Part 2
This summer, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Tina Hamlin Beer, the owner of Coast Consignment and decor soulmate matchmaker. Coast has been a long-time cherished business on the North Shore, serving its customers and matching them with their decor soulmates for 21 years. Tina’s father, Richard Beer started the business under the name, Coast Canada in 2004 and distributed antiques from his homeland in England. They rebranded the business as Coast Consignment in 2008.
What are your plans for Coast’s future?
Our plans for Coast’s future is to ensure the longevity of this company, to continue to keep it a family owned business with our long term team of employees. They are fantastic and know the business inside and out. We hope to expand our offerings, continue to renovate and hopefully stay in the same location that we are at now.
We love your energy. We love to have you in the store and we think our customer service is what sets us apart; we appreciate each and every one of our customers and our consignment clients. Without you, we wouldn’t be where we are today!
We want to grow and prosper and give back to the community. We’re trying to set up a North Shore Design District with a long term parking lot, goals of beautification of our community with more greenery, and street banners. There are lots of things that we, as a company, want to do: to continue to be a contributing member of the community, to offer an amazing collection of curated goods to help you make your home, office, and cabin as beautiful as can be, and a place that you want to spend time at.
There are days when being a small business owner comes with many challenges, especially in the last several years, not only did we go through a pandemic, but we’ve gone through economic turmoil after economic turmoil. This has made things very difficult to continue to stay in a business for a small business. And so we work really hard to ensure our longevity by being quick to pivot and make changes to ensure that we make the smart and right decisions to stay in business.
We need our clients and customers to continue their loyalty and their patronage and tell their friends and family about us.
It isn’t always easy, because we’re not only a retailer, but a service industry, serving our consignment clients and providing professional appraisals for our appraisal clients, and ensuring that we give the best customer service. But as long as we’re willing to make fast and quick changes and pivot on the spot, I think we can ensure our long term success. We need our clients and customers to continue their loyalty and their patronage and tell their friends and family about us.
Word of mouth is so powerful, and it’s been one of our best ways of marketing. We get our best clients from word of mouth and from my previous real estate career, knowing and working with many of North Shore’s and Vancouver’s most successful realtors has ensured that I have a good pipeline to homes that are being sold and downsized, especially fine homes and the fine items in those homes and estates.
I am so glad that that’s your future plans. Recently, I told one of my neighbors about Coast Consignment, and I urged her, even just go and have a look, it’s so awesome there!
Thank you. Our showroom is like a gallery. You are going into a store that has pieces that will fit any budget. Priced anywhere from $5 to $10,000 and it’s a pleasant place to go. Our staff are friendly. They make you feel welcome. The more people that come, even if only some of them are buying, the more energy it creates. And then other people start buying. To see people enjoying our showroom, that’s what makes me happy.
How to consign
What is the first step for someone thinking about consigning?
The first step for consigning is to figure out what items are not serving you anymore and let them go. Once you know which items you aren’t going to be keeping, whether it be that you want to change your interior design, or you’re downsizing, find out as much information that you have available. This especially applies if you are dealing with a family or friends’ estate,
If you have purchase receipts or information that someone’s left you about it, you can see or know what the brand name is, and potentially the age, check their physical condition. Once you have all of that information, take photos and email those photos to us or text them, and we can take a look at them and let you know which items are good for consignment. We will also let know which are in demand in the current market, and we will let you know what we can take. And then we prepare a valuation for you.
Is there anything that you would not accept into the showroom?
That is a great question, because I would say that 75% of the items out there are not saleable in the current market. There are many items that we consider to have negative value. Those are items that there is no demand for. The style and physical condition is poor and their quality is poor.
They may be too large. Or they may be too heavy, such as an upright piano. You can barely give them away, and most of them can’t be given away. Unfortunately, many of them end up in the landfill, which is a waste of ivory and excellent, excellent rare woods.
What are some of your picks?
How has the industry changed over the last 10 – 20 years?
That’s another great question. The industry has changed a lot. So in the past, people were antiquing. In the 80s and the 90s, I used to see that in movies. One of my favorite movies was Baby Boom, it was all about the antiquers from New York City that would go up to Vermont and antique.
Here in Vancouver, we had a very big antique industry. In Victoria, Fort Street was the antique row, and people loved their antiques. You saw them in homes all over Metro Vancouver. The antique business weakened drastically about 20 years ago and has continually gotten weaker as trends have changed and globalization has allowed us to have a lot more choices of furniture, and fast furniture, very similar to fast fashion available to us. So, consignment has changed from antique pieces to consigning more contemporary items.
Our plans for Coast’s future is to ensure the longevity of this company, to continue to keep it as a family owned business, with our long term team of employees who are fantastic and know the business inside and out
I think the selection of previously loved items that you can buy has expanded exponentially. Not only that, you can buy them in different ways. Not only are there auction houses and consignment houses like ours, the thrift store and resale markets have exploded. There are large curated collections online with companies like Kingsley Bate, 1stDibs, Chairish. There’s also Facebook Marketplace, which seems to have taken over Craigslist and Kijiji.
Of course, there are risks with buying items online through other people, but also there are lots of great deals out there. What we found is that the sophistication of consignment companies for clothing and furniture has really increased with demand and for what people are looking for. Shopping at consignment companies for furniture and fashion, means you’re going to have a curated collection that’s been selected ahead of time for quality, excellent physical condition, uniqueness, interest, design, esthetic and more.
If you missed it, please read Part 1 of How to find your Decor Soulmate!
To see more of Coast Consignment’s beautiful pieces, please visit their North Vancouver showroom at 171 Pemberton Avenue or view their listings.