebellion: Luxury, Sustainability & Smart Shopping with Statemint’s Sarah McAffry
with Sarah Mcaffry of Statemint.
What if consignment isn’t just “secondhand” but actually the smartest, most luxurious way to build your wardrobe? In this episode of Style Rebellion, hosts Blair Petroni and Erin Cox sit down with Sarah McAffry, founder of Statemint, to unpack why consignment is one of the most powerful acts of rebellion against fast fashion, trend-chasing, and closet overwhelm.
You’ll learn how curated, high-quality resale lets you:
Access luxury brands at a fraction of retail prices
Build a wardrobe aligned with your Style Blueprint™
Reduce waste and overconsumption
Feel incredible in pieces that actually serve your body and real life
Sell strategically and make money from items you no longer wear
Sarah shares the story behind Statemint’s wildly successful pop-up consignment events, their insanely generous 60/40 seller split, and the community-first approach that makes resale feel empowering.
Blair and Erin also share practical, insider tips like: why you should shop luxury racks first, how to identify quality fabrics like cashmere, silk, and 100% cotton, and why you should shop every size rack.
This episode isn’t just about shopping. It’s about values, longevity, and creating a wardrobe that reflects who you are, without the guilt of overconsumption.
Learn more about Statemint at statemint.com or follow Sarah on Instagram @sarahmcaffry.
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Blair Petroni 0:02
A good morning, everyone, or honestly, wherever you are in the world where you are listening to us, good afternoon, good evening. There's so many of you guys around the world that are tuning in. We are stoked about this episode today, because it is all about consignment. A lot of people think thrift and consignment are the exact same thing. They are not. So here on style rebellion, what we're going to talk about today is why you should be consigning, not only whether you want to be a seller, but also someone that definitely shops the sales too. So welcome to style rebellion. We have real bodies, real style zero. Apologies. I'm Blair Petroni. I am an image consultant. We have Miss Aaron Cox with us today. Hello, Miss Aaron.
Erin Cox 0:52
Hello, Blair. How's it going?
Blair Petroni 0:57
I totally talked over you. How you doing?
Erin Cox 1:00
How am I doing? I'm good. I'm good. Our children finally went back to school like at the right time. Today, we've had some weather here, and I was real happy to drop everyone off when they were supposed to be there. This morning was like, my systems oriented, schedule based, rhythm routine. Kind of person was like, Oh, I get some semblance of normalcy today. My nervous system can feel calm
Blair Petroni 1:29
when we were like, when you So Aaron and I Marco Polo. You guys, if you don't know what that is, it's also not sponsored. It is an app that essentially allows you to create like videos to whomever you're sending it to, if they have a polo account. And so we have one like with our other Erin and I and our other best friend, and we will like send videos to each other. And y'all, Erin's video this morning, morning was so frantic. She was just like, I got my kids to school. It was a really good day. And we I was just like, damn, Aaron. Like, rode hard, put up wet. Like, you doing okay, you do it all right, girl, I'm good. I'm good. You look, by the way, so beautiful today. Your camera pulled up, and I was like, Look at this.
Erin Cox 2:23
Kennedy. Well, thank you. I figured this, since that we were doing a consignment episode today, that I should wear some things that I actually did consign or buy at consignment. So thank you, Blair, for helping me.
Blair Petroni 2:38
Yeah, what are you okay, so you have to tell the people what you're wearing, because you are wearing a piece that, and it's a brand that I find consigning constantly with my clients, especially here in Houston. Who are you wearing?
Erin Cox 2:55
I'm wearing a St John jacket that I got at consignment in Houston with Blair. The retail value of this jacket, $1,000
Blair Petroni 3:08
at least, at least, at least, potentially retailed for 1295, 1395, something I hate, maybe $100 for it, maybe, I think it was like probably 70, was that the $70 jacket?
Erin Cox 3:22
Probably, yeah, I think you're right. Yeah, so, but it's so fun. It's got, I don't know, can you see it on camera? It's got all the texture. It's got we Blair talks about detail all the time. It's got details on the sleeve. It's in my color. It honors my accommodations and my width. And then we found this lovely this one is not consignment, but beautiful top when we were shopping in Palm Springs in November. And so I just, I feel like a million dollars, and I got dressed in like three minutes.
Blair Petroni 3:48
So here we go. I know it's we talk about all the time, right? With your style blueprint, you know, your colors, your body type, your essence, you can literally get dressed in 90 seconds. You go, boop, boop, boop. It's the best thing in the whole world. Well, everyone, I sound like a sexy smoker today. Thank you for your grace. I was at an event last night doing warm versus cool analysis during a happy hour, and it was very loud and it all it always is very loud when there is alcohol involved.
Erin Cox 4:20
Were you reminded of why you're glad you don't have to go to happy hours anymore? Yes, talking with someone today, and I was like, Yeah, this event was at a bar. And, like, I don't really have any interest in going to bars anyway. I could skip
Blair Petroni 4:35
that literally. Well, this was at, like, a really, really, so in Houston, because we have so many oil and gas companies. We have a lot of event spaces, especially downtown, that are in really high rise buildings that are meant for you to, like, roll into. So this was at, like, the Houston club. There's also the petroleum club. There's so many other ones that are just super, super nice, and it's just like a big. Open space with, like, banquet room and stuff like that. That's essentially so that you can host, like, happy hours or whatever, you know, meetings, whatever you need to do. And one of the girls was like, aren't you so happy to be here and network? And what I didn't want to tell her was, I would rather stab myself in the eye with a rusty fork. Network anywhere ever. Despite being an EIGHT and an extrovert, I hate networking. I don't want to tell you who I am and what I do 400 times. I don't want to do that. I know some people that love it, though, and they're so good at it.
Erin Cox 5:44
It is a skill and an art form, I think to do it well, but it, it takes a personality type, for sure, to like, really enjoy it.
Blair Petroni 5:53
Yeah, are you so happy to be here networking? Nope, no, I have your entertainment. I am not here to network, right? Well, here's what's super, super cool you guys, if y'all have been tuning in to us for any period of time, you know that we are not big fans of huge, huge fans of consignment for just a multitude of reasons when you know, and I basically said this earlier, your colors, your body type, your essence, and like, what I call it's this gap in your closet that you're going to have, of like, the holes that you can very clearly see that you need to fill, whether it's just like this fabulous statement code that you're looking for. Or, like, what Aaron is talking about, like, you know, maybe it's a shirt that has like, beautiful details on it. Or there you're like, I need some fire ass pants that have texture right? There's going to be gaps in your closet that you are looking for. And once you know that, I call it the treasure hunt, you're on a hunt. You're looking for treasure. That's the point of this. I want you it's supposed to be hard, okay, so finding treasure is hard. It's supposed to be hard, but that's one of the best points of utilizing consignment for that. Because you have vintage shopping, you have high end shopping, because consignment is literally one of the best places in the world that can combine all of the treasure, all of the vintage, all of the high end brands. And so I want to introduce our fire ass speaker for today. You guys, today, we're going to be talking all things consignment. And honestly, who better to join us than Sarah McCaffrey? She is the founder of statement, which is a pop up consignment sale that started in Knoxville, Tennessee, and now has locations all over the southeast and the Midwest. Sarah, I'm so pumped to welcome you. Hi, hello, thank
Sarah McCaffry 7:55
you so much for having me. I'm so excited about this conversation today.
Blair Petroni 7:59
I'm so excited. I love your accent.
Speaker 1 8:02
We're so glad to have you here.
Blair Petroni 8:05
I love you. You popped on screen. I was like, she's just so cute. I just want to give her a hug already. So tell everybody about you, like you how you came up with the idea for statement, like how you started and why consignment?
Sarah McCaffry 8:23
Honestly, yeah, so it's an interesting story, because I actually was never a consignment shopper. I was not a Thrifter. I didn't shop secondhand. I did not know that world. I'd never been introduced to it until I did a pop up consignment event for my kids clothes back in 2013 and so I dropped off, you know, what would have been a trash bag full of clothes that I would have taken to a thrift store, and just like, literally dropped off and not made any money from it, but I tried out this pop up consignment event, and when I went to pick up my check, it was For $800 and I was like, I'm rich, you know, I had two little kids and but they had worn these clothes out, you know, they were like used kids clothes. And it blew my mind that used clothing had so much value still in it, and so that, just to me, was like a light bulb moment. And I walked out of that building with that 800 with that $800 check, and I was like, why doesn't this exist for adults like my closets full of stuff I don't wear, full of stuff with tags on it still, you know, it just doesn't fit. But it would fit somebody. Somebody would love this piece. Somebody would pay for it. And so I walked out of that building and I was like, Oh no, I'm gonna have to do this. Oh, and that was really how I thought about it, because at the time, I had two young kids, I was already an entrepreneur, running a photography studio, and I really thought to myself, I can't do this. This is crazy. I'm already running a business. I have two little kids. Like, that would be just the dumbest thing to add one more thing. And the way I describe it is that the idea would not leave me alone, like I couldn't get away from the idea. It was like it was chasing me everywhere. I was thinking about it, trying to go to sleep, you know, it just wouldn't leave me alone. And so finally, one night, I was like, forget it. I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna do it. I'm just gonna, like, dive in. And I stayed up all night creating my own website, coming up with the name, figuring out the software we would use. And really it was just like that one night of like passion and like putting all my energy in and diving in completely. And it just kind of grew from there.
