Q+A with our fearless leader, Bonnie Kallenberg

Bonnie Kallenberg, owner of Finders Keepers Consignment Stores, gets asked a lot of questions. She was recently asked: "What's the most unusual thing anyone has ever purchased in one of your stores?" Here's her answer:

Tyler Perry, a movie producer, lives and films movies and television shows all around Atlanta so we have his set designers in the stores often. The most memorable purchase of theirs was a large amount of dressy and designer clothing, shoes and accessories to use in the closet scene of “Diary of a Mad Black Woman”. The YouTube link is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJKkCkNjTZQ where you can see the actors trash a closet full of clothing from Finders Keepers about 2 minutes and 30 seconds into the clip!

p.s. winter clearance starts TODAY at the Boutique! All of our winter merchandise has been marked down, so come stock up on designer goodies at even lower prices.

Spring Cleaning

Boutique Girl Ivana is also a student at SCAD. I love it when she brings her sketches into work with her. It gives me a new appreciation for the creative process that goes behind every single item of clothing. Her professor's notes are scrawled all over her designs (well, in a piece of wax paper so that the professor can correct the design without actually making a mark on it.) And when I first see Ivana's designs I am always simply blown away, and out of sheer defense of her I proclaim I can see nothing wrong and how dare her professor tell her anything differently and doesn't she understand that creativity is subjective?! And then I see the corrections and marvel at the difference the tiniest tweak here or there makes to the whole design.

Ivana is also in a merchandising class right now, so her job at Boutique suits her well, since she's often assigned projects involving displays and marketing. She had such an assignment last week. The store is in its hardest phase to display: the dreaded in-between-seasons: bulky winter stuff still puffs out between the lighter linens and silks of spring... a wool coat and a sundress sit side-by-side on the rack. (Side note: winter clearance begins NEXT WEEK!!) So she had her work cut out for her when she got an assignment to build a display portfolio. Here are a few of her pictures:

It's beginning to look a lot like...

I'm not much for the annual holiday-music domination of radio stations, or for the fact that Macy's usually has its halls decked while it's still hot enough to don a swimsuit. But there's something about decorating our stores that dusts off my Christmas spirit each November. The ornaments, presents, wrapping paper, ribbon, tinsel, and lights create a hustle and bustle in the air: a new kind of anticipation even if the store is quiet at the time. If you decorate it, they will come... :)

Something about the festivity also brings the staff together like a second family as we string up lights and spray paint plastic Christmas trees from Big-Lots. Simply: it's a lot of fun and we're a group of grown ups that really digs being silly.