Local Business: Monkey’s Uncle

Earlier this year, Eastern Market welcomed a new business catering to the kids of Capitol Hill:  Monkey’s Uncle (323 7th Street, SE).  “Purveyors of recycled children’s clothing”, the shop recently expanded and is doing a brisk business not only in clothing for children, but also equipment and maternity clothes.  Owners Jay Keegan (former manager of Hill stalwart Chateau-Animaux) and Michael McFayden have, based on the response, stumbled upon a business that had lots of pent-up demand in the neighborhood.  I stopped in recently to talk to Jay about how they got started, their environmental message and what the shop’s recent expansion has meant for business.

When I first learned of Monkey’s Uncle it seemed like a great fit for Capitol Hill.  Where’d you get the idea and how did you bring it to life?

My sister-in-law has been in the consignment business for 20 years.  A little over  a year ago she approached me about franchising her store, Mother and Child in New Hampshire.  When Michael and I got serious about moving forward, her franchise model wasn’t quite ready so she became our advisor.  We settled on the Monkey’s Uncle concept and began scouting locations last winter.  A week was also spent working in her store to understand the operations side; then we just ran with it.  Initially, we passed on our current location because it was too small.  The landlord of the building next door was a customer of mine at Chateau-Animaux, so we were able to get the landlords to agree to opening the wall in between — they were actually very amenable — which made our current space feasible.

Consignment can be complicated.  How long did it take to figure out your model?

Software was the biggest issue – it does all the work for us.  For example, we have a 7 day return policy so it automatically dumps money into a consigner’s account on the eighth day.  It also marks everything down on the 1^st of every month in accordance with our color-coded tag system.  The software is very flexible and allows us to make all the tweaks we need.

What have you learned along the way?

Do you have a great find from Monkey’s Uncle?

Fortunately our software works brilliantly.  However, we do sometimes get buried with intake.  A few weeks ago we had to stop taking items into the store.  The intake process is very time consuming and it’s easy to get inundated.

We’ve also grown to appreciate the synergy of our location.  This block is now a destination for families with Monkey’s Uncle, Dawn Price Baby and Fairy Godmother clustered together.  We see this as a benefit that increases business for all of us.

What advantages do you offer over other resources for children’s and maternity clothes?

For the consigner, the benefit is recycling – getting the used stuff out of your house and making a profit on it at the same time.  For the customer, we offer things at very low prices because we’re giving these items a second life.  Kids grow so quickly; we’re an affordable alternative for parents.

Had you anticipated just how much interest there would be?

We were hoping it would be good, but never expected it would be so big.  Our goal was, over time, to become part of the community.  We lived on the hill for 10 years before moving to Hillcrest five years ago.  We figured it would take time to build that community relationship, but within weeks we knew consigners and customers by name.  If we had a nickel for every mom who said she had this idea …  its that appreciation for the need we’re filling that has made the response so fantastic.  At first we didn’t get a big response when the shop opened for intake prior to the official opening.  We started with only 21 consignors, but today we have 300.

What new things has the expansion allowed you to do?

The expansion is really for the parents.  We have a quiet area for the kids to play while parents shop.  It amazes me how little boys and girls will sit with a book while mom shops.  It allows her to have her hands free to look through our inventory.  Customers are spending more money per sale and we are able to have a lot more people in the store in any given time.  Before the expansion if we had three sets of customers in the store it would be a barrier to others coming in.  Now, with the extra space, it is completely different.  We also carried equipment before, but we offer much more now.

You have a strong environmental message.  Why is it important to you both to make this part of your brand?

It’s something Michael and I believe in strongly.  We’ve been greening our own lives the last couple of years and figured it’s really not that hard, so we decided to use our business to provide an example of how easy it can be.  We took the extra time to find green suppliers and also make those resources available to our customers via links on our website.  For example, on the product side we carry gDiaper, a flushable and biodegradable diaper.  We’ll also be expanding into BumGenius and Fuzzybuns.

Will Monkey’s Uncle be doing more to promote an environmentally friendly family lifestyle?

We’ll definitely do additional promotions.  For Earth Day we had a promotion where we donated to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and adopted four endangered primates.  1% of our proceeds also go to Oxfam and WWF.  We’d eventually like to be able to expand to once a month informational seminars, like a recent one we did on gDiapers.  Parents ask us lots of questions about products and equipment so we’d like to offer seminars that help them make educated decisions.

Are you involved in other local organizations?

Once a month we pull clothes that expire (clothes that have been in the shop for three months) and donate them to the Healthy Babies Project in NE and Capitol Hill Group Ministries in SE.