Anyone have a booth at an Antique Mall?

If Mother's Day (the thing I always asked for on Mother's Day, a day of flea marketing) doesn't bring in some sales, I am seriously considering closing out. Our town does have tourist traffic during the summer, but I'm not sure I can handle much more of this. And my poor friend who did go in on the booth with me hasn't sold ONE THING.

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For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring - Carl Sagan

jlxian not sure where you are but if you get many summer tourist it might be worth holding off. I know everytime I go to any new town I LOVE to hit all the non chain stores. People will spend a bunch of money on vacation that they wont normally spend.
How long have you had your booth? May want to find out whose booth has been there the longest & compare what they have to yours. Not saying copy them, just try to evaluate what they specialize in & how its displayed. What ever they are doing must work in your store if they have stayed 5 yrs or so.

jcat, I've had this booth a year. My mood has been pretty raunchy for several days, and no doubt colors my ideas about whether to keep the booth or not. I'll hope for that to lift soon and see what my outlook is then. Thanks.

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For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring - Carl Sagan

Seems to me if I had a booth Facebook groups would be something I would work heavy. Someone wanted to buy it, tell them to pick it up at the booth?

Cures the folks at the house and having to meet them with one stone?

I'm just checking in here after not doing do for a while, and hate to hear everyone has had a rough April. Add us to that list, too, our Amazon sale dropped off dramatically (where we earn most of our money), and we haven't been to the flea market too much, 3 or 4 days for the month. The sales there were okay, not great, but enough to give us cash to keep buying. We did spend a lot of money at a friend's store that was closing, got great deals and are now just waiting for people to buy it all

We can find no rhyme nor reason for the drop in sales, but it is frustrating since it came at a time of higher cost of living and then, just to add icing to the cake, the flea market raised it's rent by 20%....vendors are cutting back the number of tables they get and how often they come there....it's been 2 weeks since they told us all about the rent increase, and yesterday when I went to pay them for Sunday, they tried really hard to talk me into coming Saturday as well....they don't normally beg for business! I don't expect sales to be good this weekend, due to the flooding we had this week, so many people are cleaning up. But maybe they will come there to replenish things, you never know. Oh, the flea market also issued a "no rainchecks" order, so you can no longer cancel and roll that rent to another day, so we will just go and hope for the best. However, with them suddenly being so hostile to vendors, we did rent a booth at a market in the next town over for the 17th, along with some other vendors, and may start going there once each month.

As usual we all have to adapt and hang in there. I hope it picks up for everyone, though.

My Amazon account hasn't done well in the past few weeks either. Good to know, in its own way, that it's not just me.

Went to pay booth rent today and as I suspected I had only sold $3.25 worth of stuff in April. The market owner told me that "April is always a terrible month" and says it is because of people having to pay taxes and because they are just then able to get outside in their yards and do work that needed to be done from the winter. Maybe he's right. It's hard to be encouraged. I hope Mother's Day sales show improvement. Anyway, I wanted to share this market owner's thoughts about April sales with you all.

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For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring - Carl Sagan

jlzian, those reasons sound legit, at least to me!I know I have been outside a lot more, and not on the computer, or shopping, so if others are doing the same, that could explain the drop in online sales so many people are experiencing. Our local sales have plummeted, too, but we just had all that flooding and well, the place is just a mess! The flea market owner said he suspects it will be weeks before people are out to replace all the clothes, games, etc that they lost, but we're really hoping it picks up sooner than that.

I haven't been antiquing since Christmas.
First I was broke
Then came spring
The weather is wonderful
And I suspect when it's too hot to breath outside I'll be looking for something to do that involves getting out of the house, but not outside

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I always wondered why somebody didn't do something, then I realized I am somebody

I think the heat of summer will help, too. When people just want to go someplace cool where they can spend a good chunk of time. Hope so, anyway!

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For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring - Carl Sagan

One of the people who works at one of the antique malls where I have a booth also works at Lowe's in the lumber department, and he says he knows where everybody is right now.

It's true, I've been there

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I always wondered why somebody didn't do something, then I realized I am somebody

Clovis any updates? Are sales turning around yet?

Sales are nothing but horrid. It feels like October, 1929 all over again.

The FM is as dead as a door nail. Very little foot traffic, and sales are unbelievably slow.

We had a minor bump in sales on Mother's Day, as to be expected, and today wasn't too bad, considering it is a Monday.

As of today, we are off about $600 for the month, according to my guesstimates. Even if the month turned around today, and went back to a normal month, it is very difficult to make up $600 in sales.

Memorial Day weekend should really help. Sales are typically great on MDW, judging by history. Let's hope that it holds true for this year too.

We are taking two loads this week, even though our booths are already busting at the seams with good stuff. I want the booths to have good merchandise that is priced right when people return to shop.

For a short while, I thought the economy was normalizing, at least to a degree, but am now beginning to think again that people are simply too stretched to spend money. Property taxes soared here a few years ago under a 'tax and spend' Republican governor, and we've lost the manufacturing base we used to have. One single plant in our town once employed 1,200 people just a few years ago. There is a tremendous downward pressure on wages, not to mention gasoline at almost $4 again, and sky high grocery prices.

Hate to hear the bad report Clovis.
Our spring weather has been amazing. There were several local craft shows last weekend & all vendors fussed about the lack of foot traffic.
Memorial Day comes early this yr so maybe you can pick up some lost ground. You still have another Saturday after Memorial Day.

I have been reluctant to post on this thread, as of late. I am afraid that I am turning this thread into "The Clovis Diary", LOL..

Anyway, here goes: We had another dreadful day of sales. Tuesdays are our worst day of the week, so it is expected. When things are this bad, you hope and pray that a well healed contractor comes in and drops $200+ on tools that I have in the booth. You hope that the local First Baptist Quilter's Guild drops by and purchases every fat quarter you have, all 280 of them. You hope that someone from the American Legion finds your Maxwell House coffee, and buys 8 cases, since it has 2015 dates.

So far, this month, no luck on any of those.

Just a few years ago, I could almost buy anything and pay any price for it, with no worries. Someone would be along shortly to buy it, and give you a profit for your work and risk. There hasn't been a single time in the past year, during a buying opportunity, that I haven't had a little voice in the back of my head saying "Will that sell? Really, will that sell?"

I talked to 5 vendors today, and they all agreed, this is the worst that they have ever seen it.

I like your diary
It gives us a guide on what to expect during the good and bad times.
At least you know it's not you.
We had a mall advertising a bunch of booths up for rent a few weeks ago. Must be hard times around here as well

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I always wondered why somebody didn't do something, then I realized I am somebody

Thank you for the kind words, Sarah.

Clovis there are many that read your post & take something good & helpful from your words. Think of all who are considering jumping in & have only seen people talk about the good times. If you only talked about those days where you had $500 in sales or turned $1 into $100 everyone else would begin to ask what they are doing wrong!

Thank you, jcat, for the kind words.

There are always ups and downs in business, and the reselling business is no exception.

I've seen slow times in this business, but I have never seen it this slow. The first 6 months of 2013 almost destroyed us, but by July, 2013, business really picked up. The rest of the year increased steadily, and I truthfully thought that the economy was starting to get out of the woods, so to speak. I felt that I had pricing power again, meaning that I could start marking items closer to their real value, instead of playing the 'get it gone' game.

I simply don't know what to make of the whole thing. I really don't.