The Advantages of Having a Multi-Family Rummage Sale

In our RUMMAGE SALE blog series, we've shared strategies that help you set up and run a successful yard sale. Throughout our posts, you may have noticed that we promote the idea of having multiple families involved in your rummage when it comes to optimizing your sales. Today we will explain why we suggest that, how other families may contribute, who should be involved, and how to know when to say, "No!"

A garage sale can be time consuming and takes a lot of effort, so you want to make sure you are making things easier on yourself, rather than bringing on more work for yourself. Read through our tips below to find out how involving more people will help set your sale up for success.

• Allow your trusted friends and family members to sell their items at your garage sale. Make sure they are people you know, and approach them with an invitation to participate. Make a deal with them that you will allow them to sell things if they are able to contribute their time to help out with the sale. They will also need to agree to your policies of how you choose to operate the event.
• The more the merrier. More people on staff helps things run smoother. And more people participating means more products will be for sale! There will now be a larger assortment of things that can be visible from the street, which means you will attract more people to your sale. Keep larger items in the driveway or yard during the sale, having a variety of categories highly visible to traffic. It gets more people to stop! (Ideally, the sale should be held at the home of a family with the most drive-by traffic!)
• Ask all participants to price their own items, clearly marked with their own initials. Give them a general guideline of how you'd like items priced. For example, if you're pricing books for $1 and clothes for $2, they shouldn't price like-items for $5. You want to avoid having potential customers seeing the things with high prices first and leaving because they think it's just an expensive sale. Reasonable prices on products throughout the sale will keep people browsing your rummage for longer.
• Do not allow participants to overload you with bulky items ahead of time. You may just request they bring furniture with them on the first day of the sale instead, so you don't have to store large items for them in advance. You DO want furniture items at your sale because many times it's the larger items that motivate people to stop and browse.
• More people helping out with a sale means you will have an entire staff to fill the following roles: Checkout/Cashiers (adding up prices and collecting money), Bagger (bagging items as you add up prices), Security (overseeing what's going on throughout the premises), Loading (helping people to their vehicles or carrying things for them when necessary), Organization (putting things where they should go and straightening up after customers "rummage" through things), Extra Helper (for giving breaks to workers by filling in, and maybe even preparing or picking up lunch for everyone), and a Greeter *optional (to explain things to customers, help people test items to see how they work, maybe occasionally holding a sign near the road, or wearing a costume to catch people's attention).
• Come up with an agreement of what everyone's tasks will be during the sale. Schedule everyone's help according to what tasks you require of them and make sure they are available for peak times of the day, including set-up and closing. Allow overlapping shift changes as necessary, so everyone gets their chance to contribute to easing the overall workload of the sale.
• If you are the one hosting the sale, you need to create and communicate clear rules and guidelines for all of the people involved. Put yourself in charge of finalizing all important decisions. You choose the dates of the sale, set-up and close-down times, who you want to assign to each task, how the space is set up, etc. Be open to their suggestions, but do not allow anyone to overtake your authority - especially when it is YOUR sale and YOUR property be utilized.
• Set your sale up in categories. Customers love this because it makes it easier for them to shop. All home decor items should be placed together. All clothes should be hung and organized by gender and size. You will sell more things at a well-organized sale. Sometimes people will ask if they can just have their own tables of their own items. The best answer for this is a firm no. All items at your sale should be pre-priced with initials. Just like a retail store, there will be departments - or categories - that will have similar items together. If someone is looking for baby clothes, you can point them to the area where all of the baby items are available. Some people love looking through books. The books should all be placed together so they can see everything at once. Have a section of craft supplies. Have a section of dishes, and another area with toys. This is the best way to limit the chaos on rummage day. From our experience, an organized sale leads to a successful sale.
• Some people who see your success may ask to participate in your next rummage event. If you feel they are trustworthy and beneficial towards you reaching your goals, agree to it. However, if you feel it's not a good match or they may cause more stress - just say no, preferably in a kind way. "Sorry, but we already have so many people involved. Maybe you could try to have your own sale." Or - "We're already at our limit of 5 families right now. That's a limit that seems to work best for us." It's good to have boundaries, especially when you are organizing such a big event that will be open to the public.
• Advertise your sale as multi-family rummage sale. (Also use the word HUGE in your ads.) People love coming to these sales because they know there will be a better variety of product options to shop through. Also, knowing that many people have contributed items to the sale will make people feel it is worth their time and energy to show up to shop! Generally social media is proven to be a great opportunity for free advertising. Have all of the families involved spread the word, too!