Blair Petroni 10:41
You know that really is the entrepreneur mindset. If you guys have listened to us chat with any of our previous entrepreneurs, like, especially, Andre from Nemes, we joked a lot about that in the podcast, where it was like, yeah, when you're an entrepreneur, you almost can't help it, like you just have that, like Scratch, like the itch, because you see a need, you fill a need, like as an entrepreneur, that just innately comes out in you, and you can't stop it. And you're like, I gotta do it. I gotta be the one to do it. There's nothing in the back of your head that's ever gonna stop you. You're like, I will run myself bloody into a wall.
Sarah McCaffry 11:18
And that's exactly what happened. Yeah, the in the beginning, it was so much harder than I thought it was going to be, and I could not quit it. I couldn't walk away. I was like, there is something here. I've got to, you know, keep going and figure this out. And so that's really how it happened. In the beginning, it was an fundraiser for our international adoption of my oldest son. And so that's kind of how it started. It was like this purpose driven thing. And then as it went on, I was like, Wait, this is like a real business, like there's real potential here. And so I stuck it out. And you know, every season I was kind of shifting and changing things, tweaking things, to figure out how to make it work. And here we are today.
Blair Petroni 12:04
That's incredible. Let's talk about the difference between thrifting and consignment really fast. There's a lot of people that have no idea what the difference is, because y'all they are not even remotely the same thing. There's differences between the two. So, Sarah, can you like really quickly for our listeners, what talk about that? Yes.
Sarah McCaffry 12:27
So consignment is curated. Consignment has been sorted through. There's some kind of item approval process for most brick and mortar consignments, and for our pop up consignment model, we touch every single piece that comes in, and we examine it to make sure it is worthy of being in our sale. So we have, you know, requirements and guidelines that have to be met, and that's what you don't get in a thrift store. Now, you might get a little bit of a better deal, but you're going to have to dig more. You're going to be sorting through things that are, you know, big no's, but at consignment, you're finding a lot more pieces because they've already been curated, and so you're going to be walking away with probably a bigger pile than you would at a thrift store.
Blair Petroni 13:12
Yeah, absolutely. Thrift stores. A lot of people had no idea that even a consignment shop existed, because, for example, when Erin was just a client and she wasn't, like a bestie yet, even though that, I feel like that happened, like, I don't know that that shopping day that we were together, I think that actually happened because we were like, 12 hours together, and I was like, I think we're all best friends now. I don't think we can't not be the first idea of taking Erin to a consignment store, y'all talk about her being physically ill, and she found out she was a bright spring. The second moment she was physically ill was when I was like, we gonna go consigning. And she was like, the
Erin Cox 13:55
hell we are. I'm sorry. What? Right? And so when I was little, my mom loved my mom loves consignment like, she loves thrifting. She loves digging through the piles of what I would say are like, just garbage to find, like the gem or the thing that she's She also loves vintage stuff, from plates and silverware to like, you name it. She likes to go look through old stuff, which, God bless her, right? Like, everyone's gotta have their thing that they love. But I remember as a child being like, dragged into some of these stores and, like, you know, some of them have an interesting smell, some of them like that. You know, you just have this sort of like sensory response to be in there where you're like, I don't, I don't know about this, but I remember, like, looking through clothes, racks of clothes, and looking through racks of dishes, and just being like, when can we go home? And so when Blair was like, we're gonna go to the consignment store, I was like, I can't walk in the door. Like, I started almost hyperventilate, like, on the front steps. And Blair was like, this is not. Like, shopping with your mom when you were little. And I was like, Oh, okay. Like, we joke about this being a lot like therapy, but this was actual, like, exposure therapy.
Blair Petroni 15:09
I put the snake in her face, and I was like, Are you scared it's gonna bite you?
Erin Cox 15:14
And, you know, and but it was, it was so helpful to go in with somebody who has experience doing the process, because there are, and we're going to get into these in a little bit. There are ticks tips. There are ticks. I was happy too. There are tips and tricks to really like finding the treasures in consignment stores. And as we've talked about, when you know your style blueprint, like you are able to bypass a lot of things that aren't for you or that aren't going to serve you and so that that makes the mountain look a lot smaller if you're subject to overwhelm like me,
Blair Petroni 15:50
yeah, yeah, exactly. And I
Erin Cox 15:52
walked in, and she was like, Here, put this on, put this on. And I was like, Ooh. I like John, Oh, I like this silk Lafayette 140 at top. Like, ooh. I like these expensive things. They'll have their price tags on them that have never been worn, that I am paying like 1/10 or less of the price for them.
Sarah McCaffry 16:07
So yeah, that's what we find with our shoppers. A lot of them have never experienced shopping consignment before. They're not already, you know, shopping secondhand and resale and statement is like an entry point into that world. It's not as scary, it's not as overwhelming. You're going to be finding those higher end brands that you're looking for. You know, in a retail store, you're going to find those at statement and on consignment, and their better condition, so it's just a better shopping experience than you would find in a thrift store. And then once you get into consignment, you might decide, okay, now I'm ready to try thrifting like, you know, it can be it can be fun. I tried it a couple days ago and I left with nothing. But you have to be in the right mindset, you know, you've got to be willing to, like, put the time and energy into the dig. But consignment is a good like, entry point into the world of shopping secondhand.
Blair Petroni 16:59
That's because it's all the good shit. Nobody understands that. Where they're like, No, I don't thrift and I'm like, I understand girl, it's because everything is she in. And then there's one piece of Lafayette that, like the dudes in the back had no idea what they actually had and priced it at $2 like, if you get off at the thrill of the hunt, cool, go thrifting. But if you're like, I'm just gonna speed to go and get my $200 consignment is for you, sis. Yes, all day, every, every, every day. One of the things that Aaron and I were talking about is like, honestly, consignment is dead. Ass an act of rebellion. Because if we look at everything that's happening today in our culture, which we talk about this all the time, there's this over consumption that we have in our society. Some of it is on us, but some of it really is on the companies that are pushing us with trends and that we need to buy certain things all of the and we'll get into that in a second, because Erin is very passionate about that. I am not going to steal her thunder. I want her to be able to be the one. But because of this really unprecedented consumerism that we have, there's like almost limitless accessibility that's driven this rise of fast fashion. And if you guys don't know, there are actually nine different segments of fashion, and fast fashion is like the lowest of the low. It's the it's pretty bad. That's usually the sheens of the world. That's like the worst quality of the targets. That's like the worst quality of the Walmarts. That's like, for example, you went to 579, or cotton on, or just a lot of the the trendy places in the mall like that. That's a lot of that is considered fast fashion. But even a lot of people are going to be surprised that, for example, there's still types of fashion that could be considered that even in Madewell and anthropology. And the reason why is really because they are creating things constantly, like, it's not coming out as a seasonal capsule that you could purchase. It's really you see new pants every other week, and you're like, how the hell can you do that? So we touched on the over consumerism in the denim episode, right? With, like, overnight deliveries, monthly and sometimes weekly cycles of them, like actually dropping clothing. If you are someone that, like buys new for every occasion, if you are trying every single trend that you see on influencers, if you are being influenced by these incredibly cheap prices, I mean, like that is you have been sucked into this funnel. Well, that has been created by these companies. And I'm not trying to make it sound nefarious, but as a marketer, it's like, it's exactly the funnel that they want you to be into, right? They want you to be there because they're like, yes, I've got you, like you're in the machine. Keep going. Keep going. Keep consuming, keep consuming. And it's got all this waste. Aaron, you want to talk about the waste. Very passionate
Erin Cox 20:22
