Create
Your Own Conference
a humble suggestion from Kate
NARTS Conference: where you can experience the thrill of being with over 250 like-minded business people who are renowned for being welcoming and friendly. Casual and planned get-togethers, field trips, workshops, speakers, and SourceMart are designed specifically for resale, consignment, and thrift shop owners and operators. You'll meet wonderful peers, and some of my fondest memories in the industry are of the Conferences I helped plan, participated in, and attended.
If you can afford to, GO! And be sure to read How to Have a Great Meeting to get the most out of it. If you hesitate to go, check out my thoughts on "excuses" here.
Problem is, not every resaler can go to Conference. With that in mind, let's look at how you can craft "your own conference". Let's see if we can make it less intrusive on family and business life, less time-consuming, and most of all, less expensive. Can we do it? Sure we can: after all, we're entrepreneurs, right?
Kate's Plan for Tailoring your Own Conference:
Here's the costs of going to Conference.
-
Registration, member: $439
-
Optional Bus Tour Friday: $55
-
Membership in NARTS, Year 1: $145 (after Year One, membership is $120)
-
Airfare (varies obviously) say $250
-
Hotel room: Thurs-Sun, 4 nights, at $170ish: $680
-
Incidentals: Let's be really frugal and say $100
-
Other: New duds? Taxi? Parking? A drink in the bar? Extra help in the shop (or loss of profit if you close)? Let's be downright cheap: $400.
Total of the above: A tad over $2000. Now, let's see if we can tailor our own "conference" and learn as much on our own.
Let's structure this as thoigh we were at Conference:
Thursday:
Before Conference, the Sharers'
get-together, a TGtbT event, 6 to 8 pm: The
Sharers of TGtbT get together in the hotel's lobby bar.
Put faces to names you know from our Sharing
discussion board. Introduce yourself to people you already know! A perennial favorite among Conference goers.
TGtbT
Resource: There's really no substitute for this in my Products, but of
course, you can "meet" several Sharers in Sarah Deveau's Grabbing
their Attention: How to Make the Media Love You and Cynthia
Broockman's Hot Tips and Tricks, where they
share their specific expertise with you.
Thursday:
Meet-n-Mingle. The NARTS get-together with fellow attendees, some of
whom bring shop scrapbooks.
What could you do
instead at home? Invite resalers in your area to a
get-together in your shop? If you host such a
get-together, you
might spend $65. Or take a trip to see resale shops near you and gather
ideas. (You'll probably spend that $65 in gas, lunch, and purchases!)
TGtbT Resource: Use Visiting Other
Resalers, a TGtbT Luncheonette Product that helps you gather
all the ideas you can!
Friday: Bus Tour. Poke into 5-9 shops' sales floor, back
rooms, ask questions, and the host shops offer great
refreshments. On the bus, there's a box lunch and the chance to chat
with your seat-mate. (Oh yes and shop.
To do instead: Explore the Sponsoring Shops at our
consumer-oriented site, HowToConsign.com.
Read the consumer info there to give yourself some marketing ideas.
TGtbT
Resource: Get 100's of ideas to sharpen up your store with Shop
Sizzle.
Friday
Evening: Cocktail Party and Auction. I won't even
attempt to duplicate this. The party is truly festive, the buffet
scrumptious, the finery on your fellow resalers jaw-dropping.
Instead,
stay home and play with the kids. Or go vacuum the store. Boring, I
know. But it's cheap. Oh no, I know...
Read The Picker Who Perished and
eat Godiva chocolates in your PJs.
Saturday:
Keynote.
Workshops and lunch. Inspiring. Every speaker has valuable
lessons to impart in their 45 minutes.
Schedule that time for a serious session with your choice of our Products
for the Professional Resaler. Get out your marker and
index cards to take notes and concentrate. Inspire yourself! Then take yourself to lunch as a break, before hitting the
books again for the afternoon.
Saturday
evening: Conference free time. Join fellow
resalers for dinner and more.
Try a nice glass of your
favorite beverage and an Internet cruise through Too Good to be Threw, using our Site
Map to make sure you don't miss a single page, tip or idea. Net cost $0,
since TGtbT is a free resource put up on the web for you by Kate Holmes,
author of TGtbT The Complete Operations Manual for
Resale & Consignment Shops.
Sunday:
Networking, a workshop, brunch buffet, Sourcemart. More learning opportunities and a chance to connect with vendors, perhaps meet your software people for
the first time.
Again, hard to do at home. But you can approximate the experience by
exploring and researching those links on Kate's
Links Page. Then take yourself out for
Sunday brunch first. (No champagne, you have work to do.) Return to your
computer and read through the thousands of entries on Sharing,
the TGtbT Discussion Board. That's almost as good as face-to-face
networking.
Sunday
night: Party with your newfound best buds. A
unique location every Conference.
And once again, no substitute at home, unless you have some best buds
there. After all, Sunday night's for letting your hair down, not talking
shop...even at Conference!
Monday
morning: Up early to pack, and if your schedule allows, a
stop for one last NARTS event.
At home, spend the morning (since you
don't have to pack) going over all the notes you've taken from your own
personal "Conference" this past weekend. Plan your attack.
Create a do-able to-do list. Cost? Time and concentration.
Okay, your own personal Conference is at an end. Sure, you're still at home, ho-hum. On the other hand, think of the time you've saved getting to and from airports, packing, ironing, reassuring your staff they can manage without you. Not to mention spouse and dependents.
Now: Set a budget to use to accomplish your goals. After all, with the suggestions above, you've saved about $1500 over traveling to Conference. Think of it: you could buy every Product for the Professional Resaler and STILL have money left over for (choose one or more) a TV commercial blitz for fall, getting your Sponsor listing on HowToConsign.com, a professional web design, direct mail to thousands of your customers, sending Kate a present...
And let me reiterate... this plan is only if you cannot, for whatever reason, attend NARTS Conference. If you can, DO. And, just like your shop, this plan only works if you work at it. But you already know that, or you wouldn't be here, on Too Good to be Threw, the Premiere Site for Resalers!
| TGtbT.com is the premiere web site for professional resalers. Start a consignment, resale or thrift store with our free articles and Products for the Professional Resaler. Interested in business plans, operating your shop, consignment software and selling secondhand clothes, upscale designer fashions, children's gear or used furniture? Consignment shops, resale stores, thrift stores and consignment sales use Too Good to be Threw. As a lifelong member of NARTS and a consignment consultant, our information is designed for the resale industry. | ||
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