Who are the buyers, and how do you get them to come to your

garage sale? Your customers are going to be "everybody," and you

get them over to your garage with a little bit of advertising and

promotion.

Let's look at the background: Everybody accumulates the kind of

garage sale items that other people are searching for, and are

willing to buy. These items range from no longer wanted or

outgrown items of clothing, to furniture, tools, knick-knacks,

books, pictures and toys. Many garage sale items are objects of

merchandise purchased on impulse, and later found to be not what

the buyer wanted. He discovered too late that he really didn't

have a use for it, or he no longer has a need for it. Many items

found at garage sales are gifts that have been given to the

seller, but are the wrong size or incorrect choice for the

recipient.

The problem wit most people is that they haven't the time to

gather up all the items "just taking up space" in and around

their homes and staging a garage sale to get rid of them. Many

people don't know how to stage a garage sale, and many other

people feel that putting on a garage sale is just too much bother

and work.

This is where you enter the picture. Your enterprise will be an

ongoing garage sale of items donated and collected from these

people who lack the inclination to put on a garage sales of their

own.

Step one is education: Spend a few weeks visiting all the garage

sales, swap meets and flea markets in your area. Find out what's

being offered for sale, what people are buying, and how the

merchandise is being sold. generally an item is tagged with a

price, but the seller is open to almost any reasonable offer from

the customer. Another thing you want to make a mental not of is

the way the merchandise is displayed and how the customers are

allowed to browse.

You start your own garage sale by cleaning out your basement,

attic, closets and garage. Talk to your relatives and friends;

tell them what you're going to do and ask them for donations of

no longer used or unwanted items. It's here that you'll get your

first experience in negotiating, and finally, an agreement for

you to display and sell other people's merchandise for a

percentage of the sale price. You'll find people explaining that

they really don't have a use for a specific item or thy really

don't want to keep storing it, but because of sentimental

reasons, "just hate to give it away."

Once you've had a little experience with this type of seller, you

will be able to advertise in the newspaper that you buy garage

sale items, or take them on consignment for a percentage of the

final sales price.

It's best that your wife handle the garage sale itself---greets

potential customers, "shows them around,"and generally engages

them in conversation. If it's a woman staging the garage sale,

then arrangements should be made to have another woman "mind the

store" while she's out digging up more items for sale.

The advertising angle is really quite simple, and shouldn't cost

very much either. You should run an ad in your area shopper's

newspaper for about three days in advance of, and up through the

day of your sale. Once you're operating on a full-time , every

day of the week schedule, you'll want to change your ad schedule

and the style of your advertising. But in getting started, go

with small classified ads simply announcing your garage sale,

emphasizing that you've got something of interest to

everyone--everything form A to Z. To get ideas on how to write

your ad, check your newspaper for a week or so; cut out all the

garage sale ads you can find; paste them up on a piece of paper.

Then, with a bit of critical analysis, you'll be able to

determine how to write a good ad of your own by determining the

good and bad in the ads you've collected. Something to remember:

The bigger and better you sale, the bigger and better your

"getting started" ads should be. And the secret to outstanding

garage sale profits is in having the widest or largest selection

of merchandise.

You should have made an old-fashioned "sandwich board" sign to

display in front of your house when your garage sale is open for

business. This will pull in your neighbors, if you haven't

already informed them, and attract the people driving by.

Sandwich boards are sometimes set out at key traffic

intersections nor far from the site of the garage sale, to

attract attention and point the way. (Check local ordinances to

see if this is permitted in your area.)

Another "sign idea" practiced by a few sharp operators is the old

"Burma Shave" roadside pointers. Here, you simply take a few

pieces of cardboard and tack onto the power poles a about 200

yards intervals on a thoroughfare leading to your garage sale.

You'll create a lot of traffic for yourself! Simply visit the

public library and check out a book on limericks, adapt the ones

you find humorous, and start making signs. Once word here Though:

Be sure to check your local ordinances before you start nailing

signs to power poles.

By all means, search out and use all the free bulletin boards in

your area. It's better, and usually much more profitable, to take

the time to make up and attention grabbing circular you can post

on these bulletin boards than just using a written 3 by 5 card

announcement.

