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Zero listings. Too much else going on.
Love the DP challenge and will certainly participate.
Zero listings for me but for a good reason this time. Took a road trip down to California to visit with a dear friend and go to the Sacramento Antique Faire. Found some great items, including an antique black bassinet that will be a fantastic Halloween display (especially filled with creepy old dolls!) and a very very old black typewriter that will also be part of our Halloween vignette.
Time to get back to listing…hope everyone has a great week!
10 listings for me last week. My focus was more on organizing and processing DP boxes. Was able to go through about 2 dozen boxes, and most of it was dealt with by either pricing for shows or donating.
Zero listings for me last week but I am going to make it my goal to get a bunch done this week.
The good news is that we surprised ourselves by getting set up in 3 hours Saturday morning. Perhaps it had something to do with all the caffeine in my system! The bad news is that this show is not very well attended and it was slower than we’d like. That being said, sales were fair to average, with several people buying armloads. I’d spent time last week washing and prepping a bunch of DP vintage linens and they sold really well at the show.
It’s not a show we’ll do again. Not enough payout for all the time and work. Our next show will be the end of August and it’s the killer one with crowds of people who are there to shop.
Christine….two hours to set up? GULP. Hope your sale went well on Saturday.
Thanks! This show has been harder than normal for me to nail down. What sells at one doesn’t sell at the next. I’m bringing a vast variety this time. Also, this show isn’t about beautiful displays….a lot of the vendors just lay stuff randomly out on tables and that’s not my style. However, with a scant 4 hours to load in, unpack and set up…it might have to be less styled.
Listed 20 items last week. This week has been all about going through DP boxes and organizing them. I’ve been able to pull and price quite a bit for the show this weekend. That’s my focus so not sure if I will be able to get any listings done.
This particular show is in the downtown area of Portland at a hotel convention center. The hotel screwed up and gave Friday to another event, which is normally the day we’d have to set up. Instead, we have to scramble Saturday morning and set up 5am to 9am. The show organizer emailed us last night and said that some vendors have cancelled because they don’t want to set up early Saturday morning, so the rest of us will be getting extra space and to bring lots! We’re embracing this challenge and bringing two vanloads instead of one!
Hope everyone has a great week ahead!
22 listings for me this week. Back on track and it feels good!
Sharyn…your Scotland trip sounds fabulous. We really want to get there on our next trip. It’ll be awhile though. Crikey, the honeymoon was crazy expensive, even though we tried really really hard to be frugal. It gives us something to work towards.
Christine…your booth looks amazing and so professional. Now that you’ve put in the preliminary work it will be smooth sailing from now on. We’re doing an indoor booth the end of this month. We’ve done this show a couple times before and the traffic wasn’t great so we’ll give it one more shot. They’ve hired a marketing firm to promote the show, so hopefully it brings a bunch more traffic through.
Amatino….I know what you mean about knowing you were in Scotland and feeling like you had come home. The first time I went to London in 1990, when I stepped off the train in Victoria Station I had very much the same feeling. It felt like home. My maternal grandmother was English so I do have English roots. It was a strange fascinating feeling.
Julie and VT…you really are the listing queens this year. Congrats on being so consistent! Rock stars both of you!
3 listings for me. Glad to have a number, finally, but had hoped for more. It took me longer than I had hoped to get over the nasty bug I brought back from the trip but feel better as of now. Christine, sorry that your illness took so long to recover from. I get it!
VT….the volcano erupted again on Wednesday and everything is shut down again for who knows how long. Two of the three roads that lead to the town closest to it and the airport (!!!!) have been covered in lava flow. When it first erupted in March the Blue Lagoon was shut down due to the roads to it being covered in lava. They had to construct a new road (which we drove over) and they have also built lava rock berm barriers to help keep the lava flow away from the two towns affected by it. We drove by those. We saw people out climbing among the lava…which is crazy dangerous because there is still molten lava under the cooler top layer and there are places where the crust is very thin and one could easily fall through into the molten lava. Our driver told me that they had lost one worker because a sinkhole opened up under him and he went down 30 meters and they couldn’t find him. It’s all very savage and interesting.