as you well, just as you were talking, I was thinking about, I know two people that work in retail stores in Knoxville, and every single week, they're like, Oh, we got 48 boxes delivered today. We got 63 boxes delivered today. And I'm like, Are all of those items like, in individually wrapped plastic bags? Like, are they? How are because you know, when you order something a lot of times it comes in its own plastic bag, and then it's got its shipping box and all the other things. But I just am thinking about, like, where do the 48 boxes of clothes go every week? Like, what happens when you get 63 boxes? Is there room for that? What? What happens to it? And really, the scary thing about the fashion industry is this significant amount of waste that is involved in it, from your own time, right spending and shopping and looking at things, to your money that you're spending buying poor quality clothes that could end up in the trash after the first or second wear. I mean, we talk about price per wear here a lot, and obviously, the more you wear something, the less it costs you each each time you wear it. And even if you're buying a $5 t shirt at Target, and if it's only lasting two wears, that's not an acceptable price per wear for something in your closet, like it should be down to pennies on the dollar every time you put something on your body. So there's that, and then there's the trash, and that fact that the fashion industry is one of the largest consumers of wastewater in the world and chemical contamination. So there's a statistic floating around right now that there's currently enough clothing on the planet to clothe the next six generations. So like, if no new clothing was produced for 100 years, there would be enough garments available right now to clothe everybody, which is just it explodes my brain, honestly, right? So 85% of textiles end up getting thrown away, and 40% of the clothes that we buy are never worn when I did my style training, one of the women who does training for that company, she has a background in finance and accounting, and so she did this whole like little finance model for us, which was really interesting, but she talked about at that in that year, the average woman was spending about $2,500 a year on her wardrobe, and She was wearing about 20 to 30% of that. So, like, I'm gonna let you math, the math on that, because public math is hard and scary, but like, it comes out to roughly, like, $1,700 a year. Just like, tuck that in a drawer, or go put it in a savings account, and it'll do it won't do you dirty, like having a closet full of things you're never going to use. So and then when you think about all of that, all the costs of the clothing, and all of the amounts of the clothing, you would be remiss to not think about the people who actually are making them, because it requires human beings to manufacture the clothing like they are involved of in pretty much all of the steps of the process, and when you consider that the markup for typical retail clothing is somewhere between two and four times the cost to produce the garment. Again, I'm let you math the math. But if you're spending $10 on a shirt or $30 on a pair of jeans, how much is the person who's making that getting paid, and what are the conditions that they're working in that it's so inexpensive for that piece of clothing to be produced? And when you start thinking about it in those terms, and reverse engineering all of that, you can't not ask yourself, like, who's paying the cost for this? And really it's me as the consumer and the person paying, like the person making it, and then you get into all the other environmental pieces of it as well. So there's almost a responsibility, in essence, for us to consider this as a really viable method of clothing ourselves and our families
Blair Petroni 24:23
totally, and it's a way for you to buy better, right? Because by consigning as the seller or shopper, it doesn't really matter you guys, you're gonna break the cycles of this, like over consumption that we have been at this point trained. I'm going to very strictly call this training like I'm going to put my finger on it like dogs, we have been trained to go look at the trends, to look at what's hot, to look at, because we're spending a lot of money to impress people we could give a shit about and what that's doing.
Speaker 1 24:59
She said, What? She said, Folks, that's what I said. Was zero apologies here.
Blair Petroni 25:05
We apologize here. Okay, but what you're doing when you shop con consignment, or even, you know, give your stuff as a seller to consignment and make make that cash money back, right? You're helping to break that cycle of over consumption and the waste, and then you're also giving new life to these items. Like, there are people that will pay good doll hairs for the stuff that you already have. That's the higher quality stuff, like, make your money back. So I pivot, I want to pivot back. Let's talk about the benefits of consignment. And then, like, Aaron had this stigma of secondhand, let's like, take away some of that stigma. Okay? Because growing up, as Aaron said, there's this stigma. And even even I, because when we were like, talking about this episode, both of us were like, Yeah, I remember you were considered real poor if your parents, you know, shopped at thrift, especially, you know, hand me downs. If these they you even looked like you had a wear in your clothing from a cousin, you know, they would be like, oh, there's this stigma. You're poor buying second hand or wearing second hand is you're, you know, you're, you're not in in the world where I want you to be in with me. You're not cool enough to hang out with me. Y'all that is very quickly diminishing. Like that is going far, far far away at this point, like it is becoming very, quote unquote cool to wear second hand, which is kind of upsetting, honestly, all of the people that knew about this for so long, they're like, No, yeah, giving away all the secrets bitch, right? But guys like, really, I think about this. From Aaron's perspective, we have enough clothes on this damn planet to literally clothe six generations. That is cuckoo bananas. Yes, that is cuckoo bananas.
Sarah McCaffry 27:04
Okay, can I tell you this story? Please? My 15 year old teenage daughter, yes, obsessed with shopping secondhand, like this is, and this is like the new thing. This is what like that age group is interested in they want to be shopping on Depop and Poshmark and all those things. Her entire Christmas list was like, Depop because they're wearing the early 2000s which, yikes. But that's what's happening. That is what's happening this new generation is like, Wait a minute. This is cool. This is better for the environment. This gives me, like, a more specific style than just walking into the mall and buying what everybody else is buying. So that's what's so fascinating to me. You know, I've been doing this for 12 years, but we really are seeing this, like new group of this, like new generation who is totally into it, and who doesn't have the stigma around it like we did growing up, you know, like on Tiktok, it's like a whole huge thing. This is what they're all talking about on Tiktok. That's how a lot of people are finding us now. Like that, we're reaching a whole new audience, because it's this younger, like Tiktok generation who loves thrifting, loves shopping secondhand, loves consignment. So it's exciting to watch it happen.
Erin Cox 28:21
So fun. I got to work at the cash register at the last statement here in Knoxville. I was like, Ooh, I can, I can come and help and work at the register. But there's a, like, a photo frame with balloon garland and all of that. And all of these young girls were like, so thrilled to take their arm loads of stuff and, like, go stand in front of the backdrop and take the picture of all their wares. There was even one girl who was like, please don't post this till 5pm because I'm I'm real sick today.
Blair Petroni 28:49
I'm very ill.
Erin Cox 28:53
It really is. I mean, I had always, you know, envisioned, like older people going and shopping, because they were on a budget and they were trying to save money. And every article that I read, because I am a nerd and I read articles in preparation for our episode, every article read talked about this excitement of younger generations about buying secondhand for all of the reasons that Sarah just laid out,
Sarah McCaffry 29:17
yes, yeah. And for our generation, we love that we get to recoup the costs that we've, you know, spent on these clothes that we're are not getting, the wear that are taking up that like prime real estate in our closet, that we need to replace, the things that we're actually loving, that we feel good in. So it just gives us a way to let go of things in a more responsible way. So yeah, it's good for all the generations. I think the younger ones haven't quite learned about how to sell their clothes just yet. You know, they're more interested in the shopping side of it. Our generation is like, let's make some money. Back here, I put a lot of money into this stuff, so yeah, so many benefits for consigning.
Erin Cox 29:53
When I got ready to drop off my car load of stuff at the Falls sale, I texted a pic. Sure of it to Blair before I was like, this is all of the stuff that I have cleaned out based on my style blueprint. Things that were the wrong, like colors that weren't loving me, not just loving me back. Some colors were really not they were doing me dirty, real dirty. There were some styles of things that I had tried, like cropped pants, for example, I need, I'm six feet tall, I need a full length pant. Like the cropped pant is just not jiving with the proportions of my body. And now I understand that, and I accept it, and I love it. But I was like, unloading made well cropped pants and like, some cashmere sweaters that were the wrong color. And like, the person checking me in was like, I gotta send my daughter pictures of this stuff, like she's tall like you. And this is great. And I love that, you know, it was, it took a lot of, like, the shame and guilt out of it for me, because it I was able to look at it not as just, like, throwing away my stuff, right? I wasn't just giving it away or putting in the trash. I was bringing it to a place where hundreds or 1000s of people. I don't even know how many people come through each sale, but 1000s of people were going to have an opportunity to look at it and say, like, this is for me. This is not for me. Almost everything that I had sold right and which I love, and it was just such a positive way to be able to like, con Marie my closet, like bless and release the things for what they did for me in the moment, and move them along to a place where they're actually going to be used.
Sarah McCaffry 31:28
Yes, that's what we love. Okay, this crazy story happened at our last sale. I love the idea that it's all circular. You know, that's one of the things I love about consignment. And this is so funny when on our drop off day, I happened to see like, one of my childhood friends outside dropping off her clothes, and I was just like, oh my gosh, I haven't seen you in, I don't know, 15 years or something crazy. So we had a conversation. She was dropping off her stuff, and then I ended up buying one of her pieces. Now, when you think about the statement oxal sale, we have like, 50,000 items in there, so the fact that I happened to buy the piece of one of my like, childhood friends, like it's just kind of wild. And I love the stories and the connections that happen through consignment like that. And it wasn't just any regular old shirt, it was a Diane Von Furstenberg, yes, black sheer blouse with gold polka dots on it. I mean, it was amazing. And it's also a piece that I never would have bought on my own, like walking in a store. I wouldn't gravitate to that. But somehow, at statement, you end up like being pulled toward certain things that aren't your typical style, and kind of encourage you to step outside the box. And so that's what that top did. And actually, I posted it on Instagram, and she messaged me, and it was like, That's my shirt. So that's how I found out it was hers. It's just so sweet. But I just, yeah, I love the idea of things finding another life with somebody else who will really appreciate it, like that's an incredible shirt that should not just be hiding in somebody's closet who isn't enjoying it. You know, we need the Diane von furstenberg's worn we need that in the right closet. So that's what we get to do.
