There is nothing like getting up early on a Saturday morning and scouting out the neighborhood for garage sales. As the old adage states, "One man's trash is another man's treasure." Often, when seeking to find a bargain, or simply the enjoyment of rummaging through other peoples possessions or sometimes finding a vintage item of great worth, all proves to be a great incentive and exciting way to spend a Saturday morning.
Garage sales offer a number of advantages not only to the shopper, but to the seller as well. One of the advantages of conducting garage sales is the opportunity to get rid of items that have been gathering dust around your home. Another advantage of conducting garage sales is the opportunity to generate income from items that may have been earmarked for the trash or given as a donation to the local not-for-profit thrift store.
In order for garage sales to be profitable it may be useful to incorporate three specific factors. Those factors include the need to advertise, displaying the items properly and being prepared.
Advertise
In order to get buyers to your garage sales, it is important to let them know that you have a garage sale that will be taking place. This advertisement can be accomplished in a number of ways.
One of the most effective ways of advertising your garage sales is by placing an advertisement in the classified section of your local newspaper. The sales representative at the paper will ask you all of the pertinent questions that need to be included. These questions include the date, time, address and a sampling of the items that you will be selling.
Another way to advertise your garage sales are through a weekly newspaper that is specifically designed with classified ads in mind. One other effective way of advertising your garage sales is by placing posters at busy intersections that indicate that a garage sale is in process. Also, on this poster, your address should be included.
One caution should be mentioned in regards to putting up posters or makeshift signs at these intersections. The family having the garage sale should check with local ordinances that may prohibit the posting of such signs.
Display The Items Properly
To meet the needs of those buyers that will be flocking to your garage sales, it is important that you have the items displayed properly. Suggestions of properly displaying your items for sale include the removing of the items from boxes and put them on display. Another suggestion would be to lay down a blanket on the garage floor or out on the driveway and display certain items. These items could include paperbacks, magazines or other such inexpensive items.
If you will be offering clothing as part of your inventory, you can simply string a rope or clothesline from point a to point b. Once securely fastened, just simply hang the clothes on this makeshift clothes rack.
Also, as part of the displaying process, it may be beneficial to tag each item with the price that you are asking. This will save a lot of time and help to minimize your customers from continually asking how much a certain item is.
Be Prepared
In preparation for your garage sales it is highly recommended that you have everything ready to go the night before. If you have ever conducted a garage sale you know from experience that people will begin to start their shopping very early in the day. Therefore, once you open the garage door and start displaying the items, you are not given much time from that point to when your customers first arrive.
Also, it is important to have petty cash available so that you can provide the appropriate change back to your customers. In addition, if selling electrical goods, it is important to have access to electricity so that the potential customer can test out the electrical items you have for sale.
Now let's talk about the "inside secrets" of drawing people into your sale, and the merchandising "gimmicks" that will result in the maximum sales and profits for you. First, call attention to your sale. Don't be shy, bashful or self-conscious about letting everybody for miles about know that you're having a garage sale.
Some sharp operators do the next best thing to having the Goodyear blimp overhead: They rent miniature blimps, send them up above the housetops, and tether them there on their sale days. Of course this giant balloon or miniature blimp has some sort of sign on the side of it, inviting people to your garage sale! This is one of the strongest available advertising ideas for pulling "traffic" to a sale of any kind. For more details, write to Pie-In-The-Sky Company, PO Box 5267, San Mateo, CA 94402.
You have to give your sale some flair. Put some posts up across the front of your property and run some twisted crepe paper between them. Even better than crepe paper, run brightly coloured ribbons. Invest in some colourful pennants and fly them from temporary flag poles. And don't forget the balloons!
Make your garage sale a fun kind of event with clusters of balloons anchored to your display tables and racks. Be sure to "float" them well above the heads of your customers as they are browsing through your merchandise displays.
Cover your display tables with colourful cloths. Don't hesitate to use bright colours with busy patterns. Regardless of what you sell, effective display is still predominantly essential!
You cannot "dump" items haphazardly on a table, sit down, and expect to realize great profits. The people doing the most business - making the most sales - are the ones with interesting displays, action and colour.
Try to have as wide a selection of colours as possible in your clothing racks, and mix them for a rainbow effect. Make sure that your jewellery items shine and sparkle. Arrange them in and with jewellery boxes, jewellery ladders and other items sold for the purpose of showing off jewellery while keeping it neatly organized. We know of one lady who regularly arranges jewellery items in a battery operated lazy Susan. Seeing this jewellery slowly turning on the lazy Susan never fails to draw attention.
Think about it, and then study the methods of display used by "rack jobbers" in the stores in your area. These are the wire racks that usually hold card packaged items. This kind of display rack would lend itself beautifully for anchoring a cluster of balloons. Keep these things in mind, and build your individual displays as part of the whole; make it pleasing to the eye as well as convenient for your customers to browse through and select the items that appeal to them.
Look for some kind of interesting and unusual item to call attention to your sale - something you can set up or park in front of your home during your sale. Some of the displays we've seen along these lines include a horse-drawn surrey, a restored Model T, an old farm plough. But anything of an unusual and interesting nature will do the trick for you. One couple we know put up a display using a manikin dressed in an old-time farm bonnet, long dress and apron. The display depicted a farm woman of old, washing clothes with a scrub board and two steel wash tubs. You have to believe this drew crowds and made people talk!
Wherever your imagination takes you, you have to be different and distinctive, or you'll get lost in the hundreds of garage sales going on all around you. If you'll take the time to employ a bit of imagination and set your sales up with the kind of flair we've been talking about, you'll not just draw the crowds, you'll end up being the one holding the most profits.
It's almost a compulsion of many women to go shopping, to search for interesting and sometimes rare and valuable items. This fact alone will keep you as busy as you'll ever want to be - staging and holding garage sales. The market is so vast, and the appetite so varied, that anything from a brass bedstead to a used diary of somebody's long-for-gotten grandmother will sell, and sell fast at garage sales. Put it all together, use a little imagination and you'll easily make all the money you want! And have them print up 50 to 100 copies for you.
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