Flea Market Goods, Scrapping Finds

My wife and I have many years experience selling at flea markets. I am full of advise but I will try to make it short for now.

Clean everything before you sell it. If its dusty clean while you sell.

Don't over crowd your table, once something sells put something else in that place.

During the sales day rearrange your tables, put the stuff on the back in the front and the stuff in the front in the back. (Why you ask? Customers tend to make more than one trip around a flea market unless it a huge one.)

Bring different things each week, that does not mean replace everything but change it up.

Many to most of the customers are there every week so if you bring the same stuff they may stop and talk but are more likely to buy if you bring new stuff.

Notice what others are selling. Notice that you are selling a lot more than they are because you are following my advise. When they ask you how you are doing(how much did you sell??) never ever tell them. Say "Not bad" or "OK how about you?".

After going week after week you will notice many of the other sellers are not doing well and put out the exact same items on their tables in the exact same spots.

Well that was my short response, there is money to be made at flea markets. Mike

My Phlea Market Filosophy:

I operate a junk removal business. All of my merchandise not only comes to me for free, but someone paid me to take it away. Not a bad place to start.

I often sell stuff at an auction, which works well for stuff I never want to see again and don't care how much I get for it, which is most of the stuff. I will often see that some items sell too cheap, and get mildly annoyed (remember I got it for free) but I get over my annoyance when something sells for ridiculously high prices and I wonder "What was that person thinking?"

My philosophy for years has been that I didn't want to do flea markets because I didn't relish the idea of sitting at a booth all day and HOPING someone would buy my stuff, and then having to reload the unsold stuff when done, take it home and pack up again. But my Chosen One thought it would be fun and she convinced me to take a load to the Armada flea market about an hour away from me. Well we did it, and not only did we have fun but we profited after buying breakfast, lunch and paying for booth space about $250.00 my first time out of the gate. I think part of my enjoyment was the company. ;-) Mind you we had to spend all day to do that and a junk removal job making the same money would have take maybe two hours, but I digress...

Now mind you I used to have a warehouse, and it was not only costing me too much, but I had so much space that I was ACCUMULATING instead of selling. I now am down to four storage units which cost me a little over $500 per month (HALF what I was paying at the warehouse), but I am turning merchandise over. Also, one of the storage units is my workshop for breaking down scrap, cleaning and prepping, checking items to make sure they worked, and pricing merchandise for sale.

After this experience, and seeing what sells and what does not, I'm kind of jazzed to do it again. There is the Dixieland flea market just a few miles away from me and I will probably get a booth next weekend and see how it goes.

Another thing that worked well for us at a very large flea market, we became wholesalers. The regular sellers would not open right away but would prowl the booths of the folks who would only sell occasionally and didn't have permanent stalls.

We specialized in certain types of items and we would get a big rush of the "permanent sellers" buying from us between 6-7 am. They would take our stuff back to their stalls and charge more for them. The advantage to us was we sold out early and we could fill our truck the next week and do it all over again. The quick turn over of our money was the goal.

I used to change it up the reduce prices in the afternoon, I would raise them in the afternoon. It was a special circumstance, we set near the entrance and people would see our stuff first and remember our low prices. After a few hours walking around the flea market they thought they could come out a buy at a reduced price because it was afternoon. A few got upset and told me I was doing it wrong and I should be lower my prices, but they always relented and paid.

Also value is perceived on several levels including condition, completeness, cleanliness and price. If it is higher priced then its often perceived to be worth more and don't be in a hurry to lower prices.

I'm the guy who sells things cheaper in the morning than the afternoon and wants to turn my money over quickly, the longer I stay at the flea market the value I put on my stock goes up.

The last we were in the flea market business we specialized in video games and game systems. We put a 30 day warranty on our systems, put the serial number and date on one of our business cards stating is was a 30 day warranty. We told the customers, no card no warranty. The other side was we stood behind our stuff. If it didn't work then you got your money back or exchange for another item, the customer's choice. Never a hesitation on the refund of the money. Lots of return customers, the ones we did refund always came back and many brought friends and family. Mike