First-class shopping, secondhand prices

The tag on the grandfather clock chiming in the corner of a Bonita Springs consignment shop reads $795, half the price of the marble top table positioned nearby. An entertainment center on the other side of the store looks like a built-in, and with a price near $2,000, it could be.

A red tag taped to its side reads "sold."

This isn't any thrift shop, but then, this isn't any cause.

The money shoppers spend redecorating their houses with items purchased at the recently opened Liberty Youth Ranch Upscale Shop will help make a home for an abandoned or abused child.

The ranch, a 156-acre, privately run haven for parentless kids that aims to break ground in 30 to 60 days, plans to use revenue from the shop to generate half its annual operating expenses.

The project's founder, Alan Dimmitt, said he hopes the endeavor, augmented with an annual auction of donated cars, trucks and boats, will bring in $1 million a year.

To do that, Dimmitt can't rely on the bulk of clothes or housewares moved by some of the city's increasing number of thrift shops. To do that, he has to fill his shop's 8,300-square-foot showroom with luxury items, not vintage bargains. To do that, he has to set himself apart from a growing number of stores under the category of thrift, consignment and resale.

Photo by MICHEL FORTIER, Daily News

Naples residents Nancy Newman, foreground, and Toni Carosella, background, look over rosary beads at the Liberty Youth Ranch Upscale Shop on Old 41 Road in Bonita Springs. “It caught our attention because of the Youth Ranch,” says Carosella, “I’d like to volunteer there.” Sales at the store go to help raise money for the building phase of the ranch.

Dimmitt believes he can make it happen.

"You shop where you shop because they have the items you have a preference for," he said.

At the Liberty Youth Ranch store, Bonita Springs can get that and a bargain at the same time, he said.

The shop takes both consignment pieces and donations. It splits the profit of a sale with an owner who wants to retain some rights to an item. The donated goods are pure profit.

A glance at the Bonita Springs phone book shows close to a dozen thrift and consignment shops, many of which are attached to a cause: The Lion's Club Thrift Store, the Conservancy of Southwest Florida Upscale Resale Shoppe, and Semi-Retired Treasures, a shop operated by the Community Congregational Church of Christ that just happens to be behind the Liberty Youth Ranch's new store.

Inside, the church's shop is less a furniture store than a hunting ground.

A row of chandeliers and lighting fixtures dangle in a line down the center of the store, separating racks of clothing from neat rows of second-hand furniture. Aisles of home goods are in the rear and a table at the front of the store holds merchandise the shop is giving away for free. A cherry-colored dresser is marked $50, and that includes a mirror.

Wendall Anderson, co-manager of the store, sees his new neighbor as an asset.

"I think it will be good for us," he said. "People who don't find what they're looking for there will come here."

That's Dimmitt's thinking as well. He had Naples' rows of thrift stores in mind when he decided on opening the shop.

According to Adele Meyer, executive director of the National Association of Resale and Thrift Shops, they're both on the right path.

Another second-hand shop opening in an area is almost always a good thing, she said. Friends tell friends and the community gets used to the idea of shopping for bargains, she said. It's even better when the shops are close together, she said, because people make a day of it.

"It's kind of a boomerang effect," she said, calling to mind images of antique rows that have sprung up in major cities across the country. "People will drive further to see a lot of stores."

With the country in a fit of do-it-yourself home improvement and redecorating, sales of used furniture in particular have taken off in the past five to seven years, she said.

In Dimmitt's office a block away from the shop, he says he didn't know that particular fact, but it puts a smile on his face.

For him, the venture into retail isn't temporary. The organization bought the property on Old 41 Road where the shop sits.

The investment in a hot real estate spot aside, statistics show it could be a sound plan.

According to the National Association of Resale and Thrift Shops, the resale industry is 20,000 shops strong and growing by 5 percent each year.

Retail sales by Goodwill Industries totaled $1.47 billion in 2004, the most recent year for which statistics are available.

The Lion's Club Thrift Store, a Bonita mainstay on Pennsylvania Avenue, brings in about $400,000 a year, said Ray Crowe, who becomes its general manager July 1.

In business for close to 30 years, the store is getting bigger all the time. Running two trucks to pick up donations, it has all the merchandise it can handle at the moment, he said. After the completion of a new building for the organization's eye clinic and the Bonita Springs Assistance Office, the store will have even more room, he said.

"So far, competition hasn't hurt us at all," he said of the new stores in Bonita Springs. "A lot of people like thrift stores."

At the St. Vincent DePaul Thrift Shop on western Bonita Beach Road, a 3-foot high stuffed toy in the shape of a Rottweiler keeps company with a blond wood kitchen dining set, a pair of bikes and a hutch, all set up in a neat display outside the front door.

A Mercedes Benz is parked in the lot.

Inside, Assistant Manager Mario Torres says the shop recently joined with a location in Naples. Midway between Collier County and Fort Myers, it's a convenient location for the store's customers, he says.

It opened just more than a year ago.

Though their clientele might be a bit different, the Conservancy of Southwest Florida Upscale Resale Shoppe had similar reason to open a store in Bonita Springs in 1998.

The city was expanding and people were traveling to Naples to shop at its store there, said Amy Dupree, the store's manager.

"Bonita has come up in the world from where it used to be even 10 years ago, it's just become a new market," she said. "Everybody likes a bargain, everybody likes a deal, but it's also such a giving community."

Like the Liberty Youth Ranch Upscale Shop, the conservancy's shop takes high-end consignment pieces with name brands like Lenox, Baker and Drexel Heritage.

It takes 50 percent of the profits from the sale, for an annual profit of about $100,000 a year at the Bonita Springs location alone, Dupree said.

Though the new store is likely to have a similar clientele, Dupree said, things remain friendly.

Its manager formerly headed up her shop.

"We are in the same business," she said. "There will be competition, but it's still a friendly community, everybody tends to work with each other."