Barb’s Personal Notes 4/1/09
A New Kind of Garage Sale
With spring coming at last, I am now beginning to make plans for a garage sale to be held in May. Although I’m thinking “garage” here because that’s where it will be presented, I’m not going to advertise it as a regular garage sale because it will actually be a mini estate sale with a lot of unusual high-quality merchandise rarely found at a garage sale.
I’ve decided this is the perfect time to get the old garage cleaned up and repainted a bright cheerful color. Having a nice place to exhibit my wares and offering items not generally found at the typical garage sale in my community will not only make it more fun for shoppers, but more difficult for them to quibble over my prices.
I HAVEN’T HAD A GARAGE SALE SINCE 1984, but I’ve never forgotten the lesson I learned that year. My Homemade Money book had just been published and my mind was still focused on topics related to selling and publicity, so this naturally had an impact on my sales event.
When I placed the ad in the local paper, I decided to take my own advice about the importance of giving a good name to a sales event and dubbed mine a “Garage Boutique.” I set up tables in a U-shape, covered them with colorful bedspreads, and displayed items in related categories using the same kind of displays I might have used at a crafts fair. I tagged items with professional string tags and placed a number of small signs here and there to encourage sales. Items were artfully hung on the garage walls, and large items set out on the driveway.
The most interesting thing about this event was that the newspaper sent a reporter out the first morning of the sale to interview me because they had never heard of a “Garage Boutique” before. I ended up getting my picture in the paper the next day as the author of a new book, plus a mention of my continuing sale. That drew even more shoppers that day (none of whom quibbled over prices), and we ended up selling almost everything we had for sale.
I realize how bad the economy is now, but I get a lot of traffic past my house as people go to and from work each day, so I think I’ll draw quite a few interested shoppers. Although many of them may be carefully watching their dollars this spring, I figure they will be happy to acquire some of my quality merchandise for about a fourth of what they would have to pay for the same items new. Just for fun, I’m going to add some merchandise I’ve been planning to sell on eBay, just to see if the more affluent buyers in my neighborhood might be interested in some fine art and collectibles at a good price. Should be interesting.
Meanwhile, I’ll be devoting many hours this month to getting items organized and priced and then figuring out how to effectively display them. Thankfully, I will have help from friends when it comes time to set up and sell. Wish me luck! I feel rather overwhelmed every time I look around my house and see so much stuff that Harry and I accumulated during our years together–so many things I no longer need or want to keep. Getting rid of it and generating some extra cash I can use to redecorate the house would be wonderful.
Do you have any garage sale tips you’d like to share with me and my readers? If so, let me thank you in advance for posting your comments below.
August 2009 Update: See my post, Barb’s 2009 Garage Sale Update, for some results of the sale, photographs, and some shopper stories.
New Comments and Updates
My last two posts, The Future of Craft Fairs and Shows and The Direction of the New Craft Fair, have received some interesting comments. If you read these articles immediately on publication, you might want to click back to them now to get more perspective on these topics.
TODAY I ALSO ADDED AN UPDATE to my post, CPSC Grants One-Year Stay on Lead-Testing Requirements. You’ll find links to three articles on the Web about how the CPSIA’s lead-testing requirements are damaging the toy industry and the businesses of many crafters who make children’s toys and garments. Even though the CPSC issued a one-year stay on sellers having to provide these certificates, Amazon removed 2500 toys and games from its marketplace in March because sellers could not send certificates of compliance. Guess Amazon doesn’t want to take any chances here, and this makes me wonder whether eBay and other online marketplaces will be removing products this year, too.
One of the interesting articles I’ve linked to discusses how this law is affecting the sale of children’s books, particularly older books published prior to 1985. Your comments on this topic are invited on the above article page.
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