Erin Cox 33:13
I put some 360 cashmere sweaters in that sale, and they went to loving homes, and I love that. And the same woman from my training program who did, like our little financial class encouraged us. And I love this metaphor to think about your closet as your employees, right? And if you have ever worked for someone or had people work for you like you know that there are people who get the job done and there are people who do not. And so if you have employees in your closet that aren't getting the job done, well, if you were anywhere, if you were if this were a real thing that we were applying to, like you would either have remediation, right, or you would lose your job. And so if you have things in your closet that aren't serving you, or you're not using their employees that aren't getting the job done. And so when, if you sometimes, you can shift your mindset, it doesn't feel as like, like, it's not as like gut wrenching to have to go in and clean out and get rid of things. But if you can look at something and be like, I haven't worn you for a year, like you're not serving me, like, let's put you in this new life pile, it's, it's super helpful. And then it also gives you so much more space. Right? The first time I did consignment, I was getting rid of things for, like, I had been pregnant and nursing and pregnant and nursing and moving and, like, heavy and just real, like orienting to my entire body. I had so many seasons of clothes that I needed to just clean up and part with and like the I mean, I had two little kids, so there were just piles like sitting there. The freedom that I felt to get those things out of my house and take them somewhere where somebody else was going to use them was. It's indescribable. I really love it so, you know, and then, and it's so much more sustainable, like, you're not, like I said, you're not throwing it out. You're not wasting it. It's not just becoming a piece of trash on a beach in Africa somewhere, or like a piece of insulation in somebody's in the wall of low income housing. Like there's an actual purpose to what's going through. And so when you have that opportunity to give new life, it's just, it's, it's so much fun.
Blair Petroni 35:27
Erin, can I talk about when you and I recorded all the podcasts in Knoxville and like, what you sent me home with in the big suitcase?
Erin Cox 35:37
Oh, yeah.
Blair Petroni 35:39
So my two and a half year old is in like, 5t homeboy gonna be six three. Look, he's gonna be broke. The big boy. He comes. He comes from big stock. My husband's the shortest in his family, at six feet, and everyone else is like, six three and above. And all the men on my side of the family, and my moms are six, three and above, so like Genevieve gonna be real tiny Bastion, gonna be real massive, and they are both in the same size clothing right now. She's five, he's two and a half. So we that child is growing so much we cannot literally keep him in clothing like I don't mean he runs around naked, he does, but it is so hard to find clothes for this kid, because we're always buying clothes. And so when we were at Erin's house, she was like, showing me all these piles of clothes that she had, and I said, What you gonna do with all that? And what sizes are they? And she's like, oh, there's like, some 4t and some 5t she's like, and there's like, some sixes and seven. She's like, I've been holding on to them for a really for a really long time because my Bubba just can't, you know, I didn't want to part with them, but because they're some of my favorites, they're like, little dinosaur shirts and like these great quality pants and stuff like that. And I was like, and by the way, laundry is Aaron superpower, you guys. So these clothes, these clothes are pristine, pristine, like you basically could have bought them brand new online, and I'm sure they've been worn for years and years. And I said, What you gonna do? Though, she goes, I think I need to go take them to consignment, but I just don't have the time and this and this and that. I got, I got a dude that I know that needs all this ish, so we got throw it in the suitcase. And so Bash is wearing Aaron's little Bubba's clothes at this point, and it's so cute. Like, every time I put him in a little pair of pants or like, a little shirt from Aaron, I'm like, oh, it's like, getting a hug from the Coxes. You guys. Like, it's just so awesome. I love it. Yeah, I love having that. It's just it's so high quality. And by the way, Erin buys very high quality clothing for
Erin Cox 37:55
her children. Well, it's just there's like, a nostalgia factor to it. I mean, for me, like, the clothes are in great condition, and they could absolutely be worn again. And if enough, I hadn't, like, if Blair hadn't been able to use them for her little guy, like, I would have put them in the children's consignment sale that Sarah let off the episode with, because there's such a need for it. And and kids clothes are not like, good quality. Children's clothes are not inexpensive, and they almost never get fully worn out. So being able to pass that along. But this is a sweet little story. My name, my neighbor, gave us a little like frozen suitcase at one point in time that was her daughter's when her daughter was little. Her daughter just, I think she turned 18 today. So, you know, just like she was cleaning out, and she was like, would Virginia, like this frozen suitcase, and it was in the middle of our, like, frozen, you know, our frozen face. And I was like, she would die and go to heaven if she could have that suitcase. And I remember, like, giving it to Virginia. And she was really excited, and she looked at me, and she was like, But Mommy, why did she want to give it to me? And I said, Well, when mommies give things that were their kids. They're not just giving you the thing, right? They want you to love the thing or the toy or the clothing, but like, they're also giving to you, like the memories that came with that. And I said, so it makes them magical. And I said, and then they're giving also giving the hope that new memories and like, new magic are going to get added to it. And so then, when you're big and you decide that you don't need a frozen suitcase anymore, like you get to give two kids magic to somebody else, and her eyes got real big. And so it's just that, it's just a kind of a fun way to think about about the kids. But, you know, fortunately, I had Blair's giant suitcase from when we brought all this student from Houston to Palm Springs for our friend who lives in California. And then I bought more than my suitcase could hold, so I had to borrow players suitcase. So it's a traveling suitcase.
Blair Petroni 39:53
That suitcase been all over the US, you guys, all over the world. Actually, that's that's okay. It's been all over the world. You. Up quite about quite a bit. Yeah, no, it. And by the way, those of you that are like, That bitch didn't say that. Erin didn't say that to her kid. No, no, no, yes, she did. Y'all have no idea. Yeah, the way that the Cox's speak to their children, and it's very impressive, they explain everything to their kids. Like when we were there with Aaron. I was like, I don't explain this deep to my children, so no, I absolutely believe Aaron said every word of that to Virginia.
Sarah McCaffry 40:28
100% I love that. I love stories like that. One of our core values at statement is about stories. Are the threads that connect us. Because that's one of our really like purposes at statement. It's, it's about the clothes, definitely, for sure, but it's really about connecting women and serving women. And that's that, like, story piece is so important to me. So it's like, that, that Diane Von Furstenberg top when I put that on, it's not about Diane Von Furstenberg. It's not about that piece. It's not about the fact that it's a designer piece. It's the moment that I realized whose it was, and the memories that we had together from childhood, going to each other's birthday parties. And, you know, it's that feeling you have when you put that on that the add to cart moment, sitting on your couch when you're buying something, cannot compare to that. You know, it's got that, like, sentimental piece. It means something that nostalgia, yeah. So that's what I love about shopping like this. There's always a story connected to it. And sometimes you know the story, and sometimes you don't, you know, you're not going to know whose item it is, but there's a history to it, you know, there's a reason that person bought it. And so, yeah, I just love that story piece to shopping this way.
Blair Petroni 41:44
We call that cinnamon with my clients. It actually comes from my daughter from Genevieve, when she was little, she heard me saying sentimental to a client on the phone, and she goes, Mommy wants cinnamon. Oh, cute. And so that's what I say to my clients all the time. I'm like, Oh, it has cinnamon value. No, we don't get rid of that. Like, some of them keep it for that reason. And then I say sometimes you guys are ready to get rid of those cinnamon items, and when you're ready to get rid of the cinnamon item, you are truly passing on a story to someone else. And it really is so cool and so beautiful, and it's a really deep thing. Now some people don't understand that, and then other people that are listening to us are like, Oh my god, absolutely, absolutely. So I know there's both. I hear there's a story about a top that you have that we have to
Erin Cox 42:30
like that was yes, yes.
