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« on: September 06, 2011, 05:34:11 PM »
Hey West Ga. Sorry for the delay in answering. The mall I'm at is Big Shanty Antiques in Kennesaw. It's going so well that I'm expanding to another 10x10 up front. I actually do a variety of things for selling / advertising including CL, Amazon, Etsy, Ebay etc. The rules for the mall are that if the client sees it in the mall the vendor is obliged to sell it thru the mall and pay the selling commission to the mall which is what I do. That's the agreement and I stand by my word on it. That said, I do advertise on CL and if the piece is small or collectible and easily removed, I'll go to my booth, bring the item home and sell it if. I won't just take it to the mall parking lot and sell it or take someone here to see it and then remove it as that isn't the deal. Of course, anything I list and sell that requires shipping as thru Ebay Amazon Etsy or even CL does not go thru the mall and they are fine with that so its a very flexible arrangment as long as we all play by the rules and the rules aren't bad at all. I also send people to my booth at the mall as what typically happens is they end up buying what they went to look at and usually other items also so thats a win. The danger is that they may decide to look thru the mall and not end up buying from you but that doesn't happen very often if you are priced competitively. I personally am very happy selling this way as there are a large number of smalls and even larger items that would take too much time and effort to sell on CL or elsewhere that I put in the shop (mall) and forget until it sells. As I'm sure you know you very quickly end up with a whole bunch of stuff that is worth more than a donation or yard sale price but not enough to list on Ebay or mess with at CL so the shop is great for that, Case in point. Got a very nice set of six hand painted wine glass stemware. If I'd have put them on CL or sell t a Yard sale I'd maybe have gotten 5 or 6 bucks for. If I'd have listed them on ebay the fees would have eaten the profits not to mention being hard to sell when you added shipping. So all six took up 64 square inches of shelf space in the shop (8x8 inches). They sat on that shelf forgotten until last saturday when the six sold for $18.99 for the set and I wsn't even there. So, after a 1.90 commission I ended up with 17.09 for something that would have been worth very little at a YS or on CL. So for me it works and an added benefit is that all that "stuff" that would be in boxes in my garage is out where it can be seen and sold. When I first took the space I did not sell enough to cover the rent for the first month. Month 2 I did. Now we are in month five and have sold 6.5 times the rent and are well into the profit zone and are growing and taking another space. It took us a couple months to get a feel for what sells and at what price and we did that by both trial and error and more importantly by making a list of what we put into our space them doing some detective work by looking at the other vendors spaces for how they were set up, what they had to sell and at what price. It gave us some good pointers. We also made sure we talked to any other vendors there to glean knowledge from their experience. The best vendors that are doing what we do have multiple spaces with an ecclecic mix of products and are doing as much as 70K a year in business at a 60 to 70% margin not including their time spent. So... it can be a great way to add another channel to your sales efforts just don't expect miracles right away and be sure to keep your space and inventory fresh every ten days. If you don't keep the inventory fresh, and buyers see the same old thing they will pass your space by. Even if all you do is spend a couple hours a week and just move things around, front stuff to the back, back to the front etc etc it makes it look new and buyers notice and stop to look. Hope this helps.. Let me know if you have any other questions I'm happy to help.
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