Rada Boutique and Upscale Consignment #2

It isn’t every day that a small business owner tells a customer not to buy something.  But for Rada Frohlichstein, owner of Rada Boutique and Upscale Consignment located at 394 Main St. in downtown Wakefield, sometimes doing just that makes good business sense.

Take the customer who came in one day looking for a new top.  The customer had a date that night, and she said she “needed” a white lacey top to wear.  What she’d forgotten, but Frohlicstein remembered, was that she already had such a top.  She’d bought it at Rada a year earlier.

“Oh my God,” the customer said.  “I forgot all about it.”

Frohlichstein may have lost a sale that day, but the customer would be back.  She bought some jewelry on her return trip, Frohlichstein recalled at the shop last Friday.

So why didn’t Frohlicstein just let the customer buy the top?

Because if she did, then the customer would be wasting her money, she said, and that’s no way to keep people coming back.

“You lose it [the sale] for one day,” Frohlicstein added, “but you gain so much more by being honest with your customer.”

Of course Frohlicstein doesn’t just talk customers out of buying things; she makes actual sales as well.  Rada averages about $500 a day in sales, Frohlicstein said.

Prices at Rada vary, with boutique items priced as low as $8 and as high as $228.  The range for consignment, or used, items is even greater, with merchandise going for as little as $5, and as much as $1,500.  Chanel bags and Christian Dior fur coats are the items found at the high end of the consignment price range, Frohlicstein said.

The folks at Rada pride themselves on making sure customers know how to work their new purchases into their many different looks.  It’s not just about selling their customers clothes, Frohlicstein said; it’s about “dressing” them.

“That’s what’s cool here,” Debbie Luisi, Frohlicstein’s longtime friend who helps at the shop on an as needed basis, said at the shop a few weeks ago.  “You know everyone that comes in.  We know their sizes.  You know what they like.”  When a new piece of clothing comes in that matches a particular customer’s style, Luisi noted, they’ll hold it for that customer.  It’s all part of knowing their customers and understanding these customers’ individual styles.

Given this commitment to “dressing” her customers, does Frohlicstein ever talk customers out of buying clothes she doesn’t think look good them?

“God yes,” she said, and gave an example of a woman who wanted to buy a jumpsuit that was about three sizes too small.

Frohlicstein worked harder that day to not make a sale than she’s ever worked to make a sale, she said.  She assured the customer that she could order a better size, and in the end, she succeeded in talking the customer out of the purchase.  But only temporarily.

“Three days later she came back when I wasn’t here and bought the suit,” Frohlicstein laughed.

Well, she tried.

Three Businesses with SWOT

Costco Wholesale Corporation
Strengths	Weaknesses	Opportunities	Threats
Price positioning leads to increased customer loyalty	Limited product choice	Strong growth expectations in Asian markets	High exposure to low growth mature markets
Low cost operating model		Growing demand for private label brands	Increasing labor and healthcare costs
Improved revenue and debt position		Online sales opportunities	Foreign exchange rate fluctuations

*Source: DATAMONITOR, Costco Wholesale Corporation SWOT Analysis. Jun2011, p1-10. 10p.

Target Corporation
Strengths	Weaknesses	Opportunities	Threats
One of the largest retailers with well established presence in the US	Rising write-offs in credit cards business will affect the profitability adversely	Increased presence in the food and grocery segment through PFresh concept	Low consumer confidence affects discretionary spending adversely
Differentiation through strong merchandise assortments–an edge over Wal-Mart	Involvement in legal proceedings	Expanding presence in new as well as existing markets	Increased overlap in product assortment may erode Target’s competitive advantage
Price positioning adjusted to consumer behavior and reinforced through value marketing-message		Strong presence in e-commerce and innovations in m-commerce will increase revenues as the channels grow	Tightening regulations across the US credit cards industry

*Source: DATAMONITOR, Target Corporation SWOT Analysis; Aug2011, p1-11, 11p

McDonald’s Corporation
Strengths	Weaknesses	Opportunities	Threats
Strong brand value sustains the company’s leadership position	Legal proceedings affect brand image adversely	Growth of franchisee operated restaurants	Rise in food prices
Diversified geographic presence provides opportunity to gain from economic buoyancy in emerging markets	Product failures such as Arch Deluxe	Positive outlook for out-of-home eating market can boost top line in long run	Intense competition in retail food industry
Large scale of operation compared to peers		Growing hot drinks market - another favorable trend to drive topline	Growing consumer consciousness for healthy food products

*Source: DATAMONITOR, McDonald's Corporation SWOT Analysis; Apr2011, p1-10, 10p

Rada Boutique and Upscale Consignment

            At Rada Boutique and Upscale Consignment in Wakefield, they do things just a little different.

            They don’t just sell clothes to women, owner Rada Frohlichstein said at the store last week; they “dress them.”

            It’s a unique philosophy that matches their unique store.  As its name implies, Rada Boutique and Upscale Consignment, located at 394 Main St. in downtown Wakefield, mixes consignment clothing with boutique clothing.  This means the racks are filled with the latest fashions from around the world as well as pre-owned clothing.  The breakdown of pre-owned to boutique is pretty even.

            “Fifty-fifty,” Frohlichstein said.

            While the folks at Rada pride themselves on doing more for their customers than simply selling them clothes, this doesn’t mean everyone who comes into the store is forced to buy a whole new outfit.  It’s more about making sure customers know how to work their new purchases into their many different looks.

            “We want to make sure if a woman purchases a bracelet, she knows that she can put it with this color, that color, this outfit, that outfit, this occasion, that occasion,” Frohlichstein said.

            Frohlichstein believes this commitment to “dressing” her customers is one of the things that makes her store different from a store one might find at a shopping mall, where she feels people buy more than they need, and don’t get the appropriate fashion assistance.

            “I know how to dress myself,” she said, but noted that not everyone does.  “They’re endlessly roaming and they get the wrong stuff,” she said of helpless mall customers.  “You should be beautiful when you shop.”

            “That’s what’s cool here,” added Frohlichstein’s longtime friend, and shop-helper, Debbie Luisi.  “You know everyone that comes in, we know their sizes, you know what they like.”  When a new piece of clothing comes in that matches a particular customer’s style, Luisi noted, they’ll hold it for that customer.  It’s all part of knowing their customers and understanding these customers’ individual styles.

            Sometimes, the staff at Rada knows their customers better than their customers know themselves.

            “One day,” Frohlichstein said, “a customer comes in and she goes, ‘I have a date and I need this.”  The customer was looking for a white lacey top, Frohlicstein recalled, and had forgotten that a year before she had bought just such a top at the shop.  Frohlichstein hadn’t forgotten, however, and reminded her customer of it.  “She said, ‘Oh my God, I forgot about it.’”

            Four years after Rada Boutique and Upscale Consignment opened in Wakefield, Frohlichstein and her team must be doing something right, as just last month she opened a second Rada shop in nearby Melrose.  Unlike the Wakefield location, this shop is starting out as just a boutique.  “We will feature consignment as we have a collection worthy of it,” Frohlichstein said.  Though, as there always seems to be a little twist at Rada, she noted a slight variation that’s planned for the Melrose consignment clothes.

            “New with tags,” she said, meaning that while the clothes will be pre-owned, they will never have been worn before.  It’s just one more thing that makes Rada Boutique and Upscale Consignment different.