Nicole Pollard, owner of Kid to Kid, a second-hand children’s clothing seller and Tori Helton, store manager, talk about their back-to-school items.
When pregnant Roxy McDonald walks through the door at Kid to Kid’s Rockwall location with her daughter in tow, she’s instantly greeted by the staff. She’s been coming to the store for years, so they all know her by name.
“I need to save money,” McDonald said. “I found a lot of cute clothes [here] between school clothes for [my daughter] coming into preschool this year and for the baby. The quality here is just phenomenal and the staff is amazing.”
Kid to Kid is a nationwide children’s resale clothing franchise, where customers can sell their gently used clothes and buy high-quality, in-style items for cheaper prices.
Especially during back-to-school season, the business allows parents to outfit their kids in the trendiest clothes without breaking the bank.
Owner and store manager of second-hand children’s clothing store talk about back-to-school items.
Rockwall and Greenville owner Nicole Pollard and store manager Tori Helton spoke with The Dallas Morning News about back-to-school shopping this year and the advantages of resale. Here are some of the highlights, edited for length and clarity.
What trends do you feel like kids and parents are following as they’re shopping this year?
Helton: “Brands, I can tell you, you know, Zara, H&M, Pacsun, we’ve gotten a lot of good ones. Under Armour, Nike, your true name brand things that people love. The trends it’s really all about kind of like mommy and me, or dad and son, like they kind of want to match the parents when they reach that school age.”
“So you know…the nice Nike, Under Armour, shoes, your shoe game. Kids love their shoe game to be on point. We get a lot of the good name brand shoes, but yeah…really just wanting to kind of look like how their parents dress and everything like that. I’d say that’s a huge trend going on. Being comfortable, athletic wear, but still being trendy. So they want name brand Nikes, but they want to be comfortable and trendy.”
When you’re looking for clothing that comes in to resell, what is it that you are looking for to make sure it’s a product that you want to actually put out in the store?
Pollard: “It kind of plays both sides, because we want to make sure that if a vendor is bringing in these items, then clearly they’re looking for these items.”
“It’s a balance between making sure that what we’re seeing is very trendy and very current in the market right now, and then making it make sense to the vendor as well. So we’re having to really look at both sides of what’s coming in and then also what is going out. We’re looking for things that don’t have staining, are gently used, which of course in some sizes, that’s a lot harder to find.”
“The kids are wanting to look like their parents, and so they’re wanting those trendy, upscale items, but just not the price tag with them.”
Do you feel like resale has gone up in terms of popularity because of the way prices are increasing?
Pollard: “We have had to back in and reevaluate and say, let’s make it make more sense for [the customer] to come in and buy because the economy is getting tighter and tighter.”
“There is sometimes that we see brands that maybe necessarily are not the trending brands, but they’re going to make sense to somebody who comes in and they just want those cheaper items. We are constantly evaluating our racks and saying, ‘Does this Nike outfit make sense at this price point? Does it make sense not just for the consumer, the one that’s coming in to buy it, but does it make sense to the person we’re paying money out for it?’ So it is constantly a balance of juggling and trying to make it make sense for the community, because that’s ultimately our goal.”
What would your message be to parents during this back-to-school season?
Pollard: “I would say to continue to come back daily as we’re restocking things daily, so where you might not see something in a certain size one day, the next day, it could be completely different. And so the turnover of it, don’t just come in and expect like when you go to a big box store, to get a whole season worth of clothes. Come back weekly or daily. Sometimes, because we are constantly rotating through product, we have an enormous amount of product, and we’re ready to share that with the community.”
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