Anyone have a booth at an Antique Mall?

Good for you!!!!

Galvanized is selling well for us, but we aren't getting the crazy money it used to sell for...some of it used to sell for stupid amounts of money.

That is so interesting about the oil lamps. I bought a nice antique oil lamp at an auction a few years ago, and thought that thing would never sell! I am a little gun shy now about oil lamps, but I am happy that they are selling for you.

Yall are speaking my language now, I love buckets and oil lamps! It's a good thing I am not closer to you, I'd be broker than I am lol!

Amazon has been crazy all weekend still. We had 99 orders this week, and while not a record for us, it is a very good week. Can't speak for ebay...we have a whopping 1 thing listed right now (hanging head in shame).

Our friend who got a new store apparently showed up at the flea market today with lunch for us (how nice is that?!?!) but we didn't go today, so he called and asked for us to come help him set up the store starting tomorrow morning, so it looks to be a very busy week for us. When he had his previous store, he ventured into online selling (he sells collectibles, mostly toys) and got overwhelmed trying to get it done...his employees messed it all up so he then did it all himself. I spent a few months working at it with him, getting a system in place, etc. Then he left that partnership to retire...that lasted about 4 months lol, he is bored! We asked him last week who was going to be the manager of his new store and he said he would consider nobody except DH or I, so that made us feel good. This is an older gentleman who has had several businesses in his lifetime and knows seemingly everyone, and he is always ready to help others in their ventures. When we first started reselling and doing electronics repairs 3 or 4 years ago, he watched us for a few weeks at the flea market, then approached us to buy some inventory from him, then repairs, then spread the word to his friends till next thing you know, DH was doing the repairs for all the game shops in the city! The point being, you never know who is watching how you do business or where it will lead.

It is so nice for business to be picking up for us all, isn't it? I feel I must apologize if my posts lately have sounded grumpy on the subject of low sales, I was feeling defeated for a bit and becoming afraid we were not going to make it in our own business. Hopefully this uptick will last, we can all use a better economy!

Actually, I am very thankful for your posts. I felt like that I was the only person experiencing slow sales, and have mentioned and complained about it many times in this thread.

If the economy was as strong today as it was 5 or 6 years ago, I don't think I would have to worry one bit. As I've said many times before, this economy is hurting pretty bad, at least for working people.

The cost of living is skyrocketing, especially gas, groceries and anything sold at retail. I also believe that there is a tremendous downward pressure on wages, and decent jobs are scarce, to say the least.

Whatever the reason, whether it is the economy or a shift in consumer trends, I don't see people buying whatever they want, whenever they want. People are buying what they need instead of what they want, and they are looking for the best deal they can find.

I also don't feel like we have any real pricing power for our stuff, which is tremendously affecting our profit margins. The days of selling a galvanized watering can for $55 are over; today, we are lucky to get $30, and we are prepared to let it gather dust for a while at that price.

There was a time that I couldn't physically buy enough stuff to fill two booths, and now, I have stuff coming out my ears.

Even though I am optimistic, I am afraid that this is the 'new normal', at least for the foreseeable future.

I swear, it must be only small business people who see the reality of the economy! The news says how great the economy is and so many people tell us "yall must be doing great, the economy is so much better"! In our area, unemployment keeps creeping up every month and the cost of living keeps going up, that's a bad combination. That's why we do so much better with online sales, we can buy things cheap at yard sales and such, because people here need money, and sell it for more online. I do wish we could sell more locally because it is physically so much work for so little money. What we notice is about 75% of people barely make it to the next payday, and about 25% are rolling in money, but they're not the ones who buy resale items.

And you're spot on about the loss of pricing power...locally we have to sell dvds for 1.00 to move any at all, that's less than renting a redbox movie, yet folks still try to offer you less for it! We have learned that if we wait long enough, things will sell, but it is often for a tiny profit and it is so hard to wait!

We are in the same position, we have a lot of merchandise, I try to look at it as a blessing, we can go a whole month and not buy anything, but then we are just sure we are missing out on great deals lol! And with online selling, just this month we have found so many things we had just put in boxes because they were worth so much less online than we had expected, and now their prices are back up, so we are looking around and listing so much, I'm sure that explains the uptick in our sales. It is definitely worth rechecking things, though! I find cash much easier to store than things

At any rate, old vinyl can be a great seller. Old country and rock are the best sellers. Don't have high hopes if you have Liberace, Gospel, elevator music, Connie Francis sings the Sound of Music, etc. The vinyl needs to be clean, and watch for mildew and mold on albums, which can generally be smelled a mile away.

