New Dallas Design District shop finds fresh homes for unwanted stuff

Everything But The House, a popular, decade-old online marketplace for pre-owned goods and estate sales, opened its first Dallas showroom on October 30 in the Design District, at 166 Howell St.

The idea behind the company — known better as EBTH — is pretty straightforward. As you downsize, you’re often left with scores of belongings that won’t fit in your new digs. The traditional estate sale model can be laborious, even with full-service sales that take over your home for a day or two. And what do you do with all of the stuff that doesn’t sell, or with hard-to-price collectibles? That’s where EBTH comes in.

"Everyone needs to downsize or maybe just get rid of the decor they're tired of seeing for 10 years, and EBTH is a great place to do that," says general manager Natalie Childers Hacker. "Even if you have one or two items, bring them to our showroom and we'll re-home them for you and find someone else that can love them."

The new brick-and-mortar shop offers Dallas-area residents the ability to drop off items they want to consign on the site; pickup for winning bids of the majority of Dallas items; in-person previews so shoppers see items before bidding; workshops and speaker series, and much more.

"This is the first showroom/local processing center that brings the whole EBTH process directly to Dallas, keeping all items and the full process local," says PR director Brittany Sykes. "It’s also the first space that has a showroom for residents."

For a business that deals in a high volume of unique items, EBTH runs a tight ship. Hacker says everything is handled — from the initial walk-through, to pick up and delivery of auction items, to donations, to hauling away junk — by EBTH’s "relationship managers." These representatives of EBTH hold the client’s hand through the entire ordeal, making it painless to divest of their collectibles, furnishings, and art.

There’s a lot more to it on their end, though.

During the Dallas Design District debut, Hacker and Sykes walked attendees through the store room where treasures up for auction are staged, photographed, and stored. There were gobs of neatly organized goods being prepared for bidders — antiques, furnishings, art, collectibles, and decor including precious china.

Jewelry is an especially hot item.

"We get a wide variety of everything; we have furniture to beautiful jewelry to fashion — 30 percent of what we do is jewelry — so we sell a ton of vintage jewelry," Hacker says.

EBTH’s staff picks the auction items with highest likelihood of selling for approximately $150 for their online merchandise. These items are then assessed, photographed, and packaged in the warehouse. EBTH offers local pickup as well as worldwide shipping.

Everything starts at $1, with no reserve.

"Usually everything sells," Hacker says, adding that they have over 1 million bidders registered. Anything Dallas merchandise that doesn't sell gets donated to Genesis Women's Shelter and other partners, she says.

The model combines the best of estate sales and online auctioneering in a painless one-stop-shop. And it's caught the attention of celebrity clientele.

"We just signed a contract with (NFL Hall of Famer) LaDainian Tomlinson to help him downsize, so we're excited to be doing that," Hacker says. "The auction will probably go on in December."

The showroom is open Monday through Friday from 10 am-4 pm, and the EBTH team is always taking appointments.

Find out more about it in a video posted here.

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A version of this story originally was published on CandysDirt.com.