Sarah McCaffry 42:33
Okay, this is so great. So one of the things we tried at statement this time that people had kind of been asking for was to have stylists there to help people shop for the people who don't shop secondhand, who haven't done consignment before. It can sometimes feel like a new skill to learn. Well, it really is. It is a skill to learn. And so we had stylists there who would help them shop and find the things that were right for them. And so I hired a stylist. She's local to Knoxville, Bree Lamberson. She's incredible. Has like French girl style that I like aspire to, but sometimes don't quite know how to do it. So she came and shopped for me, and she had this piece hanging on the rack when I went to go look through all the finds, and it was a Lafayette 148 shirt, and it had so many colors in it, you guys so many colors. I think you guys are not scared of color. I'm one of those who's a little scared of color, just not. It's not something I gravitate toward. It feels like stretching my style. And when I saw it, I was like, okay, it has so many colors, but I feel like each color is like, maybe my color, like, maybe I can make this work had all these gorgeous, like, fall tones, maybe a little turquoise in it. And so I put this shirt on, and I felt like a brand new woman, like I really did. It was like something I would never buy for myself, just because it's out of my budget. I don't normally shop that brand that feels very like luxurious, you know? So consignment is the only way I'm going to be able to have something like that in my closet. And not only that, it's stretching me, it's showing me what I can do with my style. And so that that piece was just so fun, I posted a story about it. It was like, you guys, I felt crazy walking out of my house today like, Oh, my God, everybody's gonna be looking at me. You know, it just sometimes putting on things that are stretching you out of your comfort zone. Can feel that way, but it's been so fun, and kind of made me want to keep doing that, and keep trying new things and having fun with my style and not taking it so seriously and just just playing. I remember,
Erin Cox 44:39
I remember the story with that picture, and I was like, damn. Like, those are her colors. She looks fire in that blouse, and it's Lafayette. Like, that's that's bananas. It was a
Sarah McCaffry 44:51
find, yes, yeah.
Blair Petroni 44:53
How many compliments did you get that day? How many people were like, bro, you look incredible.
Sarah McCaffry 44:57
Yes, that's what like my DMs were full of. People saying, like, oh my god, that's amazing. I love those colors. You look so great. You know, that's exactly what happened that day. Yeah, did
Blair Petroni 45:06
it happen to when you were like, out in the world? Were you out in the world? And people were like, You look good.
Sarah McCaffry 45:11
I think I was in my office, and my co worker, yes, was like, what? Tell me about this shirt? Yes, yeah, absolutely.
Blair Petroni 45:20
Something that's so important that I think is something that a lot of, whether it's clients or it's listeners to the podcast or just people in general, that as their shopping consignment, they forget about that. That aspect of it, and that's part of the thrill of the hunt, too, you guys, is knowing that you're going to find something, whether it is and whether you know your style blueprint, you know your colors, you know your body type, you know your essence, or you don't, but you have that need, that hole in your closet that you're trying to fill, and you have the availability and the opportunity to be able to take something that you're like, you know, I don't think I would wear it, but, like, I'm gonna try it, and you get a billion compliments from people, and it's, I'm gonna liken it to put an errand in the red lip. It was, like, the second she started wearing her, like, her lip colors that were just like, what was it, Aaron? Was it the was it like the bombs? Because you were like, I need to very slowly walk into this. Yeah.
Erin Cox 46:24
And we started out with, like, the Mac colored lip balms. Because, I mean, we've talked about how unwell I was when I was draped as a bright spring, because I had been like, literally every other season that existed. I was like, Oh, my God, we're starting again. But also it felt so loud to me. It felt so overwhelmed, because I had been previously typed as a summer, so I had spent like two years wearing all of these muted colors. So I mean, like, bright and muted are like polar opposites on the spectrum of color seasons. And I was like, Okay, we're gonna have to go find, like, the calmest version of this lip. And so we started with these tinted lip balms. But then fast forward, you know, six months, and I'm back in Houston with Blair, and I'm like, I think we need to go shop for lipstick. Like, I think I need some, like, Boulder, Boulder lipstick in my drawer. And yeah, we went and we found some. Like, it's like, when I put it on my mouth, so,
Blair Petroni 47:27
yeah, every time she puts it on, like, it just looks so beautiful. It's the same thing with clothes you guys, like, the second you you do the thing that you're scared of, right? You get that piece that you're scared of, and then that you finally get the confidence to wear it. Somebody gonna come up to you and go, you know, you look incredible, and you go, say it again, but this time, now I'm ready. Like, now say it again so I can hear it. And then the more that happens, the the easier it becomes for you to be like, Okay, I'm ready. Like, I'm gonna go get more pieces like that, because you really like being complimented. It becomes something that's very addictive, which I love that for my clients. So having the thrill of the treasure hunt is definitely something that we do talk about that is really, really important, identifying those holes that are in your wardrobe, or the pieces that you know that you want or you need, and that the the where that happens for my clients is post style blueprint. You know your colors, you know your body type, you know your essence. You go home, you do your closet clean out, and then, essentially, I tell you, Okay, put everything in rainbow order, ROY G BIV, in whatever category it is, shirts, pants, dresses, jackets, coats, sweaters, whatever. Okay. And then anything that you don't have in that color, that's what you go start looking for. That's part of this list. That's a treasure hunt that you start like knocking off of the list so that you can have this swath of clothing that you're able to pull from. That is what I call it, granimals for adults. Sarah, you remember granimals at Walmart? Yes, right? Everything matched. It was at the same like all the tops matched the bottoms. Well, when you know your season, your body type and your essence, that's how you get dressed in 90 seconds, because everything is in the same season, the same lines and the same vibe. Oh, I love that. It's Garanimals for adults. It is. It's fire. And so when you start shopping consignment for these pieces that you're like, Okay, this is very specific. I am looking for this thing. Y'all you are literally carefully curating your closet to Garanimals, to your gar animals. And also, what's great. All of these pieces become timeless to you because it fits your style blueprint. I mean, at the end of the day, look, everything old is new again, right? We know that. We're well aware of the cycles, right? Literally, when I saw the kids, Sarah, it's so funny, you mentioned this where you're like, yeah, all the kids now want to wear the early 2000s I'm like, Are they wearing the low rise jeans are there? Are they doing the whale tail because, oh, God, why we went through this pain for them? Why are they doing it again?
Sarah McCaffry 50:28
I know they don't understand,
Blair Petroni 50:31
but here's the thing about this, okay, the older stuff was made better. It was, it was because you had better quality materials. You didn't have these huge conglomerates that were trying to make excessive amounts of profit. They didn't have shareholders. They didn't for a myriad of reasons. Okay, so once you know your style blueprint, everything becomes timeless for you. So when you are shopping consignment, you have this plethora of options in colors, in lines, in vibes, and so you have this, like massive swath of things that are coming in, from vintage to now, to anything. And I love it, and especially if we're talking high end pieces now, not all high end pieces are fire, but there's a real good chunk of them that are,
Erin Cox 51:25
yeah, yes. I was gonna say, I think one of the questions that people ask Blair all the time, that her clients do get the answer to is what brands are for me, and consignment is one of the best ways to go figure that out. Yes, just have the opportunity to try them all right. And so you get to kind of work backwards. If, going in, if you were like, I don't have great shopping where I am, or all I have is this mall and I don't like the clothes at XYZ stores. So just great opportunities to be like, Oh, this is, this is what I need to lean into, or this is where I can kind of dig deeper.
Sarah McCaffry 52:05
Yes, yeah. And that's what I love about shopping consignment, is the higher quality materials, you know, like, when I know you guys mentioned this on a previous episode, that when you go in the mall, like things aren't made like they used to be, they just aren't, they don't feel the same. So that's one of the My Favorite Things to look for when I'm shopping at statement is, let me find the cashmere. Like Aaron said, you sold several cashmere pieces. I found this incredible Navy cashmere sweater at one of the other statement sales. And I think it was made in Scotland. You know, there's just, like, got to be an incredible story about how somebody bought that. Were they traveling? I don't know, who knows how many decades that sweater has been in existence, and it still has so much life left in it. I love that. I love to find 100% silk. You know, you're not going to find that at the mall. They just don't make things like that anymore. I love to find 100% cotton. Levi's like the way they used to make them. You know, those kinds of things are so fun to shop for. And you know, not only is it better quality, like you almost can't even find those things being made anymore.
Blair Petroni 53:10
Yeah, it's very hard. And if, if and when you do it is typically at the high end labels that are going to be hundreds or 1000s of dollars, and you you must be prepared to pay that now, here's here's the difference that a lot of my clients don't understand, is there's this massive difference between price and value. Huge. Just because you paid X for something doesn't mean you value it.
Sarah McCaffry 53:42
Yes, yeah, that's so true. I walked into Madewell a couple of weeks ago and bought a brand new shirt, and when I walked out, was, like, painful. It was painful with that cost for what I actually got for. You know, how many times I'm gonna wear that shirt? It was not my best purchase. But, you know, every now and then we do that, we have little, yeah, impulse buy. But once you are shopping this way, once you're shopping consignment and finding the better quality, also at better prices, it's really hard to walk into stores like that and pay full retail when you know like that cost per wear, it's it's just a different experience, and you miss out on that thrill of the fine all those things. So that's like my little caution every now and then to people like, once you start shopping like, this is your warning. It's hard to go back. It really is.
