Santa Paula Trading Co. is unique because we buy, sell and trade locally. We are a resale store, selling men’s, women’s and children’s clothing, shoes, accessories, art, gifts, as well as our own SPTC merchandise. We are different from a consignment store in that we pay you up front for your items instead of making you wait up to three months to see if you have sold anything. By upcycling your unused clothing, you can earn cash or credit to buy something new for yourself!
3 Stages of Selling
Preparing your items - As you consider which items to choose, please remember we value quality over quantity! For that reason, we request that you bring in no more than 30 items per day to sell. This allows us to properly process all of our sellers in a timely manner and be able to accept clothing anytime we are open. Chances are (unless you are Selena Gomez) you don’t have more than 30 brand new-ish items in your closet you want to get rid of anyway. All items must be clean/freshly washed and folded in bags (no boxes or hangers please) in current fashion and either new or mint condition (no stains, piling, rips, or other “telltale” signs of use). Please check your items very carefully beforehand. When selecting items, ask yourself if they are in the condition in which YOU would want to buy them.
Bringing in your items - Welcome to our store! You will bring your items to the “selling” area at your appointed time and drop them off with one of our team members. If it is your first time selling with us, you will need to fill out a basic info sheet and present a current, government issued I.D. It may take a few minutes to go through the items, so please feel free to browse around the store (in other words, please don’t hover). You will be called when your items are ready.
Getting paid for your items - Congratulations, you sold your items! If you did not sell your items, please see below*** Now, there are two ways you can be paid for your items; cash or store credit. You will receive 25% of our selling price in cold, hard cash. Or you can choose to receive 50% of our selling price in store credit to be used immediately on other resale items (this is where the "trade" comes in!). So, for bringing in those jeans that didn’t fit quite right, you can walk away with a new sundress or flannel. Neat, right?
F.A.Q.
When can I bring my clothes in to sell or trade?
By appointment during regular business hours (11am-6pm) on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays for same-day service.
Walk-ins will be processed as “Drop-Offs” on a first-come-first-served basis and will take 1-2 weeks for us to process. NO TRADING on weekends.
How do I know you will sell my item for the amount you tell me?
The short answer is: you don’t. One of our policies is transparency, and if you would like to see our pricing guide, we would love to show it to you. Our pricing guide is just that - a guide for pricing items that we tend to see over and over again. If your item isn’t one that is listed, we may look it up to see what a comparable brand is. We do not give this as a guarantee, however, because we may find something wrong with the item after it’s been purchased, or it may not sell as well as we hoped. But in both of those cases, you made out like a bandit. This is the risk that we (SPTC) take in paying for our items up front. If, however, we happen to find a $1000 bill in one of the pockets, we’ll call you.
Can I split my payment between cash and store credit?
No. That’s a lot of math.
What Items do you NOT take?
Underwear (gross), lingerie, pet sweaters, children’s items (please call/text first to see what sizes we need) or bathing suits (unless they still have tags).
*** Why didn’t you take my items? Now I’m going to bad-mouth you to my book club.
Before you do something so hasty, let me explain a little about the reasons why we don’t take certain items. Assuming your items are new and clean, the most obvious (this one may hurt a little) is that the style is currently out of fashion. Now, that doesn’t mean that it’s out of fashion for everyone, but depending on the time of year and the inventory we already have on hand, we may be buying heavy for teenage boys, for example. If you are a thirty-five year old professional woman, I would assume that your wardrobe wouldn’t be considered “teenage-boy” material. But hey, if it is, more power to you! The second reason is that we already have a bazillion items exactly like that. If you know for a fact, that canary yellow rain boots are all the rage, but we don’t take your wellies anyway, we may have three more just like it in the back we haven’t put out yet. In that case, congratulations - you nailed it! The last reason, and I alluded to it earlier, is that your style is pimpin’ but it’s a different demographic than we are trying to hit. We are mostly looking for fashion in the 14-40 age range. We know, you can be 80 and still dress like a 15 year old, or you can be 20 and dress like my grandpa (and not it a cool-vintage-vibe kinda way), but you get what we’re saying.
So, please come visit and bring your amazing items with you. Your ill-fitting bomber jacket could make someone’s day, and make you some cash!