Innovation

Consign-It Home Interiors sells Furniture, 75% of which, is repurposed. Because most of what they sell is used furniture, this allows the community to enjoy gently used furniture at a more affordable price than buying new. The furniture is first come, first served, so customers are allowed to take the furniture off the floor the day they buy it. Although they mostly sell used goods, they also purchase new items, especially sofas, to keep up with the demand for current furniture styles.

Additionally, Consign-It sells floor space within their building to local vendors who are also selling used furniture and accessories. This allows the owners to spend less time trying to fill their building with products because others do it for them. Consign-It charges a monthly rental fee and receives 10 percent of the price of each item sold, which helps bring in more profit for their business. The innovation of renting space to vendors is very successful. As longtime employee and General Manager of twenty years, Tony Rasczyk, puts it, “There is a waiting list, and they do their own pricing, they do their own merchandising.” The company has been doing this deal with vendors for eleven years with the first half of their store, and five years with the other side of their store. The addition of other vendors allows the store to cater to every style. According to Tony, “you have to be able to adapt to the market.” People are always asking for the new styles. Tony tries to go to furniture shows to anticipate style trends that are emerging in the local communities.

Inspiration

The company is inventory driven. People want to see furniture with character, so older material that is authentic has real market value. The bigger stores can’t replicate the authentic and uniqueness of older furniture, due to mass produced, “cookie cutter” furniture. Everything in the store is a one of a kind. This allows clients to come in and buy something off the floor and take it home the same day. There is no need to wait for an order to go through. What is available in the store can be taken the same day. Providing customers with unique furniture and no wait time is what gives the competitive advantage of convenience to Consign-It over large scale furniture stores. According to Tony, “Convenience is huge to people, they want it now.”

The innovation to sell to vendors was a business decision made to save time and money for Consign-It. The business vision is to combine the old with the new, selling older merchandise while still staying in today’s style. In order to do that, vendors buy or pick their own materials to display within their booth space. This reduces the burden on Consign-It to pick more products themselves. There may be more work in managing relationships and less control involved with inventory coming from multiple people, but the place is always full of furniture. The small-scale business allows interactions between customer and merchant to be quick and efficient. Tony mentions that when someone has a question on social media for the company like dimensions of furniture, he can get back to them quickly with answers.

Overall impact

Individuals looking to spice up their homes are not the only people interested in repurposed furniture. Business leaders, companies, and churches are also customers interested in repurposed furniture.

When asked which UN Sustainability Goals his company is helping fulfill General Manager Tony Rasczyk replied with goals 9, 11, 12, 13, and 15.

Goal 9, Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure, focuses on making sustainable industrial growth and innovations that are kind to the planet. By reusing discarded furniture, large amounts of materials are kept out of landfills every year. Additionally, no new materials are needed to create new furniture, so manufacturing impacts are decreased. A simple upholstery job or some paint has the potential to transform an antique into something modern looking with a lower environmental footprint.

Goal 11, Sustainable Cities and Communities, is central to the Consign-It business. Pre-owned furniture is a great way to increase the sustainability of a home. Also, the vendors at the location also benefit in this way. Consign-It provides a store front for the community to sell and display their inventory, no matter how small. This may prove more sustainable than each of these vendors buying their own building to sell from.

Goal 12, Responsible Consumption and Production, is yet again at the heart of the company. By buying used furniture, customers are reducing their community’s waste and reducing production and material extraction.

Goal 13, Climate Action, is directly affected by recycling. Choosing not to use new materials or new manufacturing processes cuts down on pollution from transportation, material extraction, and general furniture production.

Goal 15, Life on Land, focuses on sustainably managing forests, halting land degradation, and maintaining biodiversity. Many pieces of furniture require wood and other material from trees for production. According to Tony “if you’re not manufacturing as much, you’re not polluting the air, because you’re recycling furniture.” By reducing the amount of furniture pieces made, the quantity of trees cut down and used as materials is also reduced.

Business benefit

Consign-It receives ten percent of the revenue achieved by the vendors in their booths. “The ten percent helps our bottom line, but it also helps them [vendors] too”. The vendors have creative freedom to pick items that would be otherwise difficult to track down by one company alone; some of their vendors gather old material out in the country and bring it to the city so customers can purchase different styles for their homes. The vendors also allow for a large variety and diversity of material to show off, something that may be a nightmare of inventory for other businesses. The vendors also bring in customers looking for something particular because they saw the vendor had something that was posted on social media. This creates free promotion that the base company didn’t have to spend any time or money on. Once the customer is in the door, then they may see other things they like and continue the sales and promotion of the company's inventory. Additionally, because most are pre-owned, the items sold normally have a much lower price tag in comparison to new furniture companies, which keep customers happy and loyal to their business.

Social and environmental benefit

A business strategy that gets the community involved is always a helpful one. The vendors, after paying their rent and giving ten percent of their sales get to keep the rest of their earnings from the sale. These people can make a profit from a business simply by helping each other. Each vendor knows people who are looking to buy, so the name of the company is being distributed with every new vendor and all of their friends or clients. Some of the vendors shared that they enjoy the extra money as a hobby while others do the sales for their main source of income.

Nothing is ever wasted once it enters the store. After about one hundred days, if something is unable to sell, Consign-It often donates the item to Habitat for Humanity or local churches. The general manager tries to help out charities, auctions, and hurting families as ways to give back to the community. He even shared a story about how he donated furniture to a local family whose house had previously burned down.

There are several environmental benefits to selling used furniture as opposed to new: reduction of waste in landfills, pollution prevention, and extraction of new materials. They use recycled cardboard as buffers for stacking furniture for the customers, instead of throwing it away. All unsold items are donated so they can be used instead of thrown away. These contributions are tied to goals 13 and 15, climate action and life on land respectively.

These ideas of reselling products and renting space to other members in the community could be used to make other businesses more sustainable.

Interview

Tony Rasczyk, General Manager