Business
Upscale Resale CT: New Canaan Women’s Online Consignment Service Fills a Local Niche
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Jane Ponterotto encountered some strange behaviors as she researched online services to help sell furniture as her family downsized its home within New Canaan last year. With their kids getting older and a shifting tax burden in town, the Ponterottos did what many New Canaanites do: They moved out of the large home they’d known for more than 20 years, in this case down the street and into a house less than half its size. Seeking a good price for select furniture pieces she no longer needed, Ponterotto herself looked into tag sale companies, but found that fees for ads, signage and manpower made little sense given that the sale itself was largely weather-dependent and hit-or-miss. Some online “services” carried the red flags of a scam by demanding bank routing numbers over the Internet, and one woman who responded to a Craigslist ad showed up at Ponterotto’s home about 10 minutes after emailing a response to it. “She shows up and walks right in through the door, and I didn’t know who she was,” Ponterotto recalled.