Hope this helps, and as always, YMMV.[/QUOTE]

I can get cheap vinyl at auctions. They always have cases of them. What is a good source for knowing how to price them? We never buy them in auction because I just don't know much about them.

I'm so glad to hear that things are picking up for you guys! That is always a blessing!

We have picked up quite a bit. We have a TON of inventory (just hit up another auction Saturday) and scored some AMAZING things. We usually stick to furniture but now that we have the booth we have noticed smaller items are what is selling now. So we bought TONS of box lots with some awesome things in them! I'm a hoarder of pretty glass, pottery and clay items. So letting it go will be the hard part. LOL

Danny, I REALLY like the framed doily. That is an awesome idea!
Your stuff is really neat. Too bad I don't live near you!

__________________
2Ti 1:7 for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.
Luceo non uro

My philosophy on records is to buy them cheap, and then sell them cheap.

Any album, for the most part, is worth a $1. This ranges from Jim Nabors Sings Songs of Bavaria to rock albums that might not be good sellers.

$2 albums are anything that might be considered classic, and any double albums. These titles would be Johnny Cash San Quentin, John Denver, pop rock from the 70's and 80's, etc. Most of my vinyl falls into the $2 category.

$3 albums are those that are simply classics, like the ones you have to own if you are into that stuff. Michael Jackson's Thriller, Van Halen's most popular albums, Springsteen, etc., all would probably get $3 tags. Any vinyl that is super clean also gets a $3 minimum.

Name your price albums: Anything Beatles, Led Zep, Pink Floyd, Elvis, etc. Most of the younger set have no idea that we used to trip over boxes of records, including Abbey Road and Meet the Beatles.

I recently sold two rough Beatles albums for $8 each. Poor covers and poor vinyl, and they sold in 2 days.

I am probably selling my vinyl too cheap. But then again, when I can pick up two boxes of records, holding at least 100 albums for a whopping $4, and flip those for $1 to $4 each, with a very high sell through rate, I am happy.

There are record sellers in our FM and AM that are getting much higher prices for their vinyl.

We often "trash out" our vinyl. Andy Williams and Connie Francis Sings Old TV Tunes gets pulled after a few months. I recycle the paper cover, and trash the vinyl.

If you are adding new vinyl often, make a small sign that says "New Records Added on August 3!!!!!" I try to change our signage once a week on the record crates.

Of course, with anything, that I post, YMMV. If you are in a good mall, I wouldn't hesitate to mark the good stuff at $8+ each.

Vinyl can be very an outstanding sales booster, and can be good for the bottom line!!!!

I wonder if there's a worthwhile way to sell the "trash albums" to crafters? I know around here, people use scratched albums to make clocks and these crazy looking wavy bowls, as well as a few other things, so I think there's a market, it's just a matter of making it worthy of your time to get it to them. I would think they would pay $1, since they sell the boels and such for $5 here, and prices are low here!

Awwww thank you so much! I really appreciate that!

I thought it was different. We found that shadowbox at an auction and I have TONS of doilies. LOL And dried hydrangeas. LOL So I just whipped it up really quick!

Thanks so much Clovis. I will def hit up the records next auction! They usually sell them for $5 for a stack of 10. But people don't really buy them. lol So they usually will do the whole lot for about $10 if people aren't jumping on them. So I'll go to the preview and check out the titles Thanks a ton!

You could try Craigslist.

That is a pretty good idea.

Generally speaking, we are pretty tired when it comes to trashing out the albums, and generally speaking, the only vinyl left is the really bad stuff that probably wouldn't sell for 50 cents each.

I should probably try making the bowls. It wouldn't take very long.

Speaking of crafters, I am curious if any of you have run into crafters who are ultra cheap? I recently had some rough license plates from the 1950's, which were too rough to list on ebay. We marked most of them $3 each, which is a s-t-e-a-l for those plates. Two women were going on about how much they loved them, and then started complaining about the prices. I often get $1 to $2 for modern plates, and was stunned by how little they wanted to pay for them.

A few months ago, I had a wooden chair that was priced right at $12. Some woman raved about it, and once again, started talking about 'this thing she saw on Pintrest', and wanted to know if I would take $2 for the chair!

I also had some iron items that have been selling for insane prices on ebay, and inadvertently were left in the truck when we went to the FM. We've been selling these items in lots of 40 for almost $50 on ebay. A Pintrest crafter oohed and awed when she saw them, and offered $4 for the entire box of 75 items!

