Anyone have a booth at an Antique Mall?

I love Cottages and Bungalows. They have great ideas for decorating small homes.

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2Ti 1:7 for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.
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That's a great idea Clovis! The other one id suggest off the top of my head is Better Homes and Garden :-)

You guys have a great thread going here and the hints about being descriptive in the price tags is great and I am going to have to start doing that But I have been hoping someone would bring this up for sometime but since no one has here is my ?.What I was wondering is how well does everyone keep track of thier inventory and cost of items in the booths. For example do you give each item a unique item # and then keep track of cost in a notebook or do you hide a code on the tag that tells you how much you have in an item or do you just price an item and then never think of what that item cost you again. thanks in advance

Welcome to the thread and to the forum, Fred.

I don't spend any time keeping books on items. The avalanche of stuff that we deal in is too overwhelming.

I might consider it if we were dealing in large expensive items, like furniture, or if we dealt in high end collectibles, like authentic Civil War uniforms.

As for pricing codes, I don't bother with that either. I price items at what they are worth when I buy them. Since I tend to deal in smaller stuff, I just price it and move on. For the big stuff, like a horse drawn plow and a 1890's table, I can easily recall what I have in the items.

I know that I could keep an inventory person busy at least 20 hours a week, and in the end, all of those inventory records would do us no good, whatsoever. As for the pricing codes, in the malls where we have booths, there is no negotiation with the buyer on the price...and since I already know what we paid for the big stuff...see where I am going?

Welcome Fred! I am still pretty new to the antique/thrift mall world (we moved into our booth the end of May) but what we've done as far as record keeping is at the end of the month our mall gives back all of our tags of items that sold. I take those tags and then plug it all into an excel spreadsheet. I don't have a huge booth, so that helps, but I can pretty much remember how much we spent on the item plus whatever else was invested to give it new life and go from there. It's very basic, but for now it's working for us and keeping us organized :-)

Clovis, do you ever look at Pinterest? You can search for the decorating style you are interested in and get lots of ideas. You can search for almost ANYTHING you are interested in on Pinterest! It's like an endless magazine.

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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

I have one booth where I've decided to transition out of books and into doodads. It's doing OK.

My Amazon account just keeps doing better and better all the time. I recently sold a textbook for $110 - and I had purchased it at an acquaintance's garage sale for $3. I won't tell her about this. After the commission and shipping costs, I made about $75 profit.

I also signed up for a free 1-month trial of Stamps.com. I got a "free" digital scale for $10 shipping; it's $50 if I had purchased it separately. I can now buy my postage through Amazon, and that scale has already paid for itself. I also purchased a huge quantity of envelopes for much, much less than I could ever buy them at a local store.

Clovis, don't forget you can get subscriptions to those type of magazines for free with coke points.

Fred, for about the first year and a half we were reselling, we kept a detailed inventory of every video game, dvd, etc. Each item had it's own barcode, and when you scanned it, it showed what you had paid, what it was marked at, and other details, so you would know how much negotiating you could do. The inventory was in a laptop with a scanner attached so you scanned every item sold, or every item people were trying to sell you (we had a program that searched online for prices). But what a pain that was! DH is a computer programmer, and even he got tired of it lol! Now we just wing it, but somehow we seem to remember what we have in an item, so we know what selling price will make us happy. It also helps that instead of buying 300 video games in a lot, we now buy collectible games in single items or small lots, plus other things that have more character and are easier to remember.

On another note, we went to the flea market we had been selling at today to shop, and out of their 400 tables, well over 100 were empty...and we were there at prime shopping time! We found some good things to flip as, as people were eager for a sale, but hit a couple of thrift stores on the way home to round the day out. We have been finding the best deal there lately...yesterday we got a $60 vintage Star Wars ship for $2 Had to dig around for all of the parts, but it was worth that 5 minutes!

We are blessed. August was a pretty good month at the FM. Sure, I would have liked to have sold a few hundred more, but wouldn't we all?

Most importantly, we flipped quite a bit of stuff that we brought into the FM in August, so we'll get paid on the 10th of next month. I think this business is really about how fast you can flip something, and still make a nice profit on it. I think that one of the harder things in this biz is buying something, marking it so it will sell, and then having to sit on it for 3 months.

Many months, it is a juggling act. How much do you buy? How much do you mark it? Will the public buy it? This is not only a cash flow issue, but a storage issue too. All of this is more difficult in a slow economy. When the economy was hot, none of this was an issue. It wasn't a question of selling something; the only question was will it sell this week, or next?

Hey everyone!


Fred - I do give each of my items numbers. I started at 100 and just went from there. My mother in law also has some pieces in our booth so she started at 200. So this is how our tag reads "item # 107-D or 203-S". It helps me with keeping a log. I have an excel spreadsheet, I write the description, price, item number. I also have a column for what I have in the item and what it sells for. We also sell a good bit of our pieces on facebook, so I also have a column for where I sold the item, was it facebook or our booth. And then I also have a column for if I mark the price down.

I just clicked the like button on Danyell"s post, which made for the 1,000th like on this thread.

Thank you, everyone, for helping make this thread successful! I feel like I learn something new here every day!

DanyellL, I also kept track of where what items sold, I think that helps if you sell in multiple places, gives you an idea of what sells best where, what will catch people's eye, etc.

