Last Saturday my dad and I raided the basement and hauled some of our old, useless, or otherwise unnecessary stuff to the Treasure Lake Volunteer Fire Company's monthly garage sale. We rented a folding table for $10, set up our wares, waited for dollars to come rolling in, and the old junk to go rollling out.
The sale officially opened at 9:00am. Much to my chagrin, there was no Stock Exchange-like opening bell. Customers didn't come pouring in with wads of cash in their hands. Instead, they simply began to drift into the firehall in a slow, meandering trickle. Mostly grandmothers, mothers, and children, there were a few men amongst them, too.
Some of the customers who ambled through the lanes, the rows of tables, were somewhat aloof. They were careful not to establish too much eye contact, or start conversations, or to seem too interested in any one object, lest they fall victim to "the sales pitch," and face the uncomfortable feeling of saying "no." These were the tough cases; the "browsers." These were the regulars who come to the sale every month, and are just perhaps stopping by on their way to the grocery store, just out of curiousity. These, I could tell, were the folks who'd left their wallets in the car, locked in the glove compartment. Best to just say a brief "hello," and let them pass by.
Others, and these were in a distinct minority, quickly presented themselves as "live ones" by either stopping in front of our table, or actually picking up an object. These are almost gauranteed signals of interest, or at least a willingness to spend a little money.
We put no price tags on any of our merchandise. I don't believe in price tags. I believe in The Deal; the buyer and seller make a verbal agreement about what the object is worth. However, this process takes a little investigation, a little trial and error, in order to see what people are willing to pay, in general. We started out by committing the Cardinal Garage Sale Error of setting prices too high. My dad was quoting prices that were close to what he had actually paid for the particular items. My prices were also a bit too high. We were both operating with the goal of "making money." Wrong. I quickly dug back into my extensive garage/yard/stoop sale experience and realized that our whole approach was flawed. Prices had to be set with the goal of getting the person to walk away with the item; getting rid of it for a price that was something over $0.00. We had to remember, the primary goal was to Move Merch...
***
You see, my stoop selling technique was honed on the streets of Park Slope, Brooklyn. Eigth Ave. and Fifth St., to be exact. This is a part of Brooklyn where the stoop salesman has a lot of competition. It is a neighborhood composed mostly of brownstones with young middle- and upper-middle class families living in them. These are people with money, and kids. Therefore they buy a lot of stuff. When you live in a tiny apartment in New York, and you buy a lot stuff, you have to also get rid of a lot of stuff in order to make room for the new stuff. Also, the kids are outgrowing their stuff. This is a lot of stuff that needs to be gotten rid of.
As a consequence, the streets of Park Slope, the stoops of Park Slope, are almost cluttered with free merchandise. And not just broken old junk, either, I'm talking books, CDs, furniture, clothing, kitchen & hand tools, baby-related items, all very often in perfect condition. It's all sitting there for the taking. In the three years I lived in Park Slope, I collected enough books off the street to make a modest library. Some of these books I still own, others I've sold on the internet and made not-insignificant amounts of money. If you love to rummage free stuff, especially anything for a baby, go to Park Slope. Trust me.
With all of this quality free merchandise lying around, who needs to buy? That's the philosophy of most Park Slopers. Their homes are already getting choked-full with other stuff they've picked up off the street! Why would they need to shell out hard-earned money for these kinds of items?
Well, luckily, my particular corner of Park Slope had a lot of diverse foot traffic, all the time. It was a block from Prospect Park (Brooklyn's answer to Central Park, but much better), it was two blocks from an F-Train stop, it was right by Methodist Hospital, and it was parralell to the much busier 7th Ave., often considered the heart of Park Slope. Suffice it to say, a lot of folks, not just Slopers, passed by my stoop on any given day. It was prime real estate for a stoop sale.
In the three years I was there, my building-mates, my flat-mates, and I held at least a dozen stoop sales. I somehow participated in most of these, and I even conducted at least three myself. If you had some halfway decent merchandise, and you kept your prices reasonable, you could totally gut an apartment in a single day, no doubt about it. Refrigerator? Someone would drive by and claim it, return later with a van. Books? At $1 dollar a pop, they would fly off the stoop. Miscellaneous junk? If it caught your eye all those years ago, it'll catch somebody else's. The trick was to get the stuff out the door.