We consider ourselves extremely lucky to have had the experience. The Blue Lagoon had only been open a few weeks before our visit. Who knows when it will open again. I hope things settle down and you are able to experience it in July!
There’s a live feed on Youtube from AP that shows the live volcano and lava. It’s fascinating to watch.
Greetings everyone!
I can finally talk about this crazy month of May. It started with my mom getting pneumonia and spending a week in the hospital…she’s home now and on oxygen and slowly recovering. After that she spent three weeks with my brother in Seattle because Charlie and I went on our long-awaited honeymoon to England!
It was a wonderful trip, which included Portobello Road, a car boot sale (crazy fun), Brick Lane Road Market, and many charity shops. We brought some great treasures home and left even more behind we could have bought had we had more suitcases. We had a day layover in Iceland and swam in the Blue Lagoon…one of the most incredible experiences. All in all, just an awesome adventure….such a luxury to have two and half weeks!
Now we’re back home and trying to get back on track. I came home with a nasty cold, so have been not doing much other than shipping yesterday. Plan to get right back in the swing of things and get some listings accomplished. That is the hope.
What happened to everyone?
Another week of zero listings for me…too much else going on, but mostly working on good things. Went to a crazy rummage sale on Saturday where I may or may not have run amok. 35 vintage salt/pepper shakers at a buck each! It was nuts!
Howdy, y’all, I have been busy with my show the past two weeks, so put me down with zeros.
The show went like a dream….easy set up, lots and lots of happy customers who spent more than they usually do, and the smoothest shortest tear down ever. Seriously, it couldn’t have been much better. Great weather too.
Getting ready for my next big thing in May, which I can’t talk much about but I will be not able to check in as much as I would like. Hoping to get some listings done before then, as my sales have tanked recently and I know it’s because I am not listing.
Just a quick check in for now…..will be back to comment more.
Christine,
I am so glad to hear that you are getting a canopy. We have two and they are truly a Godsend. At our August show we always see a few other vendors without canopies and they always look so miserable!
A good friend used to share my booth with me but she decided to retire from booth shows and just do my Brookhaven show. When we shared a booth we always took off tags, so we could track our sales. Now that it’s just Charlie and I in the booth I don’t do that anymore, but I think it would be a good idea for you while you are still learning the market. I think just taking tags off is the easiest. I had a cigar box that I kept them in. I do think it’s important to write a brief description on each tag…it helps you and it also gives the customer more information. The MOST important thing is to actually tag everything. You’d be amazed how many booths don’t bother! People really do hate having to ask prices, so it’s a bad business practice. I think it’s okay to have a basket of $5 items with a sign, as long as you have a sign. It’s a personal pet peeve of mine.
15 listings for me this week. Brookhaven set up starts on Thursday and I’ve been concentrating on that.
I had an Amazon Seller experience that I am still reeling from. I’ve been selling on Amazon for 16 years and I mainly sell items that I buy wholesale directly from manufacturers. One of my competitors, who sells the same exact items from a specific company, decided to file a charge against me to Amazon for selling COUNTERFEIT items. Amazon takes any claim of counterfeit very VERY seriously, and they immediately pulled my listing and gave me 72 hours to prove that what I am selling is NOT counterfeit, or they’d shut down my selling privileges permanently.
It was terrifying. 60% of my online income comes from Amazon so this was a really big deal. Fortunately I am good friends with the VP of the specific company where the item in question comes from. I’ve been buying from them for 20 years. She was able to intervene on my behalf, and force this competitor to file a retraction of the counterfeit claim with Amazon.
I’m left feeling shell shocked. And wondering how many other competitors she’s done this to. I also wonder what would have happened if my friend had been unavailable on vacation or something like that. Who knows?