It seems like I keep running into what appears to be a "Pintrest mentality." I thought that Pintrest would help boost sales, but the more that I run into Pintrest crafters, they seem, at least to me, that they have this mentality that I am supposed to get up early on a Saturday, drive 22 miles one way to a country auction at $4 gas, dig through a barn, inspect every item in the estate, stand in 95 degree heat all day long, buy what I can (unless the rich show up), pay for it, haul it home, sort it, clean it, haul it 28 miles to the FM, and then let them cherry pick the good stuff for 25 cents each, and then be shocked and outrageously offended when I say, with a smile, "Thank you so much for your offer, but I have that marked $27".

I think that the icing on the cake is that there seems to be an outright expectation that I am supposed to let them have the items for pennies on the dollar, literally, because they want to make a craft from it.

So, is it me, or is there a "Pintrest mentality" of "I have to get this crazy cheap, and they owe it to me" growing out in the world?

Is it just that I have happened upon the most clueless people ever to roam the planet?

Did I happen to stumble across the five cheapest people in Indiana?

Thoughts???

I run into that ALLLLLLL THE TIME. I typically get my items for pretty cheap at auctions. BUT I DO THE WORK. I make it beautiful again. It is SO RUDE when I hear customers come into the mall saying "Oh I could make that for like $5". Well go make it then. What are you doing here? lol It drives me absolutely insane. We post a lot of our stuff on FB in the Yard Sale groups. More just to get our work out there. Our prices are def not "yard sale prices" but there are others that do the same. We have gotten a lot of business that way but people will always haggle with you. And even more so when they know nothing about antiques. They think because it's "old" it's junk. Ah NO WAY. I do the research to find what we should price things. And for our area we price things WAYYYYY too cheap. We were talking about raising our prices yesterday, because compared to other dealers here we are very cheap. But the quality is still there for us. So we shall see. I'd rather price lower and have it sell quickly. Then price high and have it sit for 2 months.

We have also been struggling with the idea of moving to a different mall. They just changed the way the rent out booths here. It's a flat 1.25 per sq ft of booth space. They don't take commissions, just the booth rental. Which is what we were drawn too. But I think the reason why they changed that is because they have foot traffic, but we rarely see people buy things. We have done ok out of our booth. But 90% of what we have made in the past month and a half has been us selling it online or on FB. I really like the people at our mall though. They are friendly, and I've been going there for a long time. So we have built a nice relationship with other dealers, the people that go to the auctions and the office staff. But....we just haven't sold much (through them). And they don't advertise at all. We have been a few times and there hasn't been anyone at the front check out. There is a livingroom set up next to it and they will be laying on the couch or outside smoking or talking. It drives me nuts. There have been a few times I've personally went outside to get the cashier to let her know someone needs help at the front.

I mean that just isn't good for business. And I just feel like now that they don't really need sells since they get rent regardless, they aren't doing anything to bring it new people.

And I know there are slow times and summer is one of them (for our area anyway) but we are doing great through our FB page and on FB in different sale sites. So you would think the booth would just be a bonus. I think we have sold maybe 10 (small) items through the mall itself.

The only other issue we have with moving is if we did we only want to go into one other place. Butttttt the owner has a bad history of not being able to pay rent on the building and late pay outs for dealers. So that makes me nervous.

I'm just not sure what we will do. We thought about just not having the booth at all, but it's nice for our FB page to show things neatly, and beautifully displayed. And it's good for those that just want to look around and such. But I'm just torn. We will give it a while longer before making a decision. At least until Fall. But if things don't pick up through the booth before November, we will be out.

I don't really do pinterest.
I have looked on it...3 times since I joined I think...
I am cheap, and I admit it, but even I would not offer $2 for an item marked $12, craft idea or no.

I don't know about a pinterest mentality, I would just call it rude.

__________________
2Ti 1:7 for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.
Luceo non uro

I agree. I love Pinterest. And I do look at it for ideas and inspiration. If you want things that cheap, then you need to go pick and hunt and find the items yourself. Know what I mean? Which is what I do. LOL Picking is hard work.

Indeed but it can be sooooooooooooooo much fun too!

__________________
2Ti 1:7 for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.
Luceo non uro

Oh yes. It's my favorite part! lol It's hard. But it's the most fun! Although we have run across some snakes. LOL

I was at my booth today, and was quite surprised to see a hole on a shelf that normally doesn't have them.