Yesterday was the annual* Lincoln Lutheran Technology Flea Market. For 5 hectic hours we sell off all of the various computer junk that has accumulated over the course of the last 12 months or so in all of the various nooks and crannies of Lincoln Lutheran where I’ve found that I can reasonably stack things without anyone (a) noticing or (b) complaining.
If you’re going to hold your own anytime soon, allow me to present a few Lessons Learned from ours:
- Advertise under “garage sales” in the paper instead of “computers”. You’ll hit your target audience better.
- Do not go from 9:00am until 5:00pm. You’ll have as many customers in the first 10 minutes as the last 5 hours. 9:00am until noon really seems about right
- We’ve been advertising that everything will be half price in the afternoon. I don’t know if this is really effective. I think some people think (a) they will come back, but forget or (b) that maybe what you’re selling is only worth half as much as you’re selling it for.
- It took 64 man-hours to get ready for the sale, but students (and alumni) did most of this. They are motivated to do a good job because they get half of the profit.
- Do not sell anything at all to the annoying guy who tries to get you to lower the price on everything and get a discount for buying a lot of items. If your prices are right, someone else will buy them.
- If you have too much to sell, stack them behind the tables and bring them out as things sell. Note: there will not actually be time to do this.
- Remember to order lunch.
- Write down (preferably in a sort of treasure map) where you’ve stashed things during the year.
- Price things to move. The very worst outcome is to have to store things for another year.
The event was deemed a success. We grossed something like $1,500.00, and everything went pretty smoothly. We couldn’t lock the doors this time, because NHS was doing something or other, so we had some early birds wandering in, but that seemed to work out okay.
*Used here in more of a sort of hopeful sense, rather than a strictly chronological one.
I like your lists.
Heh. I was going to write more, but it sounded like a spam-bot:
“Very informative. I will definitely put this site on my list of favorites.”
It was a good sale. I trapped myself in the computer lab for those five hours to try and finish some DVDs for my kids, and whenever I’d go over and check it out, it was pretty busy.
My crummy Olympus camera sold for fifty bucks!
How do you accumulate 15 overhead projectors in one year? How do you accumulate all that stuff in just one year?
YAY for your success!!
It’s not necessarily what you’ve accumulated it over the course of a year, it’s what you decide that you no longer need it over the course of a year.
Did you notice that lady looking in the window? Weird.
So what’s left of the inventory? Can we see the list?
I took a photo of the shelf. It should be in the Flickr photos in the sidebar. I offered the teachers anything they want off the rack today, and I’ll make the same offer to the students tomorrow.
The most important question: Did you allow the kids to call you Slloyd?
It did not come up.