Slide-Lok's Garage Blog

5 Tips For A Successful Garage Sale This Summer

5/29/2018

Slide-Lok's helpful hints and tips for your garage or yard sale

So you want to have a summer garage sale. Whether to raise a few extra bucks or to clean out the garage to renovate it. Follow our 5 step guide to have a successful garage sale so you can finally get rid of all the clutter you've collected over the years. Here are the 5 things we recommend doing for a successful garage or yard sale this summer.

1. Prepping and Planning - As soon as you decide to host a garage sale you should begin prepping as this can be a long and tedious job. You should begin by sorting through all the clutter in your garage for the items you know you want to sell. Once you've sorted all the items into category of item (i.e. sporting goods) or groups of pricing (i.e. all 5 dollar items go in this pile), you can begin pricing the objects. Once sorted and priced, organize your items in a way that will make it easy to transport objects onto your driveway or lawn for the day of the sale.
   
   A little more on pricing, because that can always be a headache. Pricing everything out beforehand will help deal with negotiators prematurely. The general rule is 50-30-10. New/unused items should ideally be priced at 50% of their retail value. Slightly used items should be priced at 30% of their retail items. Used or more worn out items should be priced at 10% of their retail value.
   
   
2. Timing - Timing is everything and can even be considered part of prepping and planning since you'll want to have this done well in advance once you've decided to have a sale. Saturday is a popular day for people to make plans to do things, so Sundays are usually the best bet for attracting the most potential customers. While a Sunday is usually the suggested day, it is also important to keep in mind the events going on in and around your town. It would be wise to check out the local events and plan accordingly. Some communities even have specific garage / yard sale weekends once every few months and planning your sale for this weekend could mean a 10-fold increase in the amount of people that would stumble upon your sale on any given Sunday. Finally, making sure to start early in the day is always suggested and will certainly help catch the early birds.
   
   
3. Marketing - Marketing and advertising your garage sale can make the difference between a successful garage sale and a complete waste of time. If you don’t live on one of the busy streets in your town, getting the word out on your garage sale will be vital to its success. Nowadays a lot of towns have group Facebook pages where locals can post about local businesses and events within the town. Take advantage of social media, it will be able to reach many people with minimal effort. Along with posting on various social media outlets, if your friends / family are willing to repost the information it will only help to further spread your garage sale information.
   
   As well as posting on social media, the traditional ways of marketing garage sales are still very effective. Posting signs around town will help capture the people who are willing to spontaneously go, or people who just happen to be passing by that area on the time of your sale. Posting news of your garage sales in a local newspaper of ad will help to inform that audience who don’t necessarily go on social media but who look to catch up on their news through reading the paper.
   
   Some information to include while marketing or purchasing ads are the big ticket items, day and time, and address.
   
   If you market using all three aspects you are sure to get the word out and have a busy garage sale!
   
   
4. Banker - Be prepared to act as the banker, people will ask for change and come with all sorts of denominations. If you are not prepared to make change you might lose out on the sale. Be extra prepared as a lot of people tend to hold tens or twenty’s and may only want to buy something that costs three dollars, after a couple of these transactions you are going to run low on your smaller bills! Another smart idea, especially with technology nowadays is to have a way to electronically pay. A common app that helps with electronic payments is PayPal and Venmo. PayPal and Venmo will deposit the money directly into your account, and make shopping easier for those who don’t always carry cash.
   
   
5. Staging - Hopefully you've followed the other steps and are about to have your sale. On the day of the sale you should setup and stage your sale an hour before you plan to start. Placing a few of the bigger or “hot ticket items” in plain view will help get people to stop and take a look at the garage sale. Try to get a place to put all your items. If you don’t have enough tables maybe try borrowing some from friends or asking the local school or church if you could borrow or rent tables. Items that don’t have a spot generally get looked over. Some other things to keep in mind can be treats! If you have a younger child in the family or are looking for another outlets to capitalize on try selling lemonade, cookies, and other treats as they will be a big seller on a hot summer day. Tip - You could give away ice cold lemonade and advertise that to attract more potential customers (relate this to the marketing step).

If you followed all of that you should be counting the big bucks at the end of the day! You can toss those extra dollars in your pocket for spending money around town, get your significant other something nice, get your kids a new toy, or upgrade your home. For all your garage improvement needs Slide-Lok has all your storage and flooring options covered from garage cabinets to overhead racks and polyaspartic garage floor coatings. Thanks for reading and I hope these tips will help you orchestrate a successful garage sale!

Keywords: garage, yard, sale, summer, tips

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