Like I’ve said before, the buzz is flying all over the St. Louis area about a women’s only resale shop in south county getting a reality TV deal with the Style Network…. I have personally never shopped at this particular store before, in fact, I had only heard of this store a handful of times before hearing about the TV deal.
So naturally, I began to look into it. From a glance it looks to be an amazing opportunity for this store, as well as, an opportunity to bring St. Louis resale into the national spotlight. Of course this is excellent (general) news for the St. Louis resale community (myself included), but looking into the company’s reviews from it’s customers, my impressions are beginning to shift from optimistic to more concerned.
Here are a few that I found within just a few minutes on google.
I found this a decent place to shop for designer clothing items, however unless they are on sale, the pricing is not much better than retail. Most disappointing was their attitude about consignment, I’ll go elsewhere in the future for that. One day I brought in about 40 items, most of them were formal gowns and cocktail dresses bought in the last year or so and worn once. A few had matching shoes and purses. I was shocked that they turned down ALL of them! 40 really nice items and they could not accept even ONE??? Unbelievable! No explanation nor reason was given. Shocked! Maybe they were over-stocked or something, but if so it would be nice to be told that before I hauled it all inside. If you’d like to consign designer clothing, it may not be worth the time and trouble to bother bringing it to Women’s Closet Exchange. Many of the exact same items were accepted at other ‘upscale resale’ shops. – A WCE customer review – 3 weeks ago.
I feel the same. I brought in formal wear several of which still had the tags on them, but I cannot wear them as I have lost a significant amount of weight. While I spent time shopping for an outfit for a wedding, they were supposed to be evaluating them. When I was finally called, the “Buyer” was so rude, telling me that these were not what they are looking for at this time and “take your items right out; unhuh huh right out,” repeating this several times across the store as I was carrying my dresses out. I was made to feel like I had brought in rags. This was my first time in this shop and my last. I understand each business has a right to say yes or no, but to be rude about it was unnecessary. Do yourself a favor, shop somewhere else. – A WCE customer review – About a year ago.
I’ve never felt so disrespected. I brought four bags of carefully folded clothes from high quality brands (Banana Republic, J. Crew, Ann Taylor) worth over $1000. I wanted to get an estimate of what the clothes would be worth were I to sell them to the store. They offered me $20. They put down many articles of my clothing as they were disrespectfully rummaging through my bags (commenting that many of them were too small for their shoppers – size M!) and then shoved the clothes back into the bags. I pointed out that my clothes had been folded when I went in and they had the nerve to sass me and tell me that they didn’t have time. Needless to say, I left with my clothes and intend to sell them for a fair market value on eBay. DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME WITH THIS PLACE. The women working there should be ashamed of the scam that they are trying to pull. – A WCE customer review – About 2 years ago.
Now I know you can’t please everyone, but these are minor, and should not have made it all the way to a customer writing a poor review due to defective attitudes from the staff.
This honestly makes me want to throw my arms up in frustration!. Here, this company has the most incredible opportunity, that many of us could only dream about, and they are squandering its full potential. Their focused appears to have shifted from bettering the company and the community, to bettering only themselves. This truly is a shame, not only for this company, but for the rest of us that are trying to bring the resale industry up in St. Louis, and bad business just makes the rest of us work harder to make up for their downfalls. Bad reviews don’t hurt individual resale shops, per say, but they damage the overall industry. We want to grow the percentage of resale shoppers, and these reviews aren’t helping.
It truly is time for something better.
Time to step up our game, and hit this area with everything we’ve got.
WE WILL show the STL area what this industry is truly about.
This is why our company is hardcore about community improvement and involvement, we stay true to our roots!
STL = Show The Love
Cargo Train Apparel Exchange 