Blair Petroni 54:31
It is. And I talk, I love that you talked about price per wear. I talk about price per wear constantly, because what I want it to be for my clients is I want it to be pennies. Pennies. Okay? I have clients that will tell me, like, oh, I bought this top and I own, you know, I paid $100 for it and I only wore it twice. I will literally, I'm like, I'm having a conniption fit. I think I'm also having a heart attack. It was like, It's $50 per where hole. My God, right? And that's. Also one of the reasons why Erin was extremely unwell when she took her things to the consignment shop, because she was literally seeing all of these dollars walk out of her life and just being like, I could have bought better. I could have bought smarter. I could have bought second hand and still had the same quality. Yeah, right. Yeah. No. Better. Do better. No.
Erin Cox 55:24
So I can do better, and I'm equipped with all of these pieces of information about how to shop the best pieces for myself, so that it's authentic to me and it feels like me. And that is why, when when people talk about, like, the cost of blur service, or, you know, affording a stylist or a style analysis, I'm like, can you really afford not to, though, is the question is, especially if you're in the learning phases, or the beginning phases, or like, Blair's got some different like, names that she calls her, like her clients. And so I am a Lost Boy, like I am a lost boy who likes just style has always been a struggle for me. And so to have these tools that I can then take in and start applying now, I know. And so from now on, for like, I'm actually have been thinking about this pair of Zimmerman pants I saw on the real, real that I still haven't bought yet, but I'm like, they probably are just, like, the right color to, like, complete this ensemble. So I think I'm gonna go buy them one more time.
Sarah McCaffry 56:19
Do it. We support you.
Blair Petroni 56:23
I'm there with you. Girl
Erin Cox 56:26
Zimmerman, one of the other really fantastic things that we've touched on already is just this new luxury, right? So this new accessibility to luxury brands that are completely unattainable for the vast majority of people, right? I mean, a Lafayette 148 blouse new is going to run you minimum, $800 minimum. And who can afford to go spend $800 on a blouse like not very many people, right? And so when you keep that in mind, I got this was not the only St John piece that I got in Houston that was brand new with tags. I got two pairs of pants. I got a brand new Lafayette 148 silk like Shell to go underneath Blazers or jackets or whatever. I mean, it was like jackpot.
Blair Petroni 57:22
Here's what we jokingly said, all of them still had tags on them. And I was like, Y'all somebody, somebody grandma died and just gave everything to consignment, and it was all in Aaron's. That's what happened. Yeah.
Erin Cox 57:33
Well, it was funny too, because we were there, like as they were getting ready to close and the dress they closed the dressing rooms, like an hour beforehand. So restrooms were closed, and I was like these. So one of the we're gonna get, I'm gonna spoil alert for the the tips and tricks is like looking at sizes that aren't necessarily your exact size. And so one of the one of the pairs of pants was, like, a 16, and I don't, I don't normally wear a 16.
Blair Petroni 57:57
Are you gonna tell them how you literally dressed?
Speaker 1 58:01
Yeah, that day, I was like, these are pants I can put them on under my skirt. I'm like, covered
Erin Cox 58:08
Amber stand on either side of this circular rack, and I'm like, sliding these pants up under my denim skirt. And the security guards like, you're not allowed to try things on in the middle of the store. And I was like, I'm so sorry. I didn't realize that. I just heard but I really need these pair of pants.
Blair Petroni 58:30
But I really need these St John pants, ma'am classic. I was so funny, like, it's still a story we talked about, it's still, come on. We're like, come on. Classic, disrobe in the middle of the store. Let's go.
Speaker 1 58:45
Girl. I mean, I didn't fully disrobe, I just slid up.
Sarah McCaffry 58:53
We go to great lengths for a deal, you know, right, right?
Blair Petroni 58:58
Like we do this with our children in the store. We like, undress our children's in the store. We put clothes on them. Who has time to, like, drag your kids to a dressing room, please?
Speaker 1 59:06
Well, and then they just dance in front of the mirror anyway. Then they're just like, groove into whatever is in their head.
Blair Petroni 59:15
It's true. It's true. So like this, this is a big enough deal, essentially, where we were just, if you're like, Where does this Blair, like, the benefits are of consignment. This is a big enough deal that you guys are starting to see major brands in consignment. Major major brands like pataguchi is what I call them, but they're Patagonia. I call them pataguchi. Pata Gucci tea collection, Lululemon, and like a ton of other very high end sellers and brands that are putting resale opportunities like, for example, ano, Alice and Olivia on their website and saying, hey, just give us. Clothes back, and then we'll put them on this little and some of them will do it like auction style. Some of them will purchase your clothes back from you, and then they will resell them themselves. Sometimes on the website, there's actually their own little like, it's almost like with Tesla, right? Like, you give your car back to Tesla and they're, they're the ones that have to sell it for you. Typically, maybe that's not a rule anymore, but it used to be. But, like, that's something that is, is in the purview of these really large brands now, like, this is how large of a an opportunity and a weakness that these major brands have realized that consignment is they're like, whoa. We have to protect ourselves, because we did not expect this player to enter the market and actually take market share away from us.
Sarah McCaffry 1:00:56
Yes, yeah, that's what's happening in the resale world as a whole. All of these retailers are getting into resale because secondhand is growing faster than retail is faster. I was in New York a couple months ago, and I was on Madison Avenue, and I walked by the store thinking it was Urban Outfitters, and then I was like, No, that's urban renewal. They're not taking Madison Avenue for their retail. They're taking it for their second hand stuff. You know, that was a beautiful moment for me. I was like, yes, for the resale industry, like for the for this many consumers to be shopping this way, to care about it. It's really an exciting thing happening in the industry as a whole.
Blair Petroni 1:01:36
Yeah, I love that. I want to get straight into the statement experience, right? I mean, everybody's heard of the real, real threat up Poshmark Depop, right? All these other consignment resale sites, and maybe even people have shopped like their local consignment shops. But y'all statement works just like a little bit differently. Sarah, tell everybody how genius your entire concept is truly because Aaron was telling me about this, and I was like, this woman is a fucking genius. It's real.
Sarah McCaffry 1:02:09
It's so fun. And once people experience it, once they're like, Whoa, this is, I got to be a part of this. So what's different about us versus brick and mortar consignment stores is we do pop up events. So we do two events per year in whatever location. You know, we have franchise, 37 franchises now. So each franchise does two sales, one spring, one in the fall, and it lasts for about five or six days. And so if you want to sell with us, you clean out your closet, and then you have an account online where you can go and price your own stuff. Now this is like, one of the best things about it, because you can decide what you want to make from your pieces. You decide if you want it to go half off on, half off day. You decide if you want to donate it, if it doesn't sell, or you can pick it back up. So, you know, the the seller has a lot of choices to make in the process, and then they drop it off a couple days before we open to the public. And one of the major perks of selling it statement is sellers get to shop first. So they get first access to the best deals, to the best brands, to the luxury pieces, you know. So that's another huge perk for selling it statement, and we have that item approval process. So we check everything as it comes in, and then when we're ready for people to start shopping, sellers get to come in first, and then we have a charity pre sale. So if people want to make a donation to a local nonprofit, they can show up to shop early. We care deeply about making an impact on our local communities, so that's one of the ways we do that. Then we're open to the public for several days, and then our last day is half off day. So most of the items that are left, you know, they're already priced at 50 to 80% off retail prices, and then they go an extra half off because it hadn't sold yet. So we're like, somebody take these pieces. Half off day is a really fun day to shop at. Statement, there's a lot of energy on half off day. That's crazy. Yeah, it's a really fun model. And then, you know, sellers can pick up their stuff that doesn't sell, or if you price it well, like Erin, hopefully it all sells.
Blair Petroni 1:04:13
Yeah, Aaron was telling me all the stuff she was sending, and I was like, I cannot wait to see the outcome of this.
Sarah McCaffry 1:04:18
Yes, she's one of our top sellers, for sure. She brings us the good stuff. She knows how to price it. And what is so fun about statement that other consignment models aren't doing is that we are doing something in real life. You know, all those online resale things, it's a totally different experience to just add something to cart. You can touch the merchandise. Yes, yes, you touch it, you see it, you feel it, you hold it up in a mirror and see if it's your color and if it's gonna work. You're shopping beside another woman, and you, you like, are squealing about your fine and she shares in that with you. So you're making connections with other women. That's one of the most beautiful things that happens at statement, is like friendships are formed and. You know, it just becomes something so much bigger than the clothes, all the connections that women make, and not only that, statement is more convenient, more profitable and more fun than any other resale option. That's what we really believe, because there is one week for your items to sell sell. So I brought my southern accent really came I love it. Keep doing it, like, reel it back. But, yeah, it's more convenient. You're not having to ship things off one at a time that sell online. You're not meeting, you know, crazy people from Facebook marketplace. It's really convenient. You drop it off in one place, and we do it for you, we sell it for you, and you get a check. Like, a week after our sales over, you get a check for you know, your portion of the sales and the profit margin is higher with us than it is with any online re resources, 6040 Yes. So our sellers keep 60% Yeah. So it's a
Blair Petroni 1:05:58
really split. Let me talk to you. I and I do not mean to speak over you, Sarah, this is what, based off of my experience in consignment all over the world. Guys, the world in consignment, you will not find more than a 6040 split, ever, ever, ever, ever. In fact, one of the consignment stores in Houston, the highest it goes is a 6040 split. Like I've never seen anything higher than a 6040 and the fact that, like you guys, are so generous with it, they get 60 and you get 40. I'm like this woman, again, genius.
