Consortium

Consortium is an estate collective/auction house that also does buyouts and clear outs of estates as need per the client request. We gather property from fine jewelry to vehicles and everything in between and bring it to our 24,000 square foot facility in Napa to be processed, priced, and made available for purchase through our multiple selling channels. Additionally, and why our clients work with us, is that we take items that would normally go to the landfill and try to find those items a good home, thereby diverting items from our landfill and giving them a second life. We call ourselves an estate collective because we collect items from different estates rather than perform a single estate sale in a client's home which only lasts for the weekend. By bringing items to our facilities, these items have a longer selling cycle and a better chance of getting purchased at a higher price.

I have a small team at this point because trust is a huge factor in working with estate goods. My team consists of one additional full-time team member, 5 part-time team members, and a group of consultants that help us with our cataloging and pricing for auction as needed. My full-time team member is invaluable to this business as he leads all pick up projects, is our logistics lead in the building and helps with any other areas that need attention like photography and merchandising. Each of my part-time team members specializes in a couple of different areas of the business such as web presence, social media posting, client relations, admin tasks, customer service, inventory and merchandising. Our consultants are true specialists, with areas of specialty being fine and fashion jewelry, fine art, decorative arts, furniture, coins/precious metals, toys and collectibles, vehicles, Asian art, wine and spirits, etc.

The market problem is that there is a glut of personal property that needs to come to the market for a variety of different reasons including downsizing, deaths in the family, etc. This market is huge and the potential for obtaining these projects is vast. We have barely tapped into the potential client base, and we are full of inventory and fielding requests and taking appointments weekly. Families, trust attorneys, fiduciaries and other professionals are always looking for trustworthy companies to handle their property. 

More now than ever, potential clients are not looking for those that are cherry picking their items, but someone who can complete a full service for them. That is what we specialize in. It takes more time, but the cost is the same or better than the client finding 4-6 different vendors to finish their one project. In addition to the cost factor, potential clients are looking for trustworthy companies to help them. Often times, these projects have a layer of valuable items such as jewelry or fine art and there needs to be care and transparency involved with the intake of this property. We provide this solution by inventorying items as we take them in, providing the client with that inventory, and being as transparent as possible with our approach from start to finish. We do not believe in fire selling anyone's property. We believe in pricing the items according to what the market can handle and selling our clients items at a fair price to both the buyer and the seller.

We bring in our revenue in multiple ways: our upfront charges when we go out and bring in the property, commissions on items we sell within our brick-and-mortar location, auctions, and now our online store as well. We also post items on Poshmark and have recently added Grailed to our resources. Two of our team members post items on Facebook Marketplace for hard to sell items that helps improve our turn. We are looking into a couple of other levels of revenue getting to include a membership program for trade individuals.

Our competition are other regional auction houses which there are 4 within the area in addition to the number of consignment shops that are also within the area. But where we differ is that while our auctions are on the same platforms as our competitors (Live Auctioneers and Bidsquare), our consignment portion is very competitive because we believe in the turn of the items so unlike other consignment shops that may sit on their property due to pricing, we price to move without undercutting our clients.

My vision was to have a company that would help bring "pre-loved" goods to the market via a storefront and auction, have a community aspect to it by helping out our immediate community by not pricing them out of these goods, finding new homes for these items, diverting things out of the landfill where we can, and making our building a place for experiences, not just another retail shop that they come in to. Auction houses don't have that community feel. They are largely not approachable outside of their auction days. Consignment shops can feel like another retail space, but not have the welcoming and fun vibe with the large set up that we can afford with the square footage of our building. That is a major point of difference for us. Also, our competitors do not use all of the shopping outlets that we use including having their own shop online.

We have been in our building in Napa for almost two years. Every day, we are growing by the items that are coming in, the buyers that are discovering us, and the relationships that we build. We bring in monthly revenue of between $20,000-$50,000. Depending on the project(s) that month, this can go higher. We are currently open Thurs-Sun, but may end up opening up all 7 days within the next 4-6 months if demand keeps up for our doors to be open. Our building is on the main highway from Napa to Vallejo and the amount of drive by traffic is staggering and untapped potential for us. Weekly, we have new visitors that come in because they have seen us from the highway.

I am asking for $500,000 to achieve this vision. This will allow us to scale our business by making improvements to the building and signage, hiring 1-2 additional team members that are so needed to make the processing go quickly and efficiently, and allow us to take care of lingering older consignors so that we may move on with fresh new property that needs to be processed. This also allows us a cushion to continue to do buyouts of property, marketing for potential new clients, and take on additional projects without jeopardizing our in-house team.

If this all works out for us and we achieve what I know is possible, the end result is limitless. There are hundreds of untapped potential consignment resources in the immediate Bay Area and I want to free up my time to get out there and reach them. I have someone on staff right now that can build a sales team that can get property outside of the Bay Area region which will infuse more variety into our offerings. Being able to capture more of the 30 million drivers that drive right by us yearly would also bring in a level of customers that is not always seen by our competitors. The ability to grow is truly limitless. We just need a solid foundation to stand on. I would imagine that we would be able to achieve year over year growth by at least 20%, but up to 60% if our processes are placed and we move all of our old consignors to be able to process and bring in new ones. Right now, our revenue is approximately $360,000-$400,000 for 2024. We could reach $700,000-$800,000 in 2025 and grow over $1 mil in 2026. 

My team is small, but we are full of passionate, hardworking, knowledgeable and skilled individuals with a competitive spirit and a "must make it" attitude. We know that this business is going to be successful and the last two years have taught us where our strengths and weaknesses are. We continue to address them daily. The potential for Consortium is so great, the reactions that we receive from all of our customers delights us daily. We know that Consortium is a needed part of the Napa Valley community. We hope that we will be able to find someone that believes in us as well.