Sunday, August 19, 2012

SALES BACK ON TRACK!

We had a good weekend at the Mason Dixon Flea market!  Sales were up quite nicely over last weekend.  The weather was great and there were lots of customers.  I've never seen so many vendors at the sale either, so I guess the nice weather brought a lot of them out as well.  Some people look at that as competition, but I think the more vendors you have, the more customers will show up for the sales.  It also helps the proprietor of the flea market to keep the overall business going, so I think it's a good thing all around.

Got several good items to list on Craigslist, so I'll be busy with that at the first of the week.  Got to get additional cash coming in to help pay off some of my medical bills from my last trip to the hospital.  Last week I realized how much more I could be using Craigslist to pick up extra cash between sales.  So I'll be concentrating on that this week.

Looking forward to a good weekend in Versailles Missouri next weekend!

Thursday, August 16, 2012

LOOKING FORWARD TO A BETTER SALES WEEK!

The weekend of the 11th we finally saw a drop in sales from the previous week.  Of course a day at the flea market in Versailles can hardly compare to the blowout days we had with our local garage sale, but it still didn't quite meet up to expectations.  I think a lot of it had to do with back to school shopping weekend.  Everybody was at Walmart and the other back to school retailers instead of shopping the flea market.

We're looking forward to a little better weekend this week in Union Missouri.  We'll be setting up at the Mason Dixon Line flea market there and we've got some great items for sale this week!  I kicked off the weekend sales early by selling 4 dozen canning jars on Craigslist today for $45.  Not a fortune, but it pays the costs for our trip to Union and our booth rental.  Since I had $0 in the jars, it was all profit!

Got a lot of work to do on Friday.  I'm hitting yard sales early on and loading the van as soon as I get home.  That way we'll be ready to roll early Saturday morning.  It's about a two hour drive from here and it takes about 45 minutes to an hour to get everything set up.  My helper will be manning the booth while I'm setting up.  Weather is supposed to be moderate, so it's looking good for sales.  We'll see how it goes.

While perusing Craiglist today, it occurred to me that I'm under utilizing this fantastic resource.  The canning jars sold in less than 24 hours after listing, as is the case with many other items I've listed with them.  So I was thinking I should be looking for 3 or 4 items each week to list.  It could add a great deal to my sales while reaching a lot of customers I don't normally sell to through the flea markets.  I'll be keeping an eye out for prospective items while hitting the yard sales tomorrow.  I think it would be quite possible for a person to make a decent living just selling on Craigslist. 

Saturday, August 4, 2012

RECORD SALES WEEKEND FOR NEW RESALE BUSINESS!

We expected this weekend to be good, setting up for a local garage sale instead of a booth at the flea market, but it turned out to be our best week of sales ever!  The week kicked off with the sale of a refinished coffee table on Craigslist.  From the sale of the table I made an 833% return on my initial investment!  A fantastic start to an incredible week!

Wednesday I took all the merchandise from the storage locker to the location for the garage sale and got everything set up.  We opened at noon on Thursday and ran until 6 pm..  Friday and Saturday we opened from 8 am to 4 pm.  By the end of the day Saturday we had cleared out a great deal of older merchandise and had sold the majority of our picks from Thursday and Fridays' yard sales.  In one instance I tripled my money on a hand full of tools I purchased at a sale less than a mile from our sale.  It's a lot of work to find items at the right price and items that will sell, but when you do the profits can be fantastic!

It's weekends like this that make me want to keep going and not give up on the resale business.  I love the work and I love the business, it's simply whether or not I'll be able to keep everything going until I'm able to support growth in the business and support myself as well. 

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

BIG SALES WEEKEND PLANNED FOR AUGUST 2nd THRU AUGUST 5th!

We've got a big weekend planned for resale business this week!  We're holding a 4 day yard sale to clear out excess flea market merchandise and will be setting up at the Versailles Missouri flea market on Saturday.  The heat has been brutal so far this week, so we're hoping for that to let up some. 

It was time to hold a big sale and clear out some of the older inventory.  Customers want to see new merchandise at the booth, not the same old thing every week, so we try to rotate inventory.  Usually we take all our new finds first and add in some of the older merchandise as the tables begin to clear off.  This way we've got new arrangements and new items out every week.  Still we've managed to accumulate a lot of excess merchandise and since my storage locker was getting pretty full, we decided to hold a big yard sale to sell off some of the older merchandise.  Hopefully we'll be able to buy a lot of quality items at the sales this week to replenish our booth.