The girls seem to have inherited a small dose of
Grandad's GRQ gene! (that would be
Get Rich Quick) In theory it's a great idea but hasn't panned out in reality yet. Today we were in the backyard after a swim and they started bringing out various items, asking me if they need to keep them. Finally I ask why!"oh it's for the
yardsale" I decided I'd better go into the laundry room to see what all they were getting rid of and to make sure none of it was mine!
I found two boxes of various small items, doll hair brush, waterwheel toy, leftover parts of random toys, a prayer book, the Home Depot toy tool set and the Word Whammer and I forget what all else. That didn't look too bad, I'd be glad to get rid of most of that anyway. They were busy upstairs making their sign while I was down perusing their wares. Then I went back outside to get my book and the next thing I knew, Sweetie was carting the Dora table through the fence gate so they could set up the "shop" out by the road.
Once the table was in place, they quickly affixed their colourful sign and laid out their merchandise. They initially decided to charge $6 for each item. I carefully explained that this is a bit high for
junk gently used toys. I suggested they stick to $0.50 or $1.00 if they wanted anyone to buy their items. That was fine. Then the waiting started. We're not really a high traffic area and it's pretty dead in the middle of the afternoon so the lack of customers got boring/frustrating pretty fast. They wanted to go door to door to let people know about their shop because "how can they come if they don't know about it?!?!?!?" While this was a good point, I thought it might be a little pushy to start knocking on doors! It was already four o'clock so I told them it was getting too close to supper to go anywhere.
They decided to ramp up the presentation and donned some new sparkly tiaras and blow bubbles to get people's attention. This definitely gave them a more noticeable presence but did not increase the number of passersby :(
When they still weren't getting any business and were getting hot and discouraged, I suggested they add ice cold drinks to their stand. They looooooooooooved this idea! We ran inside to mix up some iced tea, get glasses and work out a pricing strategy. They decided on $0.25 for half a glass or $0.50 for a full glass and raced back out to their stand. I was refilling the ice cube trays when they ran back in, hollering "we got one! we got one! MUMMA!!!!!! we got one already!!!!!"
At this news I just about dropped the trays on the floor. Someone actually stopped in the first 2 minutes they were out there!?!?!!? Holy caroley! I totally wasn't expecting that! I figured we'd go out, wait around then drink all the iced tea when we got hot and call it quits for the day. They had also had another lady stop by but she didn't have any money. Next time they said they'd just give someone a small drink anyway for a "free sample".
Murray got home shortly after that and he was their second customer and they were over the moon at this lucrative new business! He noted that the shiny tiaras were definitely working because he spotted them half a mile away.
They were immensely pleased with the day's take and will no doubt think they should set up shop on a daily basis!
and they were off! People were home at most places we stopped and got quite a kick out of their visitors bringing them a treat. I was afraid people wouldn't want to take their candy from them but everyone except a couple of ladies out for a walk, were more than willing to partake of the proffered goodies. One guy asked for a second tootsie roll for a bedtime snack! In the end they still had more treats than any 6 year old needs but they enjoyed the outing and felt pretty good about sharing with the neighbours.
We were a few doors down when suddenly someone popped out of the bushes to see what we were doing. Everyone was surprised to see PW!
