The Perfect Storm That Made the 2024 Fall Flea Market So Successful
Last month we reported that the Fall Flea Market beat the previous record set in 2023 by about $4,000 for a grand total of $11,213!
There are logical reasons for that and, in our opinion, spiritual reasons as well.
The logical reasons are simple. The flea market makes money in four different ways.
• We make money in between sales by selling items on platforms such as Craig’s list and e-bay, thanks to the work of Glenn Child.
• We also make money in between sales by selling some of the nicer jewelry to Truver’s Jewelers and some of the nicer silver to Treasure Hunt, thanks to the work of Nancy Andrews.
• Gloria Child has also been holding garage sales at her home over the years with some of the items from the flea market that we decided to purge. Special shout out to Gloria, because she donates all the proceeds from her garage sales without deducting the money she spends on promoting the gar-age sale.
• And, of course, there is the money we make during the week of the sale. This money comes from people who shop while helping to set up, the money made on the day of the sale, and the money made the day following the sale during coffee hour while everything is half price.
For a typical flea market, we do well with one or two of the above, but the other one or two won’t do quite as well. But in the fall of 2024, the money we earned by selling items on Craig’s list and e-bay, selling items to the jewelers and Treasure Hunt, and the money earned the week of the sale all set records. In fact, the money we made during the week of the sale was equivalent to what we typically make from all four of our typical sources of flea market revenue!
Perhaps more importantly, we made changes to our decisions about what to sell, what to give away to our customers for free, and what to donate directly to organizations such as Creative Reuse. This is where the logical reasons that we made so much money fly out the window and the spiritual reasons come into play.
There is a theory that by being willing to give more away, the more abundance you allow into your life. We found that to be true during this flea market. For example, we ended up putting many of the small stuffed animals donated to the flea market last fall among the free stuff we offer to our customers. Not only did those stuffed animals end up (hopefully) going to people who will enjoy them for years to come, but we also sold more stuffed animals in the toy area than usual.
There is no way of proving this, but we found that the more that we were willing to give away for free or to Creative Reuse and other organizations, the more items came in. In fact, for the 2024 Fall Flea Market, we never had to send out a reminder about collection. The items kept coming and we kept pricing until it was time for the sale!
Will this perfect storm ever happen again, or will we go back to our usual revenue of somewhere around $7000 for each flea market? Only time will give us the answers to those questions. For now, we will continue to hold flea markets twice a year and be grateful for any revenue that is generated and be especially grateful for the perfect storm that happened in 2024.
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