Shopping is a common hobby among students, especially at the variety of shops in the downtown district. Often, the treasures Tuscaloosans once purchased end up in front of Rhonda Mock Tew, the current owner of Twice as Nice, a consignment shop downtown.
CW: How did Twice As Nice get started?
RM: Well, Twice As Nice had been in business 16 years before I bought it. I was looking around to buy a consignment shop and saw that it was for sale, so I bought it. That was 20 years ago, so it’s been in business for 36 years. It was just a children’s shop and they just sold children’s clothes… I started selling adult clothes and within two years, I moved out of that little hole-in-the wall which was behind the bowling alley into this big place and filled it up.
CW: How has the shop expanded since then?
RM: We started out with probably 50 clients. Now I have over 15,000 clients and some of them have been with me for 20 years. Every time I try to purge my files and put them in the closed file, they’ll come in maybe once or twice a year every two to three years.
CW: What are your biggest selling items?
RM: Probably designer clothes or boutique clothing. We have a lot of boutiques that a consigner does so at the end of their season, we get their clothes and they’ll be brand new with a price tag on them. That’s what people come in looking for – the higher end items that maybe they don’t want to pay $300 for a top at one of these boutiques I have for a third of that… Since I have so many clients, I’m very picky about what we take and we only take designer brands… We go through everything really carefully and [clients] can bring it in and we’ll look at it and if we decide to take it, they’ll get half of what it’s worth when it sells. All day long from the time we open to the time we close, people are usually standing in line for us to go through their things.
CW: Do you see more of the townspeople of Tuscaloosa or more UA students in?
RM: I see the townspeople, especially professionals that work downtown. I do get students in here, but mostly professionals and people looking for collectibles… People are coming in and they know what I have; They come in to look for nice things that they normally wouldn’t pay full price for – lots of savvy shoppers in here. We have jewelry, furniture, books and instruments. I’ve sold some great guitars and even drums; I mean we’ve had every instrument you can think of.
CW: What are some of the best things you’ve gotten in the store?
RM: I’ve gotten a lot of nice folk art in, some from people in the Smithsonian now and their things are going for $10,000. These are things people had in their closet, and they don’t even know that they’re worth anything. Some of these works are from people from Alabama and a lot of [the artists’] works were at Kentuck Art Festival where you could get it for $25 and now they’re going for $3000… I had a ring that was appraised at $20,000. It had diamonds on each side of it with 14 karat gold and I sold that for $15,000. That was probably one of the higher-end things I’ve sold.
