![]() ![]() Today's close at $.7332 CAD/USD was below the 61.8% retracement of the move from the March low to April high at $.7331 CAD/USD. ![]() We can still get a lot out of physical stores.The spot Canadian dollar failed to test the April high this month, while has retraced to the April lows after weakening 75 basis points on May 24/25. “For us, going online would mean taking on an enormous amount of new responsibilities: taking the clothes online, sorting them, photographing them, storing them, shipping them. “It’s a tricky thing to do online sales,” Nowicki said. Nowicki said there’s more than enough room in the resale space for Crossroads to focus on physical retail while competitors focus on digital. Both platforms offer individual sellers 50% of the price their items are tagged. The seller then receives a text when a buyer is ready to serve them.įor sellers, Crossroads is competitive with newer platforms like The RealReal. Instead, to stay competitive, the company has put all its resources into improving the physical aspect of shopping, opening two or three new stores per year for the foreseeable future and continuing to build out an in-store app developed in 2017, which allows sellers to check how long the selling line is at their local store and add their name to the in-store list remotely, before they enter the store. The main idea is to meet the consumer where he or she is shopping, and to provide the optimal selection wherever that is.”Ĭrossroads Trading’s closest thing to online sales is a sell-by-mail option, where customers can ship in their unwanted clothes remotely rather than bringing them to a physical location. The same customers who browse secondhand items online might also be interested in seeing similar items direct from brands themselves. The same customers who prefer to go in-store to buy apparel might also enjoy browsing secondhand items while they’re there. “The line between ‘online commerce’ and ‘offline commerce’ is blurring. “Whether stores are selling their own goods or secondhand items, they’re all realizing the name of the game today is offering an optimal customer experience,” said Corey Pierson, CEO of customer analytics company Custora. In July, Scott Newman, director of streetwear at StockX, told Glossy that consumers sometimes need the “face-to-face interaction to get across the line” and convert. Resellers like StockX have turned to physical retail to entice new buyers and sellers and to streamline some of the processes that can take much longer if conducted entirely digitally - it can take days or weeks for a product to be shipped, received, entered into a system and authenticated before a payment is delivered to a seller. When clothes are used and washed and worn, you want to see the condition in person. They still want cash and trade with no waiting. As the other online competitors come into this marketplace, we want to make sure we address convenience for our customers so that we don’t fall behind - but we find that there are a lot of people who are still looking for that physical experience. “We don’t have any online business at all. ![]() “A lot of digital brands are starting to move toward physical stores,” Nowicki said. Nowicki declined to give specific revenue numbers, but the most recent figures available placed the company’s annual revenue at $21 million in 2012. But Crossroads, which has 37 stores and 500 total employees, has made physical retail its sole area of focus. Most of the big players in the space today started online-only, like The RealReal, and have slowly expanded into physical retail over the years as it became clear that physical retail is still a valuable sales channel. It became cool to thrift and buy pre-owned.” But people were more open to resale during the economic downturn. We sell contemporary clothing, usually not more than 2 years old. “I would say that probably the turning point was with the economic downturn,” she said. Nowicki said marketing Crossroads as a resale platform that’s distinct from thrift - which has been a goal, considering thrift’s cheap connotations - has also become easier. ![]() Crossroads Trading is hoping to capitalize on the growth of the resale sector by doubling down on its physical retail strategy, something that it believes sets it apart from its competitors. ![]()
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