By Sarah Murphy
Paddy Coughlin, founder and owner of Designer Exchange Ltd believes you can get your dream bag for an affordable price.
The pre-loved luxury handbag shop buys, sells and exchanges handbag brands such as Michael Kors all the way up to Chanel and Hermes.
The shop has over 1,200 items in stock, an average of thirty designer items are dropped in daily with customers looking to sell, exchange credit to buy another item in store and place it on consignment.
Designer Exchange mainly stocks handbags but stock also includes footwear, designer accessories such as scarves, earrings, necklaces, charms and the exception of a few Chanel jackets.
Each item dropped in by customers goes through an extensive authentication process and is kept in for roughly forty-eight hours for evaluation.
The shop opened just over six years ago on Dawson street, and celebrated the launch of a second shop location on Exchequer Street in early January.
'I think it was the natural progression for us to open a second store. We built our business over five years or so in Dawson street,' recalls Paddy. 'We needed more space to show things, we had a lot of stock. As our community grew and as our website and the awareness of our brand grew, it was only common sense to do so.'
'The goal was to create a business that was trust worthy and had longevity and that was relevant in people’s lives and since we made the transition from our early days when we were called Rare Clothing Company, we moved into designer handbags and it was the best decision we ever made.'
Paddy is no stranger to the trade industry, with ten years’ previous experience in the video game and electronic retailer, GameStop.
'I had an interest in the concept of buying, selling and exchanging. It wasn't necessarily the handbag industry. I came from a ten-year stint with the world's biggest video game retailer, GameStop.'
'In GameStop we had the same concept where we would buy, sell and exchange technology and video games and everything else. We decided when I left the company that there was a gap in the market in the lady’s world of handbags for this very thing.'
Authenticity is a question asked by many when shopping for second hand or as Paddy calls them, pre loved goods.
The shop guarantees authenticity with every piece, along with a certificate of authenticity.
'It’s the most important question a customer should ask walking through the door and you’ll find some business who deal in what we do may get offended by that question but it shouldn’t be, it should be the first question you reassure your customer with., that we make sure every piece is authentic.'
'It comes in, it gets extensively checked over whether that is counting the amount of stitches through a bag, whether its checking whether that brand ever made that bag in the first place, is it a copy that’s just a made up bag completely.'
“There are all the different little checklists that we will go through. Every brand has a minimum of fifteen different points on a checklist that we will go through and if it doesn’t complete one of those items out of those fifteen, it just doesn’t come in.'
'You can’t build a business like ours with a lack of trust or lack of integrity, so we would not be here six years if we were taking a bad attitude with regards to replicas or fakes. We are willing to put our signature on an item with an authenticity certificates, when a customer buys an item they know we stand by it one hundred percent.”
For those of you who get a headache at the thought of that price tag and splashing out loads of cash for a bag in one day, don’t worry.
Designer Exchange has an instalment plan that will allow you chip away at the price over a number of weeks.
The store offers instalment plans on the majority of their stock, the instalment plan requires a thirty percent deposit, the customer then has to pay the remaining balance over twelve week’s interest free, once you’ve paid it off you get to bring home your dream bag you have been pining over for weeks!
Designer Exchange is looking for new stock every day to add to their current collection of stunning designer goods, speaking of trading with the shop, Paddy says 'Two words, do it. Trade with us, it makes sense. We get certain people who might be upgrading brands, you get people who say Michael Kors is a great brand, Kate Spade is a great brand, sometimes people say to themselves you know what, maybe I want to move up luxury a little bit, I want to move up to Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Prada, Chanel whichever it might be.'
'Having those items to start off with in your wardrobe is great you can trade those in and we’ll give you credit against the items that you do want.'
'If you don’t have the Michael Kors or Kate Spade we are offering them at an affordable price which means that you can own it for six months, trade it back in, build up trade credit, so your handbag is never going to cost you a day one price ever again, your saving from us and have a guaranteed buy back from us which means your rotating your handbags throughout the years.”
Paddy hopes to expand his business even further in the future to other customers in Ireland who are “crying out” for a third location outside Dublin City Centre.
'We are planning on doing a series of pop ups soon enough. Kind of a whistle stop tour around hotels and give talks on how to take care of your handbag and how we can value your handbag for free on the day. We want to reach nationwide because our loyal customer base isn’t just Dublin.'
