About Paradise Vintage Market
Beth Cooper Meyer has been in the antique business for most of her life. As a kid in Topeka, Kansas, she watched her mother buy furniture at auctions, refinish it, and resell it. At 18 she ran a small flea market business in Oklahoma, and later kept a booth in an antique mall in Arkansas.
When she moved to Southwest Florida, she found a very different market. Many people relocating there had already sold off their Victorian and plantation-style furniture, and shoppers wanted beach, tiki and Margaritaville-style decor. Antique malls and vintage markets were scarce.
Beth rented a booth at a local antique mall, and when the chance came to buy the business, she took it. Her team took over in November 2019 and opened as Paradise Vintage Market in January 2020. They trusted SimpleConsign to run their business from the start.
Today, Paradise Vintage Market fills a 32,000-square-foot former grocery store with 250 vendors. That size is what sets it apart in the region.
"Without your database, we could not be running our store. It'd be too big, too much, too many items."
— Beth Meyer, Owner, Paradise Vintage Market
The Challenge
Outside of hurricanes, Beth's biggest challenge is keeping 250 independent vendors moving without her staff becoming their help desk. At 32,000 square feet, every item has to be tagged, scanned and rung up fast, and vendors have to manage their own inventory.
Beth is clear about where that line sits. Her vendors run their own small businesses, and the mall's job is to give them a system they can use on their own.
"Our vendors have to be independent. I cannot babysit my vendors. They chose to start their own small business. I needed a system that could handle everything for them."
— Beth Meyer, Owner, Paradise Vintage Market
SimpleConsign was able to bridge that gap. However, on SimpleConsign’s Professional plan, there was two gaps that still remained for running her mall. Vendors depended on the store to print their price stickers, and the floor itself, which booth each vendor holds and where to find it, lived in an Excel spreadsheet that staff had to cross-reference against vendor records in SimpleConsign.
The Upgrade
After years on the Professional plan, Paradise Vintage Market upgraded to Vendor Mall Plus, built for running the floor of a vendor mall. Same login, same vendor records, same POS, with new tools layered on top.
Remote Vendor Printing
The first feature to make a difference was Vendor Printing. Vendors can now print their tags from their own devices at home, instead of relying on staff at the store. For a mall that expects its vendors to be self-sufficient, it closed one of the last gaps.
"My vendors are really enjoying that feature. They're not dependent on us at the store to print out their tags."
— Beth Meyer, Owner, Paradise Vintage Market
The Interactive Map
Beth now can load her booth spaces into the Mall tab, the interactive floor map and list view in Vendor Mall Plus. When the floor is mapped, staff can answer the questions they field every day: where a vendor's booth is, and where a "go-back" item needs to be returned, without leaving SimpleConsign. They can also see at a glance which booths are open and what the rent is for each space.
Rent Management & Collection
Beth also loves the Rent Management & Collection feature. The option to collect vendors' rent from a card or bank account first and fall back to the vendor's sales balance if that payment fails. That mirrors the policy Beth already enforces by hand, and takes manual tasks off her plate.
The Results
Six years in, Paradise Vintage Market runs 250+ vendors, three registers, and a 15-person staff on SimpleConsign, and Vendor Mall Plus is taking the remaining manual work off the floor.
The system is simple enough for vendors of every age. Many of Beth's vendors are in their seventies and eighties, and she trains them herself. Once they're up and running, the vendor portal quickly becomes a favorite. Vendors can check their items, sales and top sellers anytime, and have their numbers ready at tax time. They no longer need to call the store to ask whether something has sold.
It has also given Beth her time back. With live sales on the dashboard and reports available anywhere, she can run end-of-day reporting while traveling, and her staff handles day-to-day operations.
Favorite Features
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The dashboard. Beth is on it "12 hours a day." When she sees a busy day building, she calls in extra staff for the afternoon.
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Vendor notes. Each vendor's account notes record whether they accept discounts or calls. When a shopper asks for 10% off, staff can check the notes and call or text the vendor with the offer on the spot.
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Customer database and points. A bonus program builds the mall's email list, and every 50 points earns $1 off, which keeps repeat customers coming back.
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Transaction lookup. When staff call with a problem at the register, Beth pulls up the receipt immediately and walks them through the fix.
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Categories and reporting. Beth runs the sales, end-of-day and terminal reports daily to track each register and employee. Monthly, she checks inventory by category and sends vendors a list of the top 25 categories so they know what to source at estate sales.
Advice for other Vendor Mall Owners and their Vendors
Whether you run the mall or a booth inside it, Beth's advice is the same: have a business mindset and let the trends guide what you buy.
She suggests picking up home decorating magazines at the grocery store, not to copy what's pictured, but to spot the colors, materials and styles that are trending. Within about six months, she says, shoppers start asking for those items in the mall.
Then back it up with data. Categorizing every item in SimpleConsign shows exactly what's selling. Beth even shares the mall's top 25 categories with vendors each month. Owners and vendors work from the same numbers, so everyone sources with confidence instead of guessing.