Sarah McCaffry 1:06:39
Thank you. Thank you for caring about that. Recently, I had like, a really high end piece, and I was like, you know, I'm gonna try out this. I was gonna try, well, I won't even say the name, but one of the online kind of luxury resale options, and just see what I make. I it was like, a few dollars for something that, you know, I spent almost $200 on. So, yeah, blew my mind. I was like, okay, yeah, we're, we're doing it better than anybody else. I'm really confident about that. That's what we care about. And giving people just a fun shop in real life shopping experience. People come with their, you know, co workers, they come on their lunch break, or they bring their grandmother, aunt, their cousin. You know, we have these big girl groups coming in to shop together, and that's just something you can't experience online, so that's what we love. At statement, we do something that nobody else is doing, and we're connecting women, creating experiences, helping people you know, remember what's fun about shopping like you don't leave with that shopping guilt that you might have in other places. You leave feeling good about your purchases at statement,
Blair Petroni 1:07:41
oh, my god, I love it. Can I just live at the assignment sales?
Erin Cox 1:07:46
And honestly, that split is why, like, every, every, every sale I have this moment of, like, when I'm in the middle of hanging stuff up and, like, pinning things on, I'm like, Oh, why did I do this to myself? Like, why didn't I just and then I get the check, and I'm like, This is why I do this every single time, and I know our local consignment stores here, the the the highest percentage that I've seen, I think, is like 30% that you're giving. So it's, it's like the difference between what you get at statement and what you get at pretty much anywhere else is so significant that it's worth the return on your investment and your time to put your pieces there.
Blair Petroni 1:08:21
Um, I'm still blown away. 6040, holy, right, yeah, yeah. So we're
Erin Cox 1:08:28
gonna dive into, like, moving past the overwhelm, and give you some tips and tricks for actually shopping consignment. Because as I was hyperventilating on the on the way into the guild in Houston, Blair was like, it's not that bad, it won't be that bad, I promise. And I remember sending Blair a picture from the stage, because the luxury section in our local Knoxville sale is up on a stage so that they all those higher priced items can be attended to and kept track of, and all of the things. But I turn around and I sent Blair this picture of the racks, and they were just packed full of stuff. And I was like, I used like, I a year ago, I would have looked at this and turned around and left, because I would not have had any idea where to even begin. And now I have the confidence to, like, set foot in the aisles and, like, start, start getting into things. So Sarah, what kind of like tips and tricks and tools of the trade that you have for listeners as they hopefully visit statement or visit their own consignment shop?
Sarah McCaffry 1:09:29
Yeah, I love sharing these because, like I said, I was not a person who knew how to shop like this before I started statement like I had to figure it out as I was running the business. So one of the things that can be really helpful is to start with those luxury items first, because at the end of your shopping experience, you're not going to decide to add on something that might be 100 or $200 you know, like, those are things you want to decide, do I want these, this Gucci bag? Do I want this Louis Vuitton Wallet? So I think start in the luxury items also, because those are highly sought after. So. They go faster. So you want to get to those before everybody else does. And then I think it's so important to touch and feel the items. You know, you're looking for those higher quality pieces. So you're looking for the cashmere, for the silk, for the 100% percent cotton, whatever those fabrics are that make you feel good. Shop for those. And you know, your colors definitely focus on your colors. But one of the main things that I think is really key, and Aaron, you touched on this, is to shop all size racks, because brands are all sized so differently that sometimes you're a small, sometimes you're an extra large, and sometimes it's that extra large thing that you just want it to feel oversized, or you want something to feel cropped, and so you go a little bit smaller. So I think that is a really great way to, like widen the scope of what you might find is really shop lots of different size racks, and then, okay, I'm gonna tell you guys my favorite secret.
Blair Petroni 1:10:59
Y'all, she just leaned in, for all the people that are not watching on YouTube, she just leaned into that microphone. I wanna,
Sarah McCaffry 1:11:05
don't regret this. So everybody's taking all the good stuff shop the men's racks. Yes, the men's racks.
Blair Petroni 1:11:13
I did that with Aaron and our friend, and they were like, Why are we in the men's section? And I was like, Hold, please. How many Lafayette 148? Did we find Aaron?
Erin Cox 1:11:22
Oh, man. I mean, at least, at least two or three.
Sarah McCaffry 1:11:29
That's amazing. Yes, that's the thing. Men's stuff is, like, constructed differently. The shape is different, and I like that. I don't always want everything to be like, fitted, like a women's piece, like, I love a men's button down. I love the shape of that better. I love it's a little bit longer so you can cuff it, you know, you can pop the collar. I don't know. I just, I really love menswear too, but I find so many amazing pieces in the men's section because not a lot of women are shopping it. So that is one of the best tips. And at statement, we love to have tape measures out so we don't have dressing rooms. At statement, because it's a pop up sale, we're moving things quickly, you know, so there are no dressing rooms, but bringing a measuring tape solves that problem for you, so you can bring your own. At most of the statement sales, we have them for you. And then again, this is a statement specific tip you need to shop multiple days, because what happens is, you know, day one, we've got 50,000 items on the rack, and then by day two, that shrinks a little bit, and there's more space on the racks, and you're going to see things you didn't see on day one, and then when you come back and shop half off day, you're going to see things you never even saw on the first two days, because it's impossible to see 50,000 items in one trip. It just is. So our best shoppers come back multiple days, and a lot of our shoppers come back every single day, and then they go to other locations and shop their sale, and then another location and shop their sale. The great thing about statement is each location has a completely unique inventory, and it's totally refreshed every time. So at the end of our sale, we don't hold on to anything. It's either picked back up by the seller or donated. So the next sale that happens is totally brand new inventory, so it's fresh every time.
Blair Petroni 1:13:17
Yes, that's so exciting. I just, I love, I y'all. I'm just so obsessed with consignment. I'm just like, I want, I want all the consignment things like, and you just gave so many secrets that I give my clients to. I'm like, Look. You going thrifting. You go look in the men's section. Especially, for example, if you have a body type that there's a dramatic body type. If you are pure dramatic, or a soft dramatic, we look fire in men's wear fire, so definitely go over there. Or, for example, if you are a game and you need a more tailored look dead ash, you better be looking in the men's section. Some of my classics, like my DCS, they look so, so beautiful, and certain button downs and things of that nature, like, there's gonna be stuff that you are never going to think is going to look so good on you that's over there. Like, for example, a lot of people don't know this, but the men's Dolce and Gabbana Blazers are way cooler than the women's, way cooler, way better. I put on, how Aaron, how many did I put on when we were in, when we were at Cabazon in Palm Springs, at dng, I think I put, I think put on at least six of them. Yeah, and they were just like, so cool, so interesting, so different, like, one looked like Beauty and the Beast, like it was a
Erin Cox 1:14:45
stained glass one, yeah, oh yeah, that was fire on you,
Blair Petroni 1:14:49
and purely regret not getting that thing. So there was that, there was, like, all these fun colors, all these prints, all these patterns, all these men, stuff. Can go way harder than women sometimes don't, don't, don't look, don't, don't pretend like you don't see that you better go look. Listen to Sarah, that's the big secret. Now you know she's a boss. Let's talk about what it means to be a successful seller. Because, of course, Aaron's been a seller, right? We miss make all the money, right? We talked about being a really good shopper. But how do you become someone that sells? Because selling by consigning can be this fabulous way to give, right? We talked about this new home to your less loved items in your closet while making money back from your purchases. So do you have tips about how to be a really good seller, too?