To do this, pick up some "transfer lettering," go thru your

newspapers and old magazines for interesting illustrations,

graphics and pictures, then with a little bit of imagination,

makeup an 81/2 by 11 poster type announcement of your sale. When

you've got it pasted up, take it to any quick print shop ad have

them print up 50 to 100 copies for you. The cost should not come

to more than six or seven dollars.

If you make this "circular/poster" up with versatility and

long-time usage in mid, you can use it over and over again,

simply by pasting a new date. In case you were puzzled when we

talk about "pasting" this is simply pasting another piece of

paper on to the overall page. Say you have a circular with a date

of Wednesday March 1st, and you want it to read Thursday, July

16th. Rather than do the whole thing over, simply write out the

new date with your transfer letters on a separate sheet of paper,

cut it out to fit in the space occupied by the old date, and

paste the new date over the old date. A good paste to use for

this purpose is rubber cement. That's all there is to it; the

printer does the rest.

Now let's talk about the 'insider secrets" of drawing people into

your sale, and merchandising "gimmicks' that will result in the

maximum sales and profit for you. First,

call attention to your sale. Don't be shy, bashful, or

self-conscious about letting everybody for miles about know that

you're having a garage sale. Some sharp operators do the next

best thing to having the Goodyear blimp overhead: They rent

miniature blimps, send them up above the housetops, and tether

them there on their sale days. Of course this giant balloon or

miniature blimp has some sort of sign on the side of it, inviting

people to the garage sale! this is one of the strongest available

advertising ideas for pulling "traffic' to a sale of any kind.

For more details, write to Pie-In-The-Sky Company, PO Box 5267,

San Mateo, CA 94402.

You have to give your sale some flair. Put some posts up across

the front of the property and run some twisted cree paper between

them. Even better than crepe paper, run some brightly colored

ribbons. Invest in some colorful pennants and fly them from

temporary flag poles. And don't forget the balloons!

Make your garage sale a fun kind of event with clusters of

balloons anchored to your display tables and racks. Be sure to

"float" them well above the heads of your customers as they are

browsing through your merchandise displays.

Cover your display tables with colorful cloths. Don't hesitate to

use bright colors with busy patterns. Regardless of what you

sell, effective display is still predominately essential!

You cannot "dump" items haphazardly on a table, sit down and

expect to realize great profits. The people doing the most

business---making the most sales--are the ones with interesting

displays, action and color.

Try to have as wide a selection of colors as possible in your

clothing racks, and mix them for a rainbow effect. Make sure that

your jewelry items shine and sparkle. Arrange them in and with

jewelry boxes, jewelry ladders and other items sold for the

purpose of showing off jewelry while keeping it neatly organized.

We know of one lady who regularly arranges jewelry items in a

battery operated lazy susan. Seeing this jewelry slowly turning

on the lazy susan never fails to draw attention.

Think about it, and then study the methods of display used by

"rack jobbers" in the stores in your area. These are the wire

racks that usually hold card packaged items. This kind of display

rack would lend itself beautifully for anchoring a cluster of

balloons. Keep these things in mind, and build your individual

displays as part of the whole; make it pleasing to the eye as

well as convenient for your customers to browse through and

select the items that appeal to them.

Look for some kind of interesting and unusual item to call

attention to your sale--something you can set up or park in front

of your house during your sale. Some of the displays we've seen

along these lines include a horse-drawn surrey, a restored Model

T, and old farm plow. But anything of an unusual and interesting

nature will do the trick for you. One couple we know put up a

display using a manikin dressed in an old time farm bonnet, long

dress and apron. The display depicted a farm woman of old,

washing clothes with a scrub board and two steel wash tubs. You

have to believe this drew crowds and made people talk!

Wherever your imagination takes you, you have to be different and

distinctive, or you'll get lost in the hundreds of garage sales

going on all around you. If you'll take the time to employ a bit

of imagination and set your sales up with the kind of flair we've

been talking about, you'll not just draw the crowds, you'll end

up being the one holding the most profits.

It's almost a compulsion of many women to go shopping, to search

for the interesting and sometimes rare and valuable items. This

fact will keep you as busy as you'll ever want to be--staging and

holding garage sales. The market is so vast, and the appetite so

varied, that anything from a brass bedstead to a used dairy of

somebody's long-forgotten grandmother will sell, and sell fast at

garage sales. Put it all together, use a little imagination, and

you'll easily make all the money you want!