Saturday was the first indoor yard sale sponsored by the Journal-Courier at the Morgan County Fairgrounds. Except for the weather being a bummer, it was a huge success! We had 24 vendors and almost 800 folks come out and see what was for sale. In talking with all of the vendors, just about all of them were thrilled with the turnout and many of our vendors “sold out” of their wares before the scheduled ending time of 2 p.m., which was fantastic.

As most of you know that attended, we did charge a $1 admission fee. I know there was some comment beforehand that we should be ashamed of ourselves for charging. However, 99% of the folks that showed up had absolutely no problem with it, with just about everyone having a dollar in hand when they walked up. We counted four folks that decided they didn’t want to pay, and that was fine. We weren’t out to make money on this event. The money we collected from admissions and booth rental was to cover our costs for the event. We had to rent the building, rent the tables and chairs used by the vendors, rent the porta potties, insurance etc. We did it because it was something that the community didn’t have and we felt that with our efforts, we could have a great community sale that everyone would enjoy. This was accomplished with flying colors given all the great response we got!

Since this was our first effort, we weren’t quite sure how many folks would show up, so we made up 300 “goodie bags” of stuff from area merchants to give away to attendee’s. We had stuff in there like a box of Hefty freezer bags donated by Pactiv, a car wash token from a Quick Time, coupons galore from many businesses, some CD’s from EMI, etc., etc., etc. Many were surprised that they got something like this and I think were even more pleased they came. The bad news is we didn’t have near enough bags! We opened at 7 a.m. and by a little after 8 a.m., we were already out of bags!! Next time we do this, we will have more!

Many of the merchants were asking that we do it again in the fall. Given the response, we probably will. We would love to make the next one even bigger, maybe even using two buildings. We’ll see.

Given the lousy weather, almost 800 folks is great! One could never expect that many folks to attend a yard sale they would have in their yard or driveway. Yes, you have to bring your stuff out to the event, but I didn’t hear any complaints from anyone and most sold so much, that they didn’t have hardly anything to take back. What they didn’t want to take home was left and we had arrangements for it to be donated to charity, so what could be better!!

If we only had Sunday’s weather on Saturday, I’m almost afraid of the amount of traffic we would have had! I say almost afraid because I want to try and have a “goodie bag” for everyone and we could have easily had way over 1,000 folks, probably more than that….way more! But that’s OK. That is what it is all about and we will work hard to make the next one even more successful with more vendors and more “goodie bags” to go around!

If you attended, what did you think? If you were a vendor, were you happy with the crowd? Let me know.

Thanks to everyone for coming out! Keep watching the paper and we might just do it again in a few months.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 21st, 2008 at 9:30 am and is filed under community. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.