Slow Times During the Year

You may be feeling a bit down in the dumps about your booth sales these last couple of months.   Don't worry.   Things should pick up for you.  This is a typically slow time of year.

Booth vendors would do well to keep the ebb of flow of the year in mind.

During the slow furniture months, you may not sell many large items, but smaller items will get you through.  It's a good idea to plan for that.  If you are very willing to have occasional months when you don't even make your rent, then it's fine to specialize in only large pieces.  It's possible that the sales of your other months will compensate for the off times.

If your booth business is more of a month to month thing and when you don't make a profit, you have little in reserve for finding deals, then you need a back up plan.

The thing is, even though April and May may not be great for sales, they are fantastic months for yard sales. If you don't take advantage of the peak yard sale months (Spring and Fall), you'll be scrambling at other parts of the year to keep your booth full.  And you'll pay higher prices during the off months, too.  You need to save up for the months when there are plenty of good deals.

Even though your big furniture sales may slow down, it's not an entirely dead time of year.  Smaller things do OK.  The things that sell are mostly items that people don't have to think too hard about.  Impulse purchases. 

You've probably made plenty of purchases like this yourself...   You see a cute little table.  It's around $50, give or take.  You think it'll work well in one spot.  If it doesn't, you have a feeling you could use it somewhere else.  If you change your mind about it down the road, you could get rid of it without too much regret.  You make a snap decision to get it.   Those snap decision purchases will sell!

During the slower times,

it's great to have plenty 

of nice things in your booth

that sell for $75 or less.  

Meanwhile, try to resist the urge to slash prices on your large furniture.  Better times are coming!  It's wise to keep the big picture in mind.

Christmas Wares on Sale

Before I had a booth, I thought it was rather tacky for stores to put out their Christmas things so early. Please!  Wait 'til after Thanksgiving.  I was so wrong.

The first year I had a booth, I held onto those beliefs.  I didn't sell a whole lot of holiday items that year.  I had tons to pack up, even after the Christmas sales were over.

The next year, I had loads of beautiful Christmas treasures. I wanted to make sure they sold.    By the first of November, I had very few Thanksgiving or Fall items left in my booth.  I didn't want to leave my booth looking drab all month, so I decided to jump the gun and bring out all the holiday items.

I put tons of Christmas decor in my booth on Nov 2.

What a surprise!   My Christmas decor sold like hotcakes right away.  They were pretty things, so that was partially the reason they sold so well.  But there was more to it than that.

This was all that was left of my holiday decor by Nov 26.

By Thanksgiving, I didn't have much Christmas decor left.  Some other vendors were just putting out their decor and it was very pretty. Unfortunately they were late. Sales on Christmas items slowed down after Thanksgiving.  What's up with that?

As I unpacked my own things to decorate my home, I had a revelation.  I unpacked lots of my own holiday decor, coming across things I forgot I had.  I felt overwhelmed by my holiday accumulations.  I had enjoyed looking at the holiday things in stores in November, but now, I knew I didn't need to buy ANYTHING else.  I'll bet lots of customers feel that way.

My advice for vendors - put out Christmas items in early November.  This is NOT your home.  This is a business. A business needs to stay ahead of the holidays.  In December, mark down anything that's left ... unless you have plenty of storage space to keep it for the following year.

Don't just listen to me.  Major stores have studied sales practices for years and years.  Lots of high dollar research has gone into the decisions they make about when to put out things.  Vendors can learn from them.

This article is a little late to help you this year, but remember it for next!  As for now, if your Christmas decor isn't on sale, get yourself over to your booth asap and mark down anything you don't want to take back home after Christmas!!!