Cindy Brantley, a soft spoken mother of three, has been the driving force behind Duck Duck Goose, one of the country’s first children’s consignment sales businesses. Last year, Duck Duck Goose helped over 3000 families consign over 450,000 items in ten Central Arkansas sales events. The original vision of empowering moms to make extra money while helping them dress their children with fashionable and affordable clothing remains our main guiding principle.
The sale occurs twice a year as the seasons change for spring/summer and fall/winter in four locations in Central Arkansas. Each season thousands of Arkansas shoppers go on the ultimate bargain hunt at our sales and many families count on Duck Duck Goose to help stretch the family’s clothing budget. Duck Duck Goose is well known for its outstanding selection of quality children’s, women’s, and maternity clothing and shoes, as well as, toys, strollers, bedding, equipment, home décor and more.
It started out much smaller, of course. In 1993, Cindy held a garage sale with ten friends; it did so well that she continued doing sales from the family’s home in west Little Rock. By 1996 the sales had grown so large that they were taking over the house, and Cindy's husband, Randy, stepped in and used his experience as an events planner to find and rent venues for hosting sales events. Ever since, the sale has been a moving event and Randy has been involved in the business.
Cindy reflects on some of the changes in the business over the years: “Back in the day I had to do all the accounting with an adding machine, and it would take a few weeks to settle everything and get the checks out. Now, we use barcodes and scanners and can start issuing checks the day the sale ends.” Cindy says she long ago made the decision to be a mother first and to be an Arkansas only company, serving central Arkansas with events in Little Rock, North Little Rock, Conway, Pine Bluff, Benton and Hot Springs. Typically Duck Duck Goose hosts ten events per year, including two seasonal mega-sales in Little Rock at the state fairgrounds Hall of Industry.
Randy and Cindy met while they were both on staff at Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis. Randy was in the church’s college ministry and Cindy worked in the church’s administrative office. After they married, Randy joined the Arkansas Baptist Convention, where he worked for 20 years as a youth ministry consultant for camps, conferences, and special events. The couple lived in Jonesboro for five years before moving to Little Rock in 1989, where they started their family. Eldest daughter, Kristen now works with them in the business; she and middle daughter Katie Beth, a cosmetologist, are both married. Son, Houston, is also married and is a member of the Army National Guard and currently is deployed to Africa. Cindy laughs and says, “Houston is how I keep track of how long we’ve been in business. He was 3 months old when we had that first garage sale.”
Cindy and Randy stress that the basis of their business is preventing waste – through their events, goods that are still useful find a new home with people who can use them, while the consignors also get some money for items they no longer need. At the end of every sale, items that remain unsold and unclaimed by consignors are donated to Big Brothers/Big Sisters to help local families. "It’s a win-win for everyone involved and it keeps items that are still useful out of the landfill."