Did my 1st boot sale today

Zabl

only made £10 and had to pay £4 to get in

I thought i took some good stuff, but would love some tips from the experts here?

Ta

x

Agutka

Not an expert, but that is quite poor. At least you got some fresh air. Either you sold nothing or had prices hovering around 2-5 pence...

£4 to get in makes me wonder what kind of bootsale it was - anything round here is at least £7, but I make £50-£140 (best day ever!)
Aim for something big and popular, give it another go. If still no joy go home via the skip.:eek:

BargainJunky

Not a good first experience. Our worst was £13.50 but think that was the weather and the boot had not been advertised well.

Did you price your stuff too cheap - people sometimes think something is wrong with it if its too cheap. Was it advertised well, were many people around (booters and buyers) but just didnt want your stuff, was the weather bad?

cookiemonster25

have done a few boot sales in my time and it always strike me how some weeks you cant shift a item such as clothes and the following week you cant keep up with demand, for the same items very odd!!!

pick a regular one, well advertised and keep prices reasonable, dont expect the earth for stuff you will get good weeks and bad
good luck;)

Contains_Mild_Peril

Were customers charged admission to the sale, and did it coincide with any other boot sales in the area with free admission? If the answer is yes to both, nearly all your customers would be at the free one instead. The low pitch fee (they're usually £5-10 round here) leads me to suspect it would probably be free to get in, though, but if not, it's a false economy to choose a sale with a lower pitch fee if customers have the option of a free admission sale where stallholders pay more for their pitches instead.
If it was outdoors, was it somewhere customers could enter freely rather than wait to be allowed in? I've been to some sales where the majority of the customers have already been and gone before the official start time, so stallholders arriving only an hour or so before the start would miss most of the customers, especially by the time they set up.
Were your prices comparable to other stalls? Charging too much or too little can cause takings to be low.
Was the weather OK (if outdoors)?
How well publicised was it? Were there posters outside? I once had a disastrous selling experience where the site was not visible from the street, and I had mistakenly assumed that there would be signs that passers-by could see telling them about the boot sale (as is the norm), but there were none. To make matters worse, the venue had a maze of little car parks, so even those who had seen a poster and come looking for the car boot sale could go to the wrong car park (the poster just said the buildings' "car park" and did not include any directions or specifics), find no boot sale and no sign telling them where to find it, and assume it had been cancelled. All the other stallholders I spoke to said it was the worst they'd ever been to for trying to sell stuff, so it wasn't just my stall that was rubbish!
Did you take a good variety of stuff? Some sellers have only one main type of goods (commonly baby stuff in my town) which can be hard to sell if the right customers just aren't there.
I have little experience of Saturday car boot sales, but maybe the more usual Sunday ones might be more popular, since many people do their (other) shopping on Saturdays.
There are some old threads on here with useful general advice about car boot sale selling, which you might find helpful.

jaxxy00

Or perhaps it may have been that you priced your stuff too dear. Or it could just be the weather etc.

I think you can usually tell the first timers as they are either nearly giving stuff away too cheap or they have nearly everything left as they overprice items. E.g. general tops on a rail for £4 or £5 you just know they havent done a car boot before. Thats how it is where i come from anyway. Most stuff is either 50p or £1 an item (clothing) or maybe 3 for £1. My mum once went to a car boot and they were giving the stuff away!!! They just didnt want to take it home.

If you give some examples of what you were selling and how much for etc then maybe people can help you more as to what went wrong.

code-a-holic

At ,my first car boot sale we made £112 and the pitch is £5. I think something to maybe try is putting prices on as many items as possible, made a difference when i've been selling

Zabl

Thanks for all the replies...... I felt i didn't over price items, most were £1 or 50p to be honest, although i have since found out there was a carnival in a local town, so prob why there wasn't that much interest I guess.
Am going to a bigger one next weekend, where hopefully I can shift more stuff, as its still in the back of my car! Hee hee

xx

clarew

lets us know how you get on. I am planning to do my 1st one soon, and have been stockpiling my stuff for it. Is £1 reasonable for adult books, (have lots of chick lit, paperbacks etc to sell), and children toys etc.
Is there certain stuff you can't sell (ie:alcohol,electrical?) I have sandwich toaster, still in box never used-can you sell electrics?

soolin

clarew wrote:

lets us know how you get on. I am planning to do my 1st one soon, and have been stockpiling my stuff for it. Is £1 reasonable for adult books, (have lots of chick lit, paperbacks etc to sell), and children toys etc.
Is there certain stuff you can't sell (ie:alcohol,electrical?) I have sandwich toaster, still in box never used-can you sell electrics?

I think it does vary from area to area. I did a car boot earlier this year and my chick lit hardbacks went for 20p, and I bought some paperbacks from another seller for 10p or 6 paperbacks for 50p.

Childrens toys went Ok though, especially a few old power rangers items my son had.

Soo

Nurse_Bambi

I'm stockpiling for one too! Got loads to flog.

I have an old play station (the first type) (original box) with a few games and joysticks. How much should I sell that for?

thanx