Meet Elyssa Alfieri | Owner

We had the good fortune of connecting with Elyssa Alfieri and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Elyssa, what do you attribute your success to?
Community is the biggest contributor to the success of Lilise Designer Resale. LDR seeks to create a local community through a shared love for style, sustainability, shopping local, and having fun! Whether it’s shopping in the store or attending one of our special events or partnerships with other area businesses, we are constantly looking to connect with our community and to provide a space people feel good about.

At LDR, we cater to those who feel underserved by what traditional retail models offer. We are for the people who can’t find trends early enough, for people who don’t have time to scour the thrift store racks, for the people who need a space to express themselves freely and safely. LDR is for people who want to support local businesses and their community. We want to be that spot downtown where no matter who you’re with, it’ll be fun to pop in and browse around. Funny enough, we’re also the place for people who hate shopping. It’s so much more streamlined and they can ask us to help them find things way faster than wandering around a mall all day.

We work hard at curating our selection. We split our profits with the people who consign with us, meaning money spent here stays right in your community. LDR is “all needles, no haystack.” You won’t have to search long to find things you’ll get excited about, but we promise that the longer you stay, the more you’ll find.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I’m a life-long vintage and resale shopper. I started by going to yard sales with my mother, and I was immediately hooked on the thrill of the hunt. I shopped at thrift stores out of necessity as a child, and as my skills developed I was able to really make the most of what I found secondhand and hone in on my personal style. Having clothing that no one else has became one of my super-powers, I felt good about my outfits that took effort in finding secondhand so much more than the items I bought at the mall. That really clicked for me, and opened me up to think so much more broadly about my style. In secondhand, I could span decades, styles, brands, anything. The choice was mine. I think everyone should be free to be themselves, and that personal style is one of the most important, changeable, and exciting means of expressing oneself.

I graduated from SNHU with degrees in Retailing and Fashion Merchandising. I worked for a few big-box retailers before I discovered how much I love small business. I managed a local boutique for several years before I decided I wanted to branch out on my own.

I bought LDR in 2016. While resale is very popular right now, it hasn’t always been. There used to be a big stigma around wearing other people’s clothing. Now, the secondhand market is growing much faster than traditional retail models and there is a whole new generation of thrift and resale shoppers. It’s fun to be able to take something that people used to make fun of me for and make a career out of it. Not as revenge, but rather as a means of proving to other people who love what I do that they can do it too.

A couple of years ago, I thought we weren’t going to make it. On Friday the 13th in December of 2019, my entire store was flooded due to a broken water main and I lost so much. I really wasn’t sure I could bounce back. I was able to re-open in January of 2020 in a limited capacity while I waited for the repairs to be done to my store. Then, the nation got shut down in March of 2020 due to the pandemic and I was forced to close for an undetermined amount of time for the second time in three months. I was also a new mother with an 8 month old. Everything was so up in the air and I couldn’t tell what would happen next. It was then that I really learned how to let go of trying to control the future of my business. I knew I had to carry on, and that the community needed a store like LDR. So I did what I had to do in order to move my store to a new and more visible location and start over. It worked! Three years later, business is great and I’m so happy and grateful I still get to do this every day.

So much of my success through this adversity was due to the support of my community. I had so much help throughout all of that – from friends rushing to the shop on the day of the flood to pick up valuable merchandise to store in their office for me, to adopting the shop’s plants for 8 months until I was in a permanent location to take them back to, to spreading the word about my new location so my customers could find me. If I wasn’t a believer in community before, I would be now. I couldn’t be more grateful to do what I do, but also to do it with and for the local people in Concord, NH. It’s a special place with amazing people.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Concord, NH is filled with amazing local businesses and I am a big old fan of so many of them! I would eat at Col’s Kitchen, then shop on Main Street to visit LDR and my other favorites like Bona Fide and Penumbra.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
Nicole Hodgkins from Achromatic is a key player in our success. She works at LDR and we have a “store within a store” to offer her brand, Achromatic, here in the shop. She has been so major in assisting me in anything and everything to do with LDR and has taken on the monumental task of being the primary on all incoming consignment. She’s priceless and I’m so proud to work alongside her.

Website: www.liliseresale.com

Instagram: www.instagram.com/lilisedesignerresale

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elyssa-alfieri/

Twitter: www.twitter.com/lilisedr

Facebook: www.facebook.com/lilisedesignerresale