Consignment Shops Across the Country and Abroad Join Innovative Marketing Alliance to Promote Consignment Shopping

Birmingham, AL, July 30, 2009 --(PR.com)-- Consignment Chic is an innovative marketing alliance among consignment and resale shop owners dedicated to promoting consignment shopping. Consignment Chic began as a local marketing partnership of Birmingham, Alabama area consignment shop owners via a weekly television show and companion website of the same name. However in June 2009, Tracy True Dismukes, founder of Consignment Chic, announced that Consignment Chic would be expanding partnerships nationally and internationally to create an online community for consignment shoppers. In the first month since the announcement, over thirty consignment shop owners in the United States and Canada have joined this unprecedented and innovative marketing alliance.

Consignment Chic hosts a website (www.consignmentchic.com) that has quickly become the online community for consignment shoppers and will soon contain an online consignment store filled with the best items from the participating consignment shop partner stores. The goal of the resale shops in this alliance is to convert potential customers on the internet to consistent consignment shoppers not only online but also in their brick and mortar stores. By partnering together with other consignment shop owners, each store is able to leverage its advertising budget in a much larger and effective way than one business can do on its own. At the helm is Dismukes, a seasoned 15 year veteran of the consignment industry and former bank consultant, who is leading the charge with massive marketing and public relations exposure monthly for all the partner stores.

Dismukes knew that the key to thriving is this economy was to continuously attract new customers. “The best way to draw new customers is to go where the customers are and that is on the internet. Traditional advertising is declining in its effectiveness, so now is the perfect time for stores to divert a portion of their traditional advertising budget and reallocate it to their internet presence,” explained Dismukes. Consignment Chic spent months creating a prominent presence on the internet among those who are interested in consignment and now consignment shops from across the country and abroad are able to reach a larger and more targeted worldwide audience who is specifically interested in consignment.

Also the owner of a chain of three consignment shops called Collage Designer Consignment and Collage Plus Sizes (www.shopcollage.com) in Birmingham, Alabama, Dismukes is the Immediate Past President of NARTS, the National Association of Resale and Thrift Shops. Consignment Chic is a member of NARTS and ECMTA, the E-Commerce Merchants Trade Association.

Dismukes is the Host and Executive Producer of the Consignment Chic television show on the local CW affiliate and Owner of ConsignmentChic.com, a consumer-focused national website with video clips, blogs, store finder, message boards and information to educate and energize consumers about consignment shopping. This active online community for consignment shoppers is set to launch online shopping in an e-Commerce store comprised of merchandise from consignment shops across the country in August, 2009.

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