One famous sale of mine, which I'll remember all my life, was held on a hot, sunny summer saturday. I put out half my earthly belongings, just trying to lighten my load, and started hawking. Soon my flat-mates brought some of their stuff, and so did some neighbors from upstairs. They would put their wares out on the stoop, and let me work my magic. With some of the earnings we bought a case of Coors and got a little tuned up. With a good buzz going we even managed to sell more and faster. We were wizards that day, calling people to the stoop from across the street, almost forcing them to buy, giving them no excuse not to. We even threw in a free beer to someone to get them to walk off with a dehumidifier.
"You, hey! You wanna buy? We got good stuff here, come take a look! Come ahhhn, you!"
"You like that? It's $20. No? How about $2? Okay. Sold..."
"Hey kid, that's not free yah know. Tell your mom you can have it for free if she buys something. Oh hell. Just take it."
It was all about the Hard Close; do not let the person walk away without buying something. Always be closing. Be closing from the moment the person walks to the stoop. My friend Kevin Connelly came up with our motto that day, and it has stuck with me ever since. The motto was simple, "Move merch." Do whatever it takes to get the buyer to pull cash from their pocket and walk away with the item. No excuses.
And we did indeed move a lot of merch that day. Someone even offered to buy my pet turtles who were out with us enjoying the fun. But they weren't for sale. After while, I started running back into my apartment, bringing out arm-loads of stuff to sell.
"You like basketball? Wait here..." another $5, another item gone.
"No, no! Don't leave! I've got other books inside. Come inside and look! Everything must go GO GO!!"
It was a great episode in my life in New York, and in the end I made about $120 and took my friends out to dinner, blowing almost every cent of it. But that's life; here today, gone tomorrow. Money, jobs, friends, big events, or old junk around the house, they all come and they all go. Have fun with 'em while you can...
***
As far away as I was from Park Slope last saturday, the motto still worked. Move Merch. With this in mind, we began to make a few sales. An old ashtray, a picture frame, a Christmas wreath, we sold them all at rock-bottom prices, sometimes 1% of the original sticker price. But we moved merch.
We even saw a little bit of arbitrage taking place. One of the more wiley sellers at the firehall noticed we were selling a little wicker basket. Using my technique, I sold it to her for $5. Well, apparently this little wicker basket was some sort of collector's item. My dad knew it, and quickly saw that the lady put it up on her table for sale! I don't know how much she sold it for, but it was gone by the end of the day. And she must have sold it for more than $10 or it wouldn't have made sense.
In general, however, the public did not seem overly eager to part
with their money. And the "hard close" didn't exactly work so much as it kind of scared people away. A considerable amount of merch was left on the table. Sometimes, no amount of closing will get someone to buy, and you've got to live with that. We ended up donating most of the stuff to Goodwill. Not before pocketing about $80, however. Not bad, even for a Park Slope stoop sale.Aside from any mundane concerns about making money or moving merch, it was a fun chance to meet some people from around the neighborhood and swap a few stories. The highlight of the day was when a beautiful tan Boxer dog wandered into the firehall, apparently lost. She was healthy, clearly not a stray though she had wandered astray...heh. For about 30 minutes she was the talk of the sale. I even offered to adopt her if her owners didn't show up. But alas, they did, reclaiming their beloved pet and saving me from an immediate and ill-prepared pet ownership.
Overall, the experience was pretty similar to what I used to do in my old neigborhood; put out your wares, engage people, make quips, crack jokes, make the sale. It's not rocket science, and that's why you can do it from your stoop, or your yard, or the local firehall. It is a lot of fun though, especially if you like joking around with people, making a little money, and clearing out your basement. It's not going to change the world in any way, but it's enough to fill an otherwise lazy Saturday and a blog post. It's commerce at it's most rudimentary, and if you're open to it you can even learn a lot about people and their habits, about human psychology.
This knowledge will always come in handy. Because in this world someone's always selling, and someone's always buying, and you've got to be able to adapt if you want to move merch...
1 comment:
You should forward this advice to Hank Paulson.
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