Resale Terminology Here, you can look up the resale terminology used on TGtbT.com and on HowToConsign.com and no one will ever know you didn't know what that word meant before! A compendium of terminology for the resale industry: consignment clarification, like-new lingo, secondhand sense, a glossary of great used stuff, a dictionary of junk jargon. Added to at irregular intervals by Kate Holmes, Resale Pro, Industry Expert, and all-around Consignment Queen. Not to mention the brains behind HowToConsign.com and the Auntie Kate sob sister of Auntie Kate's Blog. Want to suggest a listing? E-mail me!    Color-tag System: A way of indicating, by use of a scheme of color price tags, when an item was placed on the sales floor. Used by some shops as a short-cut to actually doing markdowns by hand, resulting in a mish-mash of signs in the store of the Pink Tags 25% off* Blue tags 38% off* Peridot tags 75% off  variety, sales staff who say that in one long breath right after hello, and confused customers who can't remember which color's which, and anyway can't or don't want to do math while they shop, and who the heck knows what peridot is anyway? DuH: In Basic Internet Speak, DH is "darling husband", DD "darling daughter" and so on. Your hostess with the mostest (and how old do you have to be to remember THAT phrase?) happens to have a DuH or "darling UN husband"... 38 years this month!... that many Sharers assume is clueless, as in Duh? This may well be true but we won't tell him. We will ALSO not tell him that I have put this silly photo of us on the web, complete with fake Santa hat. NTY: Abbreviation for "no-thank-you", items offered to a shopkeeper by a member of the public wishing to consign or sell them, that the shopkeeper does not have the customer for and thus says "no thank you" to. Often, regrettably and incorrectly, known as "Rejects", a word which is pejorative and non-consumer-friendly.  Plural (they usually are!) NTYs. Collective noun: A mess of NTYs. They usually are. ODs: Abbreviation for "out-of-dates", those consigned goods which remain unsold after the store's specific length of consignment period is past. The handling of ODs can make or break a shop's profits and operations; for details, refer to Too Good to be Threw, The Complete Operations Manual for Resale & Consignment Shops. OTB: Abbreviation for "Open-to-Buy Budget." This is the cash you have available to invest in purchasing stock to sell. Many shops buy some things, such as lower-priced accessories or clothing; some shops buy most or all of their merchandise from individual sellers who come into the shop much like consignors do. The more you buy, the more carefully you must monitor and handle your OTB. PDQ: The term that TGtbT.com uses for PDFs, ("Portable Document Format") which are a type of file that can be safely transmitted from computer to computer. You need the latest edition of Adobe Reader (free, easy-to-use, and here) to view these files. Kate calls her version PDQs because they are sent to you by herself, Pretty Darn Quick, as opposed to some web sites which automate the process so you receive them from a machine. Kate likes people more than machines. Peridot: Yellowish-green.  POP: Retailese for Point-of-Purchase, those little impulse items that are at your elbow when you're paying for your purchases. Some places it's gum, chocolate and magazines; other places it's aspirin and batteries. What are the POPs in your shop? What? You don't have any? Well, see, there, you've learned something already. Tell Kate thank you. ROI: Abbreviation for Return on Investment. Everything you do involves an investment: of money, of time, of effort. It's important, if you want to be successful (silly phrase, of course we want to be successful!) to balance what you spend with what you aim to profit. A bag sale, for example: Would you buy a $500 ad in the paper, add 25 staff hours to payroll, and spend 10 hours of your own time on this event if you're hoping to sell 100 bags of clearance items at $5 apiece?