The idea for a high-end consignment shop had been percolating in recent years for New Canaan’s Christine Knox.
She’d always liked beautiful things and—after earning a bachelor’s degree in art history at Skidmore College and a master’s in art history from Williams College—she went to work for about six years in the field of art, through museums and at Christie’s Auction House.
“I’ve always been interested in the art field—everywhere I traveled, I could always go to museums and look at everything,” Knox told NewCanaanite.com on Tuesday morning from a desk at the rear of Posh Home Décor Consignment at 33 East Ave. “I have everything here from—right over my shoulder is a 16th century Italian etching, which is very famous—everything from antiques to contemporary things. I vet things extremely carefully when they come in so that everything is sort of unique, different and good prices. Very marketable prices. With my background, it sort of circles around. It’s something you carry with you all your life. But I’ve always wanted to do this. It’s just that this is the opportunity that I have later in life to do it.”
Christine Knox: “Four Eames chairs that have authentication papers. They’re from 2006. They’re highly desirable. In fact, the new library is completely outfitted with Eames chairs by Herman Miller. So, there is a market there. These are in perfect condition.” $699 apiece at Posh Home Décor Consignment, 33 East Ave. in New Canaan. Credit: Michael Dinan
She opened the shop in June and—perhaps because no local business is offering luxury consignment items in the way that Posh does—the response has been immediate and strong. With the closures in recent years of Severed Ties and The Silk Purse, no one else is offering a physical shop with Knox’s expertly selected paintings, decorative tables, candle holders, dishes, jewelry boxes, signs, pillows and other antique and contemporary items.
“It’s word of mouth,” Knox said of her growing clientele. “It’s a lot of my own contacts just from living here for years and years, and I have a lot of designers that are now coming in, and that’s a key market for me. Because not only do they have access to high end luxury goods, but they’re looking for those kinds of things. As you see, we’re not focusing just on things you can buy in Wayfair—and no judgment against those—these are more particular items.”
Knox has registered Posh as a member business of the New Canaan Chamber of Commerce. That organization’s executive director, Laura Budd, said the new high-end consignment shop “has filled an important hole in downtown New Canaan’s retail scene.”
“The consignment shop model for home goods is popular here in New Canaan and Christine’s business acumen and her sense of style is sure to make the store successful,” Budd said.
Many of Knox’s walk-in customers are women and there’s a long-established consignment clothing shop next door in DWR, “so we have synergy together,” she said. They’re both located on the first floor of what longtime residents will remember as the former Merit Music building.
Christine Knox: “I have this adorable dinosaur bureau. I have an artist in Stamford who does this work and she designs them and then hand paints them. It’s $450. This is a great market for people who have kids or who have grandkids and they want to give them something fun and unique.” $499 at Posh Home Décor Consignment, 33 East Ave. in New Canaan. Credit: Michael Dinan
“When people come in, I engage them,” Knox said. “It’s a relationship building business. As far as I’m concerned, I’m on the phone all the time. I’m talking to people. I say to everyone, ‘Please tell your friends about us,’ so the word has traveled. This is 99.9 percent consignment. I do buy some things.”
Knox noted that Posh is not designed to compete with online auctions.
“That’s where everybody’s cleaning out everything they have in their house, soup to nuts, garage items,” she said. “I am not that. I am here so that if somebody has five pieces, one piece, two pieces—very, very particular items for when people come into the shop. This is not a thrift shop. It’s a high-end consignment shop with a lot of luxury items.”
Christine Knox: “This is a contemporary bureau that came in pristine shape. Never was in someone’s guest room. It was used maybe four times for a shirt. This is very reasonable. It’s $600. If you look online for Ethan Allen now, it’s $2,000.” At Posh Home Décor Consignment, 33 East Ave. in New Canaan. Credit: Michael Dinan
She added, “ I think it’s an exciting new business for New Canaan because that model did exist in the town for years. Then it didn’t exist anymore.”
Knox spent the bulk of her career in global corporate marketing after earning an MBA from the University of Connecticut. She worked for Estée Lauder and for DDB Worldwide, a large advertising agency where she was responsible for global strategic programming. It was a demanding job that saw Knox traveling nonstop for 30 years, so when she finally retired in 2019 she was ready to take some time off. Since then, Knox—who attended King Low-Heywood Thomas School while growing up in New Canaan, and later became head of its Alumni Association—joined the local Encore Club.
That corporate background has also come into play in launching Posh, she said.
“It’s talking to people, it’s image making, it’s advertising, and so there’s a line that runs through all those things,” she said. “Those are the things that have always interested me.”
She’s finding that people are coming into Posh from all over the area—Trumbull, Pound Ridge, N.Y., Stamford, Darien, Fairfield, Bedford, N.Y., New York City.
Inside, they find “everything from antiques to contemporary objects,” Knox said.
“I have some Mid-century modern chairs that have authentication papers as if they were a pedigree dog,” she said. “I have everything from a beautiful 16th Century etching and a 19th Century tilt-top table, but a modern painting above it. So I offer everything, but it has to be an object that is unique, has good value, good condition, and is marketable to a clientele under market prices.”
Those selling through Posh are paid quickly under the business’s 50-50 split, she said.
“I’m extremely organized, conscientious,” Knox said. “I know every object in the shop, who it belongs to, track it very carefully. Everybody gets paid on time. So it’s a functioning model. They never have to worry about where their object is or how it’s going. They can call me. I can track every object that comes in the shop.”
Items that come into Posh and aren’t sold after a set period of time undergo mark-downs, she said.
For Knox, operating Posh is a return to what she’s loved to do since her college days— “beautiful objects, whether they’re paintings or furniture or, or whatever else value, the value in them, the history.”
“The history is very important,” she said. “I research everything that comes in. I can’t know everything, and I don’t know something offhand, I research it. And I know how to do the research because I was in that business for a long, long time.”
Here on Instagram, Posh Home Décor Consignment is open 11-5 Tuesday to Saturday, 12-5 Sunday, closed Monday. Private shop parking behind the store via one-way Burtis Avenue – last driveway on the left on Burtis. 203-722-9570, [email protected].
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