And yes, thank you everyone for this great thread! I love reading how everyone is doing!

Well we have decided to "close" the booth. The past month and a half we have had $23 in sales. Insane. Last night through facebook alone we sold 3 pieces making $345. We haven't even sold that much through our booth since we opened. I think we just chose a bad mall to start out in. They do no marketing, the foot traffic has completely died off. Even on weekends when we go in, there is maybe 10 people there. And it's a HUGE place. The past years on any given day (even through the week) you would be circling for a parking spot. The management changed a few years ago and it has been slowly declining. The people that own the mall also do estate sales and auctions and that is clearly their money maker and what they devote their time too.

I feel great about our decision though. We will still sell our refinished furniture. We just won't have a retail space. For our area, our stuff sells through facebook the best. So that is just what we are sticking with.

I will still continue to participate in this thread because I love hearing all the ideas and tips and how you guys are doing!

Sad to head about your booth! But I am so glad your Facebook sales are doing so well!! It's very encouraging! With DH being military I have wondered if Facebook alone would be good for us if we moved to an area where antique malls weren't super popular!

We had a decent weekend, not the Labor Day blockbuster I was hoping for but solid sales none the less. We met last months for our September check and by yesterday had already cleared rent and were in the green for Octobers check :-)

Clovis! Super glad you debunked the bad August stigma! Hoping September is killer for all of us!

I told MJ this weekend, if I had the resources I would open a shop.
I would set it up as an old department store.
A counter for notions, a toy counter and so on.
At the back would be a lunch counter selling sandwiches, homemade cookies and desserts and simple things like lemonade, coffee and tea.
That would be my dream.

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

My goodness. Is it Wednesday already? I totally missed Tuesday Tips!

Here is my Tuesday Tip:

If you all are new in the AM/FM game, I would encourage you to always expand your knowledge and horizons by dabbling in items that you normally wouldn't buy and sell.

When I was starting out, and since I didn't know a thing, I focused on buying stuff that I found cheap. I've bought a million $2 boxes at auctions, and then pieced each item out cheaply.

I've met a ton of people that look at the success we've had in the FM and ebay business, and want to start making some money too. Because they don't have any real working knowledge of anything, I always suggest buying cheap auction box lots, garage sale stuff, etc. What I've found though, is that almost everyone that I've talked to about this wants to start off dealing in big stuff with big profits, and quite frankly, look at cheap stuff and auction box lots as too much work, and certainly beneath them.

If you want to be a big time dealer, you need to have big time knowledge. Sure, we all get lucky from time to time, and find a killer score, but it doesn't happen every day.

IMO, it takes many years to be truly knowledgeable, and experience will always be your best education.

This is why I always suggest paying and investing cash in your flips, and to always start small. Those auction box lots and bulk garage sale items are excellent teachers.

Here is an example:

Many years ago, I bought about 10 boxes at an auction. These boxes appeared to be a farm or garage clean-out. I paid $2 a box for 9 of the boxes, and $9 for the 10th box, mostly because it had tools in it.

When I got home, I looked everything up. In the 10th box, I was stunned to find a complete set of Deere seed plates for a Deere planter. I scrapped the junk (all copper) jumper cables for about $6; and pieced out the tools for about $30. I sold 6 pairs of nice leather gloves for $3-$4 each. A few sets of semi trailer straps sold for $5 a piece, and IIRC, there were 5 of those. But the real kicker was the seed plates. Those plates sold for $79 in just a few days on ebay. The other nine $2 boxes did very well too, but not as well as the 10th box.

You aren't going to find a set of seed plates in every box, and sometimes, you are going to throw out some $2 boxes because they contain nothing worth flipping. But I will share this...there hasn't been a set of seed plates at any auction since then that I haven't spied and bought, and it has paid off handsomely over the years.

Like the old Allis Chalmers manuals said: Knowledge Is Power.

I would encourage you to expand your horizons a little. Don't bet the farm, and don't go crazy, but dabble a little here and there, especially if it is cool to you, and if you think you can make a few bucks on it.

As with everything I post, YMMV.

We had a great August in our AM space. We sold several large pieces of refinished furniture and a ton of smalls. So glad we had some large items ready to move right in the empty spaces. I'm really pleased so far! I haven't commented much, but have tried to keep up with the reading. Thanks for everyone who shares their experiences, and for the questions too!

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formerly known as HaloHead
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"... And what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" Micah 6:8

I'm not sure what to do now. lol DH told them yesterday we were moving out and giving our 30 day notice. They got so upset. When DH was in the parking lot almost to the truck, she ran out and gave us an offer. She said she would drop our booth rent down to $100 a month (which is awesome for our size booth) and write off what we owe this month (which is $83 since we only had $67 in sales this month). She said business has been picking up and that she knows that when the weather cools down a bit things will pick up.

So I'm kind of confused. We've also reached out to a few other AM's to see how they run, but none have really seemed to be a good fit. DH wants to give it another shot. But I'm still kind of unsure, seeing how the issue is with traffic. Paying the booth amount isn't the issue, its the fact that they do nothing to bring in customers.

Any suggestions?

That sounds like my kind of dream!

This is one of my issues, having things to go right back in the "holes" once things sell. I have got to be better about this!