Sarah McCaffry 1:15:46
Yes, I've got some good tips on that. Okay, so one of the beautiful things as we grow at statement, is that you can sell at multiple locations. Like in Knoxville, we have two different sales, so some of our sellers, you know, they do both sales, they'll pick up what doesn't sell at one and bring it to another one. And it doesn't mean that the items that they picked up weren't desirable. They just didn't find the right buyer, you know, just the right person didn't get lay their eyes on it. So it gets to go to another sale to hopefully find the right buyer. So that's a really smart tip. And then when you're cleaning out your closet. I mean, I'm sure you guys have lots of tips for how you clean out your closet, but the question, you know, Does it spark joy? Do I feel good in this piece? Do I feel good in it? Does it feel like me? Do I feel like myself in this that's a question that you really want to get real with yourself on. I'm a person who loves clearing out my closet, like I get rid of probably too much, and every now and then I'm like, What happened to that? Oh, I must have sold. I do that too. Girl, yes, yeah. But, you know, you can find that piece again. You can find that piece again. So, you know, I just encourage people to, like, really let go of your stuff, because the longer you hold on to it, the less value it will have, like, barrel leg jeans in 10 years. Sorry, like you're gonna need to get rid of those sooner than that. Like nobody's gonna be shopping barrel leg jeans in 10 years, right?
Blair Petroni 1:17:11
Sarah, did you see my story from a couple of days? Was it about barrel jeans? Girl, barrel jeans so often, so often. And I tell my people, like, Look, if who are barrel legged jeans for no one, I will die on this hill. No one. You look bow legged. No one, right? Pasta. Stop it.
Sarah McCaffry 1:17:37
Everybody's gonna realize it in the next few years, and then nobody's going to be looking to buy those, so let go of those soon. Yes, and at statement, we have some specific guidelines on how our sellers hang their items so that they stay on the hanger. We don't want things slipping off the hanger and landing on the floor and getting stomped on or something. So those things are really important to make sure you hang it the right way. We use little safety pins to keep it snug on there, because we want to protect the integrity of your item. We don't want it to get damaged. But we do have 1000s of people who will touch each item, so like you got to, got to keep it secure on the hanger there. And then we also offer our sellers the chance to work our sale. So that's how we staff our sale. Is our sellers have already said, Hey, I'm looking to make a little extra money by cleaning out my closet. And we're like, actually, if you want to make even more, you can help work the sale. And we pay an hourly rate. And the real advantage to working at statement is that you get to shop while you work. Like we know, we know you're coming to shop while you work. And so that's another bonus, is you can be kind of collecting your pile while you're making money working the sale. You're also, again, meeting women, having conversations, like getting excited about everybody's little finds. Or you get to see somebody carrying something amazing around, and then they go put it down, and you go grab it real quick, you know. So lots of advantages to working the sale too, and our workers get to shop before everybody else. So, so many perks to doing that.
Erin Cox 1:19:13
That's where I got my green sneakers flare. No.
Blair Petroni 1:19:17
Love those damn sneakers she was wearing those the other day when, oh, not the other day, but like when I was in Knoxville, and I was like, wait them sneakers.
Erin Cox 1:19:25
Statement, I saw them. I literally was walking past the shoe sale or the shoe rack on on one of my working shifts, you know, where we're just like, organized, you know, making sure that things look nice and we're in the right size places and things like that. And I walked past these green sneakers probably 10 times. And every time I walked by, I was like, and I was like, Can I can I take those and, like, put them aside for myself and everyone, every single person, was like, yeah, that's why we're all here. Put him in the work room. Or just check them out when you're ready. And that was a pair. They were brand new adidas sneakers. They were like this, really fun green, and the white stripes on the side are like, almost this, like, primrosy lemony yellow. It's like, barely white, but barely yellow. And they just, they work so well with color carrying and different things that I am looking for in my wardrobe. And they were so comfortable and they were brand new. So I was like, yes, come home with me. Like, get get in my bag. Let's go.
Sarah McCaffry 1:20:34
Yeah, that's why you want to work a statement, yeah, yeah.
Erin Cox 1:20:38
So. And then also, too, I feel like I need to share this story, because everybody who works at the same who works at the sale is so lovely, and they have just become this network of people. I wore a bracelet the first day that I worked, and it was a cuff bracelet that I had gotten in Guatemala when I went on my trip, and but it was open on one side, and at some point during the day, it got caught on something and fell off. And I got home that afternoon and I was like, Where, where is my bracelet? And I knew that it had fallen off there. And I was like, distraught, because I was like, There's no way that it's going to be found, that it's going to be turned in. Y'all the last day, I like, put a picture of it in our sellers group, the last day of the sale, somebody was like, I found that, yes. And the different people were like, Hey, I saw it over here. And like, somebody would go look. And then the last day of the sale, somebody was like, I found it. I dropped it off at this with this person, and I got my bracelet back. And like, I just like that. Just speaks to the quality of the people to me that are involved with this whole process that it didn't just like, Oh, this looks fun. It doesn't have a price tag, like, come on home. So it's just been such a positive experience. It's been great to get to know Sarah and her team, and I just think the world of this whole process and the opportunity that provides for shoppers and sellers and are really our worlds to be honest.
Sarah McCaffry 1:22:00
Thank you. I didn't know that you found the bracelet, but I knew the story of the bracelet because we, like, sent out a search party for that bracelet. We were like, this isn't just any bracelet. She cares about this thing. It's got a special story. So yeah, it's just a great community of women, and we care deeply about each other, so even if it's, you know, just a missing bracelet, we take it seriously. And I'm so glad somebody found that that makes me feel so good.
Blair Petroni 1:22:25
It really does speak to how high quality the humans are that are working, statement that are shopping, statement that are because what I always say is this, Your vibe attracts your tribe. It really does. Your vibe attracts your tribe. Be who you are, your people will find you.
Sarah McCaffry 1:22:45
Yes, yeah, that's one of the things that's so important as a statement, is our core values. And we talk about our core values all the time, and we try to make sure we're growing with people who share those core values, like especially the people who franchise with us and are starting their own location. That's what we start all of our calls with, is these are our core values. Do these ring true to you? Does this feel like it aligns with who you are and what you want out of your life? Then maybe you're the right person to grow with us. So yeah, that matters so much to us.
Blair Petroni 1:23:17
It makes me so happy. I want you to tell everyone, Sarah, where they can find you. Like, give me the handles, give me the website. Give me tell them what and what you got going on next.
Sarah McCaffry 1:23:29
Yes, okay, so statement.com m i n t because all of our items are in mint condition. Statement com, that's where you can go to get more information about shopping or selling, or just to see where our locations are. And if you're interested in franchising, like, if you don't have a location in your area, Houston, we've got to get in Houston. We need to be in Houston.
Blair Petroni 1:23:52
Yes, is everyone like, Blair, listen to Sarah, like, I don't like, I don't sit on enough boards. Like, I don't own enough businesses. She's like, Hey girl,
Erin Cox 1:24:02
let's play a chat Houston and I can fly.
Blair Petroni 1:24:05
I'm gonna talk to you after dis girl,
Sarah McCaffry 1:24:08
there we go. I love it, yes. So yeah, we're just looking to grow. We're primarily in the southeast and the Midwest right now, but we're excited to expand into a lot of other territories, and it's just an incredible group of women like I've said, we are looking to grow with people who want to make an impact in their community. And because that's the beauty of statement, that's the beauty of consignment. It's the circular thing that does good for everybody. It does good for everybody. And we partner with local nonprofits, so we're making a difference in those ways too. So yeah, we're just excited to continue growing. So if people are interested, then go to statement.com and at the very top, there's a link to a form that they can fill out. And then we'll get back to you with all the details. And, you know, talk and see if it's the right opportunity for you. It's been a beautiful opportunity for a lot of moms who want to be at home with their kids but want to have. Have something else that's their own. Statement is a beautiful way to do that that gives you so much flexibility and freedom. And honestly, that's why I started franchising in the first place. I'm a single mom of three kids, and statement has done so much for me that I know a lot of other single moms don't get to experience in life. They're, you know, struggling and, you know, putting in full time work hours and trying to be there as a mom and statement has just given me so much, so I'm excited to pass that along to other women.
Blair Petroni 1:25:28
I love your light, Sarah, I'm again. I'm so, so grateful for the time that you spent with us today. I am obsessed with this conversation. I cannot wait to hear the feedback about this episode, because I know it is going to hit the right people that never knew anything about consignment. We are going to change so many minds with this episode. I'm so so stoked about it. Thank you for being here.
Sarah McCaffry 1:25:56
Thank you all for having me. This is such a fun, fun chat. Thank you. You're the
Blair Petroni 1:26:00
best girl. I appreciate you. All right, guys, you heard it here first. If there is anything that you can do for us here on style rebellion, please give us a like, a follow, a comment on YouTube, on Instagram, yeah, that too. On Spotify, on Apple podcasts and definitely subscribe on YouTube if you are looking to actually see what do we look like? How stunningly, fabulously beautiful are all of we? We three women, right? Incredible. So you have to watch us on YouTube because we have this high quality video that you can see us on if you're just listening to us on Spotify or apple, but otherwise, thanks. Thanks, pretty people. Thanks for being here.
Erin Cox 1:26:45
Thanks for being here till next time you.
