Garage Sale Success!
Mar. 2nd, 2009 03:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
errantemberThe garage sale was a roaring success, particularly considering it was my first ever. We earned a few hundred dollars, and got rid of a ton of shit! The remnants are packed into the CR-V, headed for donation tomorrow. The weather was a total nightmare. It went from balmy and warm the day before to cold and windy-as-shit the morning of the sale. Clothes had to be piled on the ground on a tarp instead of hung, and paperback books and price tags were flying!
I couldn't have done with without help from my Dad and Echo, who not only babysat when I had to run inside, but also provided a constant stream of "we haven't had time to look through this yet" stuff for me to sort through and price. Traffic was heavy from about 8:30 AM to 1 PM, after which things dropped off considerably. At least three people I knew showed up. My combination of a higher-priority add in the online Chronicle, a post on Craigslist, and my 17+ signs guiding people into the neighborhood from two major intersections Got the Job Done.
The whole thing was a fascinating exercise in real-world, old-school advertising and sales. The whole time I was working on it I was constantly thinking of how archaic and outdated the system I was following was, and how much it could have been improved with New Media if I'd had the time. My roommate had so given up on the idea that anything would actually happen with the sale that she took her shit to Goodwill a week before. The entire sale went from zero to done in less than a week, which was crazy fast!
Next time I will spend more time putting my shit in categories, do more targeting advertising, make better, re-usable signs, put out more signs, and run from 7 AM - 1 PM to make maximum use of traffic. I will also be thinking in garage-sale terms as I sort through my shit, which will help place unwanted items on the Ebay/Craigslist/GarageSale/Half-Price Books/Goodwill continuum.
I couldn't have done with without help from my Dad and Echo, who not only babysat when I had to run inside, but also provided a constant stream of "we haven't had time to look through this yet" stuff for me to sort through and price. Traffic was heavy from about 8:30 AM to 1 PM, after which things dropped off considerably. At least three people I knew showed up. My combination of a higher-priority add in the online Chronicle, a post on Craigslist, and my 17+ signs guiding people into the neighborhood from two major intersections Got the Job Done.
The whole thing was a fascinating exercise in real-world, old-school advertising and sales. The whole time I was working on it I was constantly thinking of how archaic and outdated the system I was following was, and how much it could have been improved with New Media if I'd had the time. My roommate had so given up on the idea that anything would actually happen with the sale that she took her shit to Goodwill a week before. The entire sale went from zero to done in less than a week, which was crazy fast!
Next time I will spend more time putting my shit in categories, do more targeting advertising, make better, re-usable signs, put out more signs, and run from 7 AM - 1 PM to make maximum use of traffic. I will also be thinking in garage-sale terms as I sort through my shit, which will help place unwanted items on the Ebay/Craigslist/GarageSale/Half-Price Books/Goodwill continuum.
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Date: 2009-03-02 08:59 pm (UTC)