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Display items on tables. You can rent tables at various places or create your own from sawhorses and plywood. Cover your tables with plastic tablecloths for a uniform, attractive appearance. Tossing items on a tarp in your yard tends to turnoff shoppers. Put eye-catching items near the street. Display larger items (like furniture) and shiny items (like mirrors) close to the street to attract crowds.
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Be realistic with pricing. Do you want to sell your stuff or do you want to carry it back in your house at the end of the sale? Clearly mark your prices on each item and build in a bit of room for negotiating. For your pricier items, use the web to find descriptive information, print it out and tape it to your item. This will help the buyer understand the item’s value and will help explain the price you’re asking.
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Be ready. Be completely ready to go when your garage doors open. It’s stressful to try and finish pricing or merchandising while customers are shopping.
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Offer beverages. Offer coffee, water and soda for sale when you’re open to keep people comfortable so they’ll spend more time browsing and buying.
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Have change on you. Carry cash/change on you so you can wander the sale and not be tied to a particular spot. Carpenter aprons work great for this. Expect to receive a lot of $20 bills, especially at the beginning of the sale, so have a plenty of $1, $5 and $10 bills ready for making change.
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Keep packaging handy. Have a supply of bags and newspapers to package your shoppers’ purchases.
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Give it to Goodwill. If you don’t feel like dragging all the stuff that doesn’t sell back into your home when the yard sale is all over, just take it over to the Kindercare next
to Hunters Bend Elementary, where a Goodwill truck will be waiting to take it off your hands. Now that you know how to achieve success at the yard sale, what are you going to do with all the money you earn? Some Fieldstone Farms residents donate theirs to “Project Graduation,” Franklin High School’s (FHS) answer to a safe and fun graduation-night celebration. Project Graduation is an all-night, drug- and alcoholfree celebration for the FHS class of 2013 hosted by the school’s Parent Association. It’s only through the combined generosity of business and individual contributors that the students are able to partake in this safe and memorable event. To donate or for more information, please contact 2013 FHS Project Graduation’s co-chair, Jody King, at (615) 390-2665 or kking36@att.net.
April 2013
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