What to do Office Furniture?

LaWaughn,

I hope I am wrong but I just wanted to bring this to your attention. I would hate to have you sell them something their not getting. The last thing you need is to get a buyers attorney on your case.

I have some contacts in the furniture business in my day job and I am somewhat familiar with the construction. I would highly recommend that you look this furniture over VERY GOOD. Unless you have purchased from a manufacture that went out of business and you were able to see some raw goods, you could possible have MDF with a veneer on it. Look very carefully for end grain on the wood. The drawer fronts may be real wood. The side panels of the drawer pedestals should have end grain. Also, the inside of the peds should be wood grain and the underside of the top should have matching glue up lines as the top. 

If I am out of line, I apologize.

Wayne

Very good advice. I ASSuMEd that you knew what you had but as an obviously impulse bidder from OP I would say cover your bases all around.

This furniture is the good stuff and not veneer. It was a government auction. Check out the link below of the pictures of room 1 and let me know if you think I'm crazy.

http://washingtondc.craigslist.org/doc/off/2523142876.html

  Good luck
  Thats a lot of furniture to unload in this economy , even at that price

This furniture is the good stuff and not veneer. It was a government auction. Check out the link below of the pictures of room 1 and let me know if you think I'm crazy.

http://washingtondc.craigslist.org/doc/off/2523142876.html

Looks like great furniture and you are offering it at a great price (and we all know why)....for someone who needs it, they will be very happy...now to find them.

I'm sure we've all heard the expression, "it's only worth what someone is willing to pay for it."  I'm thinking in D.C. there must be a LOT of furniture available....yours would seem to be among the cheapest...let's hope you find some buyers before moving day rolls around.

I looked at your other listing in the "furniture" section of CL where the pictures are a bit larger.

http://washingtondc.craigslist.org/doc/fuo/2523101000.html

Looks like the stuff is currently in a former day care center floor of an office building.

Wish you luck in getting rid of it all. I sent you a link earlier in this thread about a guy in Florida who had similar but maybe not as nice stuff.

Thanks Movieman I did look at your like that's where I got the idea to contact office liquidators. I got one office liduidator interested but he can't deal with it before I have to move it out. I got people who want to buy less than twenty items each even though I advertised for people to buy 20 items or more. It's not in a location where I can have people in and out of there a lot. I contacted a mover to assist people yesterday he never showed. Without him people didn't buy anything because they were relying on him to move it. I lost almost a grand in sales yesterday. Frustrated.

Sorry your mover didn't show up. I don't know why people don't follow through on committments...money out of his pocket too.

Would it make sense to have TWO of those folks show up (explaining to them that there will be 2 movers there, and the reason you are doing that)?

Meanwhile, I see you have deleted the CL post that had larger pictures. Don't understand that, but guess you have your reasons.

I deleted the larger picture post so I could repost it at the top of the list this morning. It's there but in a different spot. I do that all day to get back on the first page.                                                  I have two people viewing it tomorrow I think they will buy. They say that they have their own trucks so they will come back another day to actually move the items.  This furniture business is a slow process if you don't have your own trucks.  Once I move this lot I will get a used truck on offer deliveries myself. I will also more about 50 items to my house and sell them individually on t weekends

Open a call center and hire 250 employees lol.

Friday, August 12, 2011....

What's the latest on your furniture liquidation ?

  I wonder how he made out with all the office furniture ? He hasn't been back since Aug. 2 .
  I know from personal experience how office furniture sells here in Mass. with so many companies going OOB , downsizing or moving out of the  state / country .                                                                                      You almost have to offer to pay someone to take it plus offer free delivery .
Bandit

  I wonder how he made out with all the office furniture ? He hasn't been back since Aug. 2 .
  I know from personal experience how office furniture sells here in Mass. with so many companies going OOB , downsizing or moving out of the  state / country .                                                                                      You almost have to offer to pay someone to take it plus offer free delivery .
Bandit

And another one bites the dust. Add him to the list with "momonamission", "JohnnyGHonda", the  guy in Texas with similar office furniture, and who knows how many others who hardly made the hit-parade at 10 posts on this forum.

The "survival of the fittest" has a perfect testing ground in this business.

No I did not bite the dust. Just been crazy busy.

So to recap.

250 pieces of Office Furniture total

Located in a Government Warehouse like facility that is only accessible by calling one person to come open it for me.

Furniture is gorgeous and super super sturdy. (Larger and heavier than I thought it was because I did not view it before bidding on it)

Once won I didn't know how to move it.
1. I showed it to an office liquidator. They said they wanted to buy it but go scared once they saw how big of a project it would be.
2. I showed it to neighbors who wanted to get large amounts of pieces but chickened out once they saw how bulky the pieces were.
3. I showed it to a furniture store owner who also chickened out.
4. I advertised for buyers that wanted at the least 20 pieces of furniture at once. I found 2 buyers. One showed and only want 5 pieces but not that day maybe a week later after he got back from vacation. The second was about to enter the building 15 minutes later but the guy who opened the building had to go do something so we all had to leave. The second guy actually wanted 20 pieces but didn't view anything and didn't come with a truck anyway.

All of these showings were on seperate days. Since I only got about 15 minutes in the building per visit.
All of these showings were a waste of my time.

Okay take a breath.

I got brave, joined this forum for advice and decided move 30 pieces at a time to my house and sell it off for $20 per piece for non cherry wood and $40 for cherry wood pieces. Please understand that these pieces easilly retail for $250 and up per piece but because I had 250 pieces to move it fast I made the pieces really low so I could do another pick up of 30 pieces.

I hired a mover for $80 on craigslist. Moved the first batch to my house and they sold in about a week. Cherry pieces sold in a few hours. (I sold them through craigslist.)

Second batch went fine.

Third batch I fould a person that wanted the remaining 120+ pieces. GREAT

but.........Because I suppose to have removed the furniture in 10 days and was still moving it 6 weeks later and
Because the guy who opens the building no longer wanted to open the building just for me and Because no matter how many time I asked they were not willing to charge me the $10 per day storage fee for every day that I did not remove the furniture THEY TOOK THE FURNITURE BACK

I sold half

Furniture Lessons learned:

Do be afraid on it
You will need a box truck or a trailer to move it alond with at least two hand trucks and dollies.
Some pieces will get chipped and scratched in the move but for a low price people will not care.
White people love cherry wood.
Place in in a storage facility at offers a deep discount for a month.
Try to get warehouse space just for a weekend

When I sold the items from my house my living room and kitchen was covered with book shelves. I looked crazy but the money was good. Have yourself a furniture yard sale.

Try finding a auctioneer with a warehouse that can store and auction off your items.

So anyway I paid $50 for 250 pieces of Executive Office Furniture. I sold half. Had half taken away. Learned a lot.

Would I do it again. Yes   

Would I do it again. Yes   

Well, you persevered and got some good results and as you said, you learned a lot. There are plenty of people who read and contribute to these forums who have learned that just because you get something cheap that it is not necessarily a good deal.

Would you do it again and the answer is "yes". That one kind of astounds me. That was a lot of work for the return, but if you were happy with it, I'm sure there are more surplus furniture auctions in your area.

The return was good enough to pay some bills. When I won the furniture I expected it to be a quick flip. What I have now is a list of people I can know email when I have other items for sale. Half of my buyers were college students. They will need more stuff.