ASHEVILLE, N.C. (828newsNOW) — Second Gear, an outdoor gear and apparel consignment shop, has been an Asheville staple of outdoor adventure and community-oriented business since 2004. Later this week, in conjunction with the consignment platform SimpleConsign, Second Gear will host an event for the next generation of consignment entrepreneurs.

What to expect at Resale 101

The Second Gear event, “Resale 101: Starting Your Dream Business,” will be held from 6:30 to 8 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 25 at the Second Gear shop, 52 Westgate Parkway.

“It’s a light social for anyone who’s interested in pursuing a business like ours, which is in consignment,” explained Rhea Lidowski, Second Gear marketing manager. “It’s in partnership with our point-of-sale inventory management platform group, called SimpleConsign.”

Second Gear has been partnered with SimpleConsign since 2012. According to Lidowski, the platform has been a major reason for the level of success Second Gear has experienced over the last decade.

“I mean, SimpleConsign has allowed us to get where we are because it’s just so keyed into our whole operation, how we do it, and we’ve developed with them as they’ve developed, vice-versa,” Lidowski said. “Anything that we were learning and needing, they were using to also program their programs.”

Lidowski said that SimpleConsign is a great platform, in particular, for new consignment store owners, the target audience for Resale 101 event. For new businesses, the software offers a “Store Launch” program, which provides entrepreneurs with all the consignment tools on the platform for 70% of the price until the store earns its first $75,000.

The event is designed for shop owners preparing to open their first consignment store – think anything from thrift stores to art shops – or are in the beginning stages of their operation.

Shifting consignment into high gear

For Second Gear, which began to use the software over a decade into their consignment journey, SimpleConsign was transformative.

“We have grown in size, and revenue and number of consigners since the day this business opened up 21 years ago, and so as you can imagine, it gets pretty beefy very quickly when it comes to professionally organizing what consigners are bringing in, how much money they’re getting for it, what the business is getting for it, how we inventory it, how we manage that inventory,” Lidowski said.

According to the marketing manager, SimpleConsign was equipped to handle all of those challenges and more.

“It streamlined our payout process for consigners, it reduced any manual errors and saved just valuable time, lots of valuable time,” Lidowski said.

After Hurricane Helene, Second Gear’s previous storefront on Riverside Drive was destroyed, ruining or washing away hundreds of consignment items. However, the store was able to take care of its consigners in large part thanks to their SimpleConsign records.

“Our community are the consigners. They’re our community, it’s not our building. It’s the people who come and shop and consign their gear and their outdoor apparel,” Lidowski said. “We were able to still maintain what all our store credit was. It wasn’t a paper book that got washed away, right? We still have consigners from the first year we opened 21 years ago in this system, and if they had store credit, that store credit stayed around until today.”

For more information about SimpleConsign, visit www.simpleconsign.com.

For more information about Second Gear, visit www.secondgearwnc.com.