INTRODUCTION (very informally)
HELLO EVERYONE!! We (fyi there is no “we” just “I” but “we” sounds nicer) created this page to allow brands to get some relevant insights directly from us. Well of course, you can also get insights or perspectives from brands that have worked with us previously provided you have the connections.
In case you don’t know, Pluto Days is owned by Planet Days! This means that we wear many hats while we run this little shop and one of them is being a fellow small business like our vendors. Trust us when we say that we understand your perspectives and concerns in considering a consignment space. We also come from a brand that don’t have connections to other brands (online “friendships” if you will) so we know the struggle of not having anyone to talk to that can relate to business stuffs. When you read the content of this page, we hope that you can also think of us as Planet Days (vendor perspective) rather than solely Pluto Days! We promise that the content here is as objective as it can be with the intention of sharing more information to brands that are interested in working with us, also pssstttt there is no way a vendor will know more about our store than us ദ്ദി(˵ •̀ ᴗ - ˵ ) ✧
WHATEVER IS PLUTO DAYS?
We created this space with the main intention of having a space to sell our items from Planet Days! So yes, the whole consignment concept is secondary in nature although it has evolved into a distinctive feature of our store. That being said, we have been working very hard since our opening in 2022 to continuously invest back into the store to improve and diversify our own stock levels to be less reliant/ profit motivated when it comes to having vendors, this has allowed us to be able to cope with lesser vendors in times of non-peak months or be in a position to reject applicants despite having availability to maintain the standards in store.
We believe that maintaining the quality of products in store is far more important than partnering with a vendor who might not be ready for a retail space. It is also beneficial for the long term survival for our store for us and our future partner vendors when we are able to continue attracting footfall by offering customers quality products. When you work with us, your rental goes directly to the operations of the store including expenses like rental, manpower, packaging, Wi-Fi, electricity etc. We sincerely wish for all of our vendors to have a great experience with us!
IS RETAIL FOR YOU? OR ARE YOU AN EVENTS PERSON.
We think is important to set the right expectations especially if you have no experience with selling products offline so let’s talk about it! To start off, there is a stark difference between doing pop ups or events compared to selling at a physical retail store.
For pop ups and events, most likely you will need to personally man your own space and handle sales! This means sitting behind a table for the entire event duration and having the ability to interact with footfall in hopes of converting them into sales which might not be for everyone.
In contrast, working as a vendor with us means just heading down minimally twice, to drop off and collect your products as manpower is handled by us! You stand to benefit from the overall footfall that the shop receives and retail footfall are more likely to walk around the entire shop at least once. This means you have chances of daily sales which can translate into one source of income stream for your business rather than only relying on online sales AND it relieves you from interacting with customers or preparing for online drops and shipping products which can be time consuming.
However, it is important to note the differences in customer behaviors when it comes to events compared to retail. For pop ups and events, impulse purchases are triggered on a higher scale compared to a retail store. Events are often short term and already specifically targeted to a certain audience, if your products are suited to the catered audience, it would serve to boost impulse and potential purchases exponentially. Additionally, most events and pop ups are bigger in scale in terms of area, customers might not be willing to head back to your area due to footfall crowd or distance which further reinforces impulse purchases. This is not evident in retail particularly in a relatively small shop like ours with a highly condensed amount of goods presented. Here, customers can take their time to compare similar products from different brands due to the close proximity and they can also decide to come back another day to make their purchase. This means higher competition between vendors and brands need to make sure that their products are attractive- which is why we have high curation standards!