My Sister’s House consignment sale women’s clothing (photo by Lauren Franco)
The 17th biannual My Sister’s House sale has relocated to downtown Abilene – the fourth location for the consignment sale since its opening sale in the spring of 2010.
ACU alumni and sisters Summer Walters and Kate Stover began hosting the consignment sale as a place for the community to browse thousands of clothes, jewelry and household items available for purchase. Each sale receives products from 200-300 consignors to fill a large warehouse space.
Stover said the duo has not yet entertained the idea of expanding outside of Abilene but is excited to host the event downtown again.
“Nobody just happened to drive by where we were before,” said Stover. “People were having to come out and find us, so we’re going to get a lot more walk-in traffic. This venue is definitely going to attract more shoppers.”
My Sister’s House consignment sale home goods (Photo by Lauren Franco)
Walters said when they first started hosting the event, it was on a much smaller scale. Now they have a new computerized system that progressed the sale from its old system of all handwritten tags.
With the old system, they would have to cut tags as people were checking out, total the amount on a calculator and separate all cut tags into files by consignor number. When the sale concluded, they would retrieve the tags from the files and total the amount owed. Now, consignors can log in at the end of the day and see how many products they sold that day and how much money they made.
In 2012, the sisters won Springboard, an Abilene-based competition in which young entrepreneurs can win up to $100,000 to use as they develop their business locally. Walters said Springboard happened to occur at the same time as their spring sale, forcing the volunteers to take over while they competed.
My Sister’s House consignment sale welcome sign (Photo by Lauren Franco)
She said when they decided to enter the competition, they were unsure about how much to invest back into the event.
“We had sort of jumped into a business without having a business background,” said Walters. “We are teachers and young moms. We thought, ‘this will force us to write a good business plan and meet with people who know how to invest in a business.’ It was a great process to help us learn.”
This year, the My Sister’s House sale has reached its highest number in its history of registered consignors and items entered.
Participating food trucks will be in attendance at every event, and Coconut Cactus Co. will have a succulent building activity on site Saturday. There will be a public sale Friday from 9 a.m.-8 p.m., a half-price, pre-sale Saturday with a $5 entry fee at the door and a public half-price sale on Sunday from noon-5 p.m.
