Have these items handy at your sale:
- Trash can
- Bags, plastic and paper
- Tape
- Scissors
- Change – we had $50 worth of 20s, 10s, 5s, quarters, dimes, and nickels.
- Strong box or money bag
- Notebook to scribble quick calculations in.
- Calculator for not quick calculations
- Newspapers for wrapping breakables
- Business cards if you have blog or side business. You’d be amazed what comes up when you are chatting with folks
- Handy work like crocheting or simple crafting. Something you can put down instantly and talk while you work. A book is too much of a barrier.
- Cell phone
- Tape measure ("Will this fit in my car?")
- Screwdriver ("If we can just take the legs off, I think I can get this in my VW bug.")
Before
* The first day is the biggest, even if that first day is a
Thursday and you’d think everyone was at work. I’m never doing a 3-day sale again—I just included “Sat. Only!”
on ALL of my advertising and got all that traffic (and work) condensed into one
day.
* Make your Craigslist ad a list, not a paragraph. List items under headings like “Household”
“Furniture” and “Kitchen.” You can add
up to 12 pictures, so do. I included
prices and brand names of many items. (Remember, some people will be searching
the entire Craigslist site for “Schwinn bike” or “Cocoa Cola collectibles”
rather than clicking through hundreds of garage sale postings.) For some of the
really awesome deals, I linked to websites showing that what I was selling for
$2 goes for $35 on-line.
* Make your signs consistent, use thick lettering, and put
the date if you can. (Without the date, some people don’t stop because they
don’t know if your sale was last week and you were too lazy to take down your
signs.)
* Picking the weekend of a neighborhood garage is a big
advantage. If your neighborhood doesn’t
have one, perhaps you can start one.
* To find items to sell open EVERY door, cupboard, closet
etc. Think of it as a scavenger hunt.
* “But someday I might need it!” If you make $200 selling 150 items, then you can afford to
replace the 2 that you did need after all.
But odds are, if you haven’t used it in the last year or so, you don’t
need it.
* Start pricing early and do a little at a time.
* Pack up priced items neatly in boxes. Boxes stack, which is handy since you still
have to live in your house while you are getting ready. Plus the day of the sale, it will be much
easier to carry them up or down stairs and outside. AND you can offer your empty boxes to customers who need them to
collect and then cart away their purchases.
* Plan a lunch that is quick to make, easy to share, and can
be eaten outside.
* Do you have an outlet in your garage? It will prove handy for a fan and to prove
that, yes, the string of Christmas lights really works, so locate it before you
start.
* Recruit help for the donate-everything-left part at the
end.
Multi-Family Garage Sale Management
We had 12 contributors to our last sale which worked out
very well. One big contributor was a
retiring Kindergarten teacher, and being able to post on Craigslist that we had
teacher stuff and lots of children’s books was a big draw. Another contributor brought furniture which
was also a big draw, and helped make our sale look nice and big to passing
cars.
* All contributors had to deliver their items already priced
with tags or stickers that had their initials.
(It’s the pricing that takes forever and I’m not going to do any more
than my own!)
* All contributors had to either pick their items up or
agree to let us donate them with our stuff.
* Rather than flipping through notebook pages to figure out
where to put that pesky sticker, I used the front and back of one piece of
posterboard. Sections were proportioned
to contributions.
* Math – We paid everyone else, then kept what was
left. Ergo, we didn’t have to keep
track of what we sold during the sale.
* Tags. I made a
pile of tags from leftover cardstock all at once and then used them for
everything I could. During the sale, I
just clipped the tags off with scissors and dropped them in a box to sort out
later. Making the tags was slower than
using stickers but tags speeded up check-out and were less likely to fall off.
* A lemonade stand run by an enterprising
child is a good learning experience. My
nine-year old niece made enough money to buy a toy she’d been coveting. She quickly learned that, “Would you like to
buy some lemonade? I’m saving up for a
doll,” worked more often than not, particularly when accompanied by a shy
smile.
Pricing
Pricing is what takes forever and therefore
it is why most people who do garage sales make about 25 cents an hour. (Been there, done that!)
Strategies:
* “All unmarked items 25 cents!” (or 50 cents
or whatever). Post this on Craigslist,
put it on your signs, and save time pricing.
If someone brings you a Ming vase that you know you put $2 on, just
politely tell them that it is not a quarter and the price tag must have fallen
off. I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone
pull off a price tag and this strategy saves so much time.
* Or “Make Me an Offer” – on all but a few
nicer things which you do price. My
friend Mary did this and had NO garage sale leftovers.
* Lower prices two hours before the end with
either a pen or an announcement that everything is half off.
* Are you doing this garage sale to get rid
of stuff or to make money? Decide which.
Set up
* Laundry baskets are a good way to ferry goods out to the
tables from the basement or wherever you did your pricing
* Glass items in the sun all day will soon be too hot to
touch so plan accordingly
* Book ends make great sign holders. Just add packing tape.
* Spread it out and make it look big!
* Folding chairs make great temporary tables. The higher off of the ground that box of books
is, the more likely someone will look through it. When lots has sold and it is time to consolidate, folding chairs
can easily be put away.
* Clothes folded on a table deter all but the most determined bargain hunter. Put a pole between two ladders, borrow a clothing rack, do something to get as much as you can off of that table!
* Put the cash box on a table that leaves room for folks to
deposit their haul and for you to turn things over and find price tags. A card table works better than a TV tray.
During the Garage Sale
* Decide what you will do if people show up
early. If you sell the antique rocker
you listed on Craigslist at 7:30, the person who comes at 8:00 when the sale
opens expecting to buy it is going to irked… but you don’t know if more than
one person wants it.
* Two workers is the minimum, three is
better.
* I prefer to greet people. “All unmarked items are a quarter.” “Please let me know if you see an item you
like with a price that you don’t like.”
“Welcome!” “Anything I can help you find?”
* If someone’s eyes are darting here and
there, they are usually after something specific. I ask, “Is there something particular you are after today?” Said item is usually behind something, and
they might not have found it without help, especially in the beginning when the
tables are crowded.
* Have sacks on hand to offer shoppers. They’ll buy more if their arms aren’t tired
from toting those books around.
* Not everyone could get away with this, but
at my last sale I tentatively offered to hold a woman’s infant and she gladly
accepted…. and bought much more than she would have if she’d had to shop while
toting a baby. (I’m also very non-threatening,
and she and I were chatting before I offered.)
* You are unlikely to get robbed, but you may
want to periodically stash cash in the house, keeping enough in the cash box to
make change, just in case.
* Get up and mill around when no one is
there. People are more likely to stop
if they see others looking. This is
also why you should invite your friends to drop by and say “hi” during the
sale.
Final Curtain
* Take down your signs throughout the
neighborhood, even if you put the date on them. It’s only polite.
* Walk through the sale with a laundry basket
or box and scoop up whatever you don’t want to donate. (Some people post “Everything left is free”
on Craiglist, but I’m not really comfortable with people helping themselves
unsupervised.) You may think it all can
go, but take that walk anyway. You may
be surprised at what you want to keep or give to someone specific.
No comments:
Post a Comment