The myths of "Black Friday" and "Cyber Monday" seem to persist like that fifteen-year-old fruitcake languishing in the back of your freezer, but most everyone knows that the most profitable shopping days before Christmas for retailers usually tend to be sometime during the last couple of weekends before Christmas, or perhaps the Thursday and Friday before Christmas if Christmas itself falls on a weekend day. So with that in mind, everything in The Sunny Attic is going on sale!
Between now and Christmas, use coupon code HOLIDAY11 at The Sunny Attic and take a whopping 25% off your entire purchase. I've got all kinds of cute things on sale right now, just waiting for a new home. I'm taking custom orders for those bucket hats, too! So don't delay, wrap up your last-minute holiday shopping in the Attic!
I'm also celebrating the fact that The Sunny Attic was featured for the first time in one of Etsy's renowned treasury lists. Check this out!
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Monday, December 5, 2011
Flea Market!
My boyfriend and I headed up to the Flea Market at Exchange Park in Ladson, SC on Saturday. We didn't go up there to shop, but to sell. Between the two of us, we had a lot of things to get rid of, so we decided to shell out $10 for a table and see what came of it. I had a bunch of things that weren't a good fit for The Sunny Attic (they don't fall into the vintage category, nor are they handmade) and lately I've been working hard to pare down the amount of stuff I have. As a result, the flea market seemed like a great thing to try. On top of that, my boyfriend had done it before and knew the ropes, so his willingness to lend the benefit of his experience was an added bonus.
I spent big chunks of last week compiling a mental list of things I could take up there, and by the time Friday rolled around and I assembled everything in one place, it just barely fit into the back of my boyfriend's SUV along with his stuff. We went to sleep as early as we could on Friday night, and were up by 4 a.m. on Saturday in order to get to the flea market early to claim a table. We made the unpleasant discovery when we arrived that many people had arrived even earlier than we had (perhaps even the night before) and placed boxes or crates or other items on top of tables as a way of "claiming" them. For a few minutes, it looked like we weren't going to be able to get a spot at all, let alone one of the "good" spots near the entrance, but we did eventually find a vacant table and hustled to get set up. It was pretty chilly, even for South Carolina, and I was extremely grateful to be bundled up.
A couple of flashlights proved to be indispensable at that hour of the morning, enabling us to see what we were doing, and allowing us both to show off our wares to a few of the super early birds who came by on the prowl for good stuff at good prices. I sold probably $25 - $30 worth of my stuff within the first 90 minutes, much of it before I'd even had a chance to arrange everything on my side of the table!
As the sun got higher in the sky and the temperature started to warm up, people started arriving in larger numbers. We made it a point to stand next to our table and greet everyone that came by, and I'm sure many people who stopped to look at our stuff wouldn't have stopped at all had we not been so friendly. At one point, I headed over to the main building (where all the permanent vendors are located) for some hot cocoa, and I have to admit that I enjoyed seeing what other people were selling as I went -- but I managed to resist the temptation to spend any of my profits on other people's wares!
Flea markets attract all sorts of people from all walks of life, and I observed a bunch of different "types" throughout the day. Among others, there were the bargain hunter/scavenger types who would haggle over a $1.00 item, the fresh produce buyers, the quirky folks looking for unique treasures, and the jewelry scavengers with their loupes on the hunt for gold and silver.... not to mention a handful of random folks who seemed like they might qualify to be profiled on the A&E show, "Hoarders."
My favorite visitor to our table, though, was a hilarious Vietnamese woman. She didn't end up buying anything from us, but she hung out and chatted for a while and gave me a great tip for using lemongrass in a meat marinade. As we were talking, a bee buzzed by and startled her. She shrieked that she was allergic to bee stings and grabbed her lemongrass to swat the bee away. She managed to disable it to the point that it fell to the pavement, and she stepped on it with an emphatic, "You die!" Although I try to avoid bee or wasp stings as much as the next person, her ferocity was pretty hysterical and I had a good chuckle.
By the time we packed up and left around 2 p.m., I had made $120. I was pretty happy with my take, but less happy about the amount of unsold stuff I was toting home. But I'm taking it as a sign that I'll need to do the flea market again soon.
