Main Street Antiques on Harrison is a 16,000 square-foot antique and vintage shop in Florida, approaching its 11th year in business. The store was founded by Liane Harding, a paramedic of 30 years who spent her off-hours hunting yard sales and wandering antique malls as a way to decompress. What started as a personal collection, grew into one of the region's larger antique retail operations.
Liane's passion for the business goes beyond the merchandise. A lifelong animal advocate and sustainability-minded retailer, she's drawn to the fact that everything in her store has had a previous life. "I have 120-year-old pieces that are in as good shape today as the day they were built," she says. Liane loves that her business model and personal hobby keep goods out of the landfills.
Day-to-day operations are managed alongside Samantha, a younger, tech-savvy manager whose ability to problem-solve on the fly has been indispensable, especially through a major software migration and the launch of a new Shopify storefront. They along with staff Gisela and Cliff, run a store with 211 consigners, hundreds of thousands of inventory items, and a business model distinct from the typical antique mall: no vendor booths, just individual consigners whose items are integrated into a single curated collection.
Before switching to SimpleConsign, Main Street Antiques had run on ConsignPro for a decade. She had mastered it over years of daily use. That familiarity made the idea of switching feel more like a threat than an opportunity.
But the limitations were real. Only one staff member could input inventory at a time. If someone was checking out a customer, the item numbers would go off-sequence the moment a second person tried to work in parallel. The barcode scanner never worked reliably. Every checkout required manual data entry, opening the door to errors and eating up time at the register.
Month-end close-out was its own ordeal. Generating consigner checks in ConsignPro involved a lengthy, multi-step process that Liane dreaded each month. And with 200+ consigners, the administrative load was constant.
"I hesitated for years to make any kind of switch. I had paid for ConsignPro and owned it outright. It wasn't a subscription service, which I thought I liked better. And starting with something new felt beyond stressful. For the 60-somethings that are worried about having to change their business processes, they're going to be happy they did because it's so much easier."
— Liane Harding, Owner Main Street Antiques
Liane evaluated several alternatives, including Clover and Square. Both fell short for the same reason: they were built for hospitality, not retail consignment. Adapting either platform to handle 200+ individual consigner splits would have required migrating her data through Excel, a process with far too much room for error. SimpleConsign rose to the top for two reasons.
The first was fit. Unlike generic POS platforms, SimpleConsign was designed for exactly the kind of business Liane runs: consignment-based retail with complex payout tracking, large inventory volumes, and a need to manage many consigners independently under one roof.
The second reason was personal.
"The main thing that put me over the top was Alyson. She was my support person at ConsignPro, and I trust her a million percent. She never makes me feel stupid when I ask a question. When she moved over to SimpleConsign, I knew I could figure it out — because I knew I could always reach her."
Three factors sealed the decision:
A platform purpose-built for consignment retail — not adapted from generic software
Seamless data migration
A support team Liane already trusted
The team had braced for a difficult transition. They had assumed some data wouldn't survive the move. It all did.
"We moved on a Monday, we opened on a Tuesday."
Migration happened on a Monday, the store's closed day. By Tuesday morning, Main Street Antiques opened for business on SimpleConsign. Old ConsignPro tags still in circulation scan cleanly and map to the correct items in the new system. There was no downtime, no data loss, and no need to retag existing inventory.
Onboarding was handled by Alyson, which made the learning curve feel less steep from the start. The help center handled the routine questions, and the support team stepped in for the rest. Including one session, Liane recalls, where a support rep took remote control of the computer and resolved a consigner payout configuration issue in under ten minutes.
The timing was deliberate; Liane made the switch at the very end of December, heading into year-end tax preparation. That turned out to be the best possible proof of concept.
"I was really worried about it. And oh my gosh — the end of the month is so easy now. I wish I'd done it sooner."
The operational improvements were immediate and tangible. Multiple staff members can now enter inventory simultaneously across three workstations, eliminating the coordination issue that had slowed the team for years. The barcode scanner works on every item, every time. What used to require five minutes of manual entry at checkout now takes a single scan.
Month-end payouts, once a source of dread, now run smoothly. The store's largest consigner, a vintage clothing operation bringing in over $10,000 a month in sales, gets processed without the multi-step ordeal that ConsignPro required.
Since migrating, the team has also launched a Shopify storefront, with SimpleConsign integration described as the easy part of the project. The store now has an online presence it never had before.
Simultaneous multi-user input across all workstations
Reliable barcode scanning at checkout, reducing manual entry errors and transaction time
Faster, simpler month-end close-out and consigner payouts
Seamless data migration with zero inventory loss and backward-compatible tag scanning
A support team that is always responsive and helpful
For other store owners still on ConsignPro, Liane’s advice is clear.
"Cloud-based is the way to go. You can't just stay where you're comfortable. It scared me to move, but I'm thrilled that I did."
If your business model isn't a typical consignment shop, she's quick to point out: it doesn't matter. She ran a store that looked nothing like the template, and the system handled it. We're proud to support what Liane and her team have built over 11 years. We're glad she finally made the jump!