Tips for Car Booting
Written by: Shani Fowler
The spring is well upon us and after all that spring cleaning we can often find we have a surplus of stuff we no longer really want or use. With the car boot season having sparked into action what better way of earning a bit of cash and letting your stuff go to a good home than getting out that pasteboard table doing a good old car boot sale? Car boot sales are usually held on a weekend. They can be fun to do but also time consuming and involve early starts. Below are some tips of making the best of turning your unwanted items into cash.
Prepare
Get your boot packed with some order of semblance! Try to get like for like stuff together. Keep things like books and DVDs in boxes together where people can have a good rummage.
Get there early
Although you probably don’t relish the thought of getting up a ridiculous hour on your weekend off, many car boots have an early start. The earlier you get there and pitched up, the better. Even when you are early you still get the serious car-booters rummaging around before you have even got the trestle table up, but by getting there early you are can minimise this and be left in peace to get on with setting up shop.
Set your stall out!
Make your stall look attractive. If it is covered in piles of stuff people won’t be bothered to come and look through it, but if you have a bit of order to it and make it easy on the eye there will be much more interest.
Hang out your clothes!
If you are selling clothes and you do car boots quite often, it would be a good investment to get a clothes rail. They are easy to assemble and dismantle once you get the hang of them! Clothes look much more appealing hanging neatly on a rail than just in a pile in a bin bag at the side of your car.
Be prepared to let things go cheap
Okay so might have paid £80.00 for something that someone is now quibbling paying a fiver for, but this is the nature of the beast. You can start higher and see how it goes but as the hours tick by be prepared to reduce your expectations unless you want to take nearly as much back as you brought. Also be prepared to barter – people love a car boot bargain and will rarely think your first price is your best.
Get the kids involved
Possibly not for the very young, especially if you are selling their toys that they no longer play with, because trust me, as soon as that car they never even looked at is about to take new ownership, they will suddenly have such affection for it. But the older ones from around four upwards can enjoy it, especially if you offer to split some of the profits with them.
Take food
Pack some sandwiches the night before and take a flask of coffee – you are going to dip into those profit margins otherwise once you smell the bacon sarnies that will be on the go!!
Bag it up!!
Make sure you take plenty of carrier bags to ensure you can allow your customers to tootle off with your wares!
Float
As the notes are handed over, make sure that you have that all important change to offer! You don’t want to lose a sale simply because you can’t stump up the change.
Car-booting can be a great day for a bit of family fun time with a bit of people watching thrown in the mix. You can also have a wander round and see if there is anything anyone is selling that takes your fancy; but beware you are there to get rid! Gathering more things and dipping into that profit is not the aim of the game! With a bit of luck you can get rid of all that unwanted stuff with one car boot sale because one man’s rubbish will always be another man’s salvage!
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