Geeky Garage Sale
Over the weekend of 9/9-9/11 we were at the Geeky Garage Sale in Bartlesville that is hosted by the Gaming Store, Paper Games. We were happy to return to this event for our 3rd time. We enjoyed spending time with the vendor friends we have been setting up with in past events, and getting to know new to us vendors. We learned a few more tricks for setting up for events and they are as follows.
- Use Vertical Space
- We learned the importance of shelving on the top of our tables to showcase our items at a more eye level view. Not only does this allow more items to be placed, but your customers can actually see all of them. We were lucky enough to have wall space for taller shelving, but this is true even if you don’t have wall space. After the first day at the event, we quickly went to Ollie’s to purchase some easy set up/take down shelving. The shelving we used for displaying our consoles and our dice towers.
2. Bargain Bins and $1 Boxes
We have been using bargain bins for many of our video games in the past and have had great success. This year we decided to move most of our video game inventory into the bargain bins, even if they were worth a little bit more. This allows for more sale, better community, and a better sense of resale. The customer is happy to find a great deal in price, the seller is happy to sell an item in person to create that bond with the customer and this allows for those holy grail of selling, return customers. Not only are you not selling through another platform that takes their own cut, such as eBay, but you are in the actual community, face to face with your buyer, and now you have cash on hand. If this is possible, we found not squeezing every penny out of your sale allows for quicker flips and a higher profit margin in the long run. We only sell our video game inventory twice a year in person, and online throughout the year, so this method seems to work for us.
$1 Boxes is a great way for anyone (young and other ages) to rifle through your harder to sell items that you have been attempting to sell for 1+ years. I placed video game memorabilia, books, key mats, plushies, and so on in these boxes to change out my stock on items I have been needing to get rid of. This doesn’t mean placing broken items or trash, but are actual items that I would rather sell at $1 then donate. This brought in many customers and made my storage better with bringing home less.
3. Get rid of old stock and bring new items to a recurring event.
We plan on going to the Geeky Garage Sale Bi-Yearly, in this way we will be servicing many of the same customers at these events. Because of that, we don’t want to bring the same stock every time. Just like those monthly of yearly “huge yard sales” put on by the same couple. I they have the same stock, people aren’t going to return to look through their items every time they have a sale if they are leaving out the same old stock. So to prevent this, I sold off my entire video game inventory to another reseller at an extremely low price, and brought new items. Yes, I did have much less stock of items, but they were NEW to the event. That is the same for the crafted items. We are continuously trying new items from wither our paetron designers or from thingiverse to bring our buyers new items. This gets me to number 4.
4. Take requests and orders.
If someone asks for a certain console that you do not have, give them a business card and have them watch your page or online site. Then follow through and write that info down. Then when you find that item, post it where you told them to watch and possibly @ them. Worst case scenario they don’t notice, but maybe there is that possibility for a return customer. This is the same for crafted items. Ask what your customers would like to see and see if you can accommodate them. Then bam! you have new stock that can open your selling to more customers.
To end off with, we had an amazing time with everyone at the event. The vendors- amazing, amazing AMAZING- feels like a community every time. The buyers- my kind of people, they know what they are looking for and are great to talk with. If you saw us at the Geeky Garage sale, even if you didn’t buy from us, thank you for supporting us, you are appreciated!
