It may be tempting to leave price off items for your sale but I would encourage everyone to put prices on items or at least price out categories. An example would be all pants $2.00 Shirts $1.00 or something. Pricing items or categories will lead to more sales because a lot of people are shy when it comes to bargaining and would like to know what they will pay up-front before bringing the items to a person.
So, with individual prices, people will just grab a bunch of stuff and bring it to the counter and perhaps ask for a bargain at that point or not at all. With no prices, every item has to be brought to the attention of a person and that encourages more bargaining or strange pressure if the items are not priced well.
What's more, when on the spot, the pricing person could under-price or over-price items giving the stuff away or losing a sale.
Anyway, thought I would just chime in with the suggestion. Thanks!
We had our first sale last July. We did a Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We made about 75% of our money on Friday. So this year we will only be having a Friday and Saturday morning sale. We took everything that was given and stored it in my shop. We had a "work" day the day before the sale, and went through and catagorized and tossed the trash. We did not price the items as there was just way too much. We had 2 people that were the "prize people" and would wander the crowd, answer questions and bargain. We then had 2 more volunteers as checkout and bagging.
Suggestion - have food/water and sunblock available for your volunteers. We did this on a day that was in the 90's. We did not know what to expect and We had such a huge turnout that we didn't really get a break. Make sure that you have a plan for the end of the sale and the remains. We had several members with trucks that we loaded up and immediately took to goodwill. Also, put your breakables and small items near the checkout or have someone specifically in charge. Amazing how many people just let their kids run rampant and we didn't want any injuries or items breaking.
We had an overabundance of clothing. this year we hope to have racks, because people really don't like sorting through clothes.
We made about $1500 which we were very happy with.
If you have enough volunteers, here's what I would recommend: we tried the pricing route the first time and we were up to the wee hours trying to get it all done. Then we found that at the end of the day we had to mark things down. So last year we decided to group things in price categories. One side of the room was $1 items, another $10 items, and another $30 above. What we found was that people often actually pay more when you do it this way. The tricky part is check out. What we did is have a parent or child man the price areas, people check with them on way out and volunteer put price on the item as they went out the door to check out.
We took everythong, except obvious trash, and what was left we had a local charity pick up afterwards. This way we didn't have a big mess and took advantage of every chance to sell stuff. you can call your local charities they will be MORE than happy to help
In Michigan- we have a sale like a garage sale but call it a Mom-2-Mom sale--
we rent tables out and parents bring their own items in and sell them to customers (other moms) looking for items--- we charge a fee of $1.00 per adult to come in and shop-- this is a great fundraiser for our school and helps out other families and the community as well.
