Every consignment and resale operator eventually learns the same hard lesson: pricing is the business. Price too high and the item ages on the rack while your consignor loses patience. Price too low and you gave margin away at intake, permanently. Here is a repeatable way to price used inventory that does not depend on one veteran employee's gut.
Start With the Split, Because the Split Shapes the Price
In consignment, the price and the split are one negotiation, not two. Common structures across the resale industry cluster around an even split, with the store's share typically rising for low-priced, labor-heavy goods and the consignor's share rising for luxury and high-ticket pieces, where sourcing the item is the hard part. Many stores also use tiered splits that give the consignor a better percentage above certain price points.
Whatever you choose, two rules keep it healthy:
- Put it in writing at intake, along with the consignment period, the markdown schedule, and what happens to unsold items.
- Model your real economics. Your share of the sale has to cover rent, labor, payment processing, and the floor space the item occupies for its whole consignment period, not just the moment it sells.
Price From Sold Comps, Not Asking Prices
The single biggest pricing mistake in resale is benchmarking against what other people are asking. Asking prices are wishes. Sold prices are the market.
For anything brandable or searchable, check completed and sold listings on the big marketplaces and note three things: what condition the sold examples were in, how long they took to sell, and where the price clustered. Your store price should sit near that cluster, adjusted for the advantages you offer that a marketplace does not: the buyer can see and touch the item, take it home today, and return to a real counter if something is wrong.
For everyday, non-brandable goods where comps are thin, the working convention across the resale trade is a fraction of original retail that drops with condition and age. Like-new mass-market goods commonly land around a quarter to a third of original retail, with well-used items below that. Treat that as a starting anchor, then let your own sell-through data tune it by category.
Set a Condition Tier at Intake, and Be Ruthless
Condition drives more price variance in secondhand goods than brand does. A simple four-tier scale (new with tags, excellent, good, fair) applied consistently at intake does three jobs at once: it standardizes pricing across employees, it sets consignor expectations before the item hits the floor, and it gives you clean data on which tiers actually sell in your market.
Being ruthless matters. Accepting marginal items to be polite is how racks fill with goods that will never sell at a price the consignor will accept. A clear, posted intake standard protects the relationship better than a quiet markdown fight three months later.
Put Markdowns on a Calendar, Not a Mood
Aged inventory is the profit leak of resale. The fix is a markdown schedule that is agreed at intake and executed automatically: a common pattern steps the price down after set intervals on the floor, with the item returned to the consignor or donated at the end of the period if it has not sold.
The exact intervals matter less than the automation. When markdowns depend on someone remembering, they happen late or not at all, and every late markdown is floor space that a fresh, full-margin item could have occupied. Your system should apply the schedule, show the consignor where their item stands, and surface the items that have aged past their period.
Let the Data Price the Repetitive Half
None of the discipline above requires more hours. It requires the repetitive parts to stop being manual:
- Comps at intake. Bravo's platform includes AI-assisted price estimation that draws on real marketplace sales data, so the person at the counter sees a defensible price range in seconds instead of alt-tabbing through sold listings while the consignor waits.
- Automatic markdown rules. Schedules apply themselves, by category or by item, and the floor price is always the system price.
- Consignor accounting without spreadsheets. Splits, payouts, and unsold-item handling calculate from the rules you set at intake, so the month-end consignor settlement is a report, not a project.
- Online listing from day one. Unique inventory earns its best price when online buyers can find it. Pushing items to your online channels at intake widens the buyer pool beyond walk-in traffic.
That combination, market-comp pricing plus automated markdowns plus clean consignor accounting, is the core of what consignment point of sale software should do for a resale operation. If you run consignment alongside buys and trades, our guide to buy, sell, trade, and consignment systems covers how the models work together in one store, and if you are comparing platforms, see how Bravo compares to SimpleConsign.
A Simple Weekly Pricing Routine
Fifteen minutes a week keeps the whole system honest:
- Review last week's sales by category: what sold within two weeks of intake, and what has crossed its first markdown without selling.
- Adjust intake anchors for any category that is consistently selling on day one (priced too low) or consistently hitting markdowns (priced too high).
- Pull the aged-inventory report and action every item past its period: return, donate, or clearance.
- Spot-check five recent intakes against current sold comps to keep the team's pricing calibrated.
Pricing used inventory well is not a talent. It is a process, and it is one of the highest-leverage processes in the building. If you want to see how Bravo automates the comps, the markdowns, and the consignor payouts, book a demo and bring your hardest-to-price rack with you.