Say you're sold on adding used. The next question is deceptively simple: how much of your floor do you give it? Too little and it never gets the traction to matter. Too much and you've starved the new-goods business that pays your rent. This is one of the most consequential calls you'll make, and most owners make it on feel. There's a better way.
Space is your scarcest asset, so treat it like one
Your store has a fixed number of square feet, and every one of them is already doing a job. When you carve out room for used, you're not adding space, you're reallocating it. The relevant question is never "how much space does used need?" It's "what does this space earn as used versus what it earns today?"
That reframe changes everything. It turns a gut call into a measurable one, using a number you probably already track for the rest of your store: sales per square foot. Whatever a section earns per square foot as new goods is the bar the used department has to clear to justify the same footprint.
Start small and make it earn its expansion
The lowest-risk way in is to start with a modest footprint, a rack, an endcap, a defined corner, and treat expansion as something used has to earn. Give it enough space to be a real department (too small and customers won't take it seriously or find enough to browse), but not so much that a slow start puts a dent in your overall productivity.
Then watch how it performs per square foot. If the used section is out-earning the space it replaced, that's your signal to give it more. If it's lagging, you've contained the damage to a small footprint while you fix the pricing, sourcing, or assortment problem underneath.
Space follows performance, not enthusiasm.
Placement matters as much as size
Where you put used is nearly as important as how much you allocate. A used section tucked in a dead corner won't perform, and you'll wrongly conclude used doesn't work for you. Placed where it pulls customers deeper into the store, or where its treasure-hunt energy catches browsers, it can lift the whole floor by increasing how far and how often people move through it. The best used placements do double duty: they earn their own square footage and they improve the productivity of the space around them.
The signals that tell you to grow or shrink it
You don't have to guess whether the allocation is right. If used is turning fast, holding its sales per square foot, and the racks thin out between restocks, it's ready for more room. If it's turning slowly, aging into markdowns, and dragging its square-foot productivity below what it replaced, it's either too big or has a problem upstream in pricing or sourcing. Read those signals honestly and the right size reveals itself over a season or two, rather than being locked in by a guess on day one.
Where owners go wrong
The two classic mistakes are opposite and equally costly. Some owners give used a token sliver, starve it of the critical mass it needs to build a following, and declare the experiment a failure. Others fall in love with the margin story, hand over a big chunk of prime floor, and watch overall sales per square foot sag when the department can't fill those shoes yet. Both come from sizing on emotion instead of on what the space earns. Size it on the numbers and you avoid both.
Funkhouser Strategy helps independent and mid-market retailers make the calls that move the P&L, resale included, with senior operator judgment and no vendor agenda.