POST SCRIPT: I almost forgot to mention one of my more interesting sales. I had brought five of my crocheted bucket hats with me (basically my entire inventory minus one that I put aside for a friend) and was trying to sell them for $7 each. Since it was such a chilly morning, I pretty much asked every hat-less woman that passed by if she thought she needed a hat to keep her head warm. No one bit until I went away to find hot cocoa -- I returned from that expedition to the news that an older gentleman had offered my boyfriend $20 for all five hats. My boyfriend demurred on the offer, suggesting that the prospective buyer return in a few minutes, at which point I'd be back and able to talk to him personally. That's what he did, and when I met him I talked him up from $20 to $25. That pretty much allowed me to break even on the cost of the materials, at least, and I was happy to be moving some merchandise. Apparently this guy had five ladies he needed to buy gifts for so he was happy to take care of all five of them in one fell swoop!
I spent big chunks of last week compiling a mental list of things I could take up there, and by the time Friday rolled around and I assembled everything in one place, it just barely fit into the back of my boyfriend's SUV along with his stuff. We went to sleep as early as we could on Friday night, and were up by 4 a.m. on Saturday in order to get to the flea market early to claim a table. We made the unpleasant discovery when we arrived that many people had arrived even earlier than we had (perhaps even the night before) and placed boxes or crates or other items on top of tables as a way of "claiming" them. For a few minutes, it looked like we weren't going to be able to get a spot at all, let alone one of the "good" spots near the entrance, but we did eventually find a vacant table and hustled to get set up. It was pretty chilly, even for South Carolina, and I was extremely grateful to be bundled up.
A couple of flashlights proved to be indispensable at that hour of the morning, enabling us to see what we were doing, and allowing us both to show off our wares to a few of the super early birds who came by on the prowl for good stuff at good prices. I sold probably $25 - $30 worth of my stuff within the first 90 minutes, much of it before I'd even had a chance to arrange everything on my side of the table!
As the sun got higher in the sky and the temperature started to warm up, people started arriving in larger numbers. We made it a point to stand next to our table and greet everyone that came by, and I'm sure many people who stopped to look at our stuff wouldn't have stopped at all had we not been so friendly. At one point, I headed over to the main building (where all the permanent vendors are located) for some hot cocoa, and I have to admit that I enjoyed seeing what other people were selling as I went -- but I managed to resist the temptation to spend any of my profits on other people's wares!
Flea markets attract all sorts of people from all walks of life, and I observed a bunch of different "types" throughout the day. Among others, there were the bargain hunter/scavenger types who would haggle over a $1.00 item, the fresh produce buyers, the quirky folks looking for unique treasures, and the jewelry scavengers with their loupes on the hunt for gold and silver.... not to mention a handful of random folks who seemed like they might qualify to be profiled on the A&E show, "Hoarders."
My favorite visitor to our table, though, was a hilarious Vietnamese woman. She didn't end up buying anything from us, but she hung out and chatted for a while and gave me a great tip for using lemongrass in a meat marinade. As we were talking, a bee buzzed by and startled her. She shrieked that she was allergic to bee stings and grabbed her lemongrass to swat the bee away. She managed to disable it to the point that it fell to the pavement, and she stepped on it with an emphatic, "You die!" Although I try to avoid bee or wasp stings as much as the next person, her ferocity was pretty hysterical and I had a good chuckle.
By the time we packed up and left around 2 p.m., I had made $120. I was pretty happy with my take, but less happy about the amount of unsold stuff I was toting home. But I'm taking it as a sign that I'll need to do the flea market again soon.
POST SCRIPT: I almost forgot to mention one of my more interesting sales. I had brought five of my crocheted bucket hats with me (basically my entire inventory minus one that I put aside for a friend) and was trying to sell them for $7 each. Since it was such a chilly morning, I pretty much asked every hat-less woman that passed by if she thought she needed a hat to keep her head warm. No one bit until I went away to find hot cocoa -- I returned from that expedition to the news that an older gentleman had offered my boyfriend $20 for all five hats. My boyfriend demurred on the offer, suggesting that the prospective buyer return in a few minutes, at which point I'd be back and able to talk to him personally. That's what he did, and when I met him I talked him up from $20 to $25. That pretty much allowed me to break even on the cost of the materials, at least, and I was happy to be moving some merchandise. Apparently this guy had five ladies he needed to buy gifts for so he was happy to take care of all five of them in one fell swoop!
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