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Re: Swap meet question
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Re: Swap meet question


  • Subject: Re: Swap meet question
  • From: Nicholas Pyers <email@hidden>
  • Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2003 12:00:00 +1100

I would envision a swap meet similar to a flea market, in that the club
would supply space and tables and individuals would bring whatever they want
to sell and would put it on tables for others to see and buy or make offers
on. To help with the club treasury, the club would take a cut of the sales.
This would be on an honor system, or at least the first time so we can
evaluate if we need to have more paperwork.

I'd like to ask those of you who have done this to feed back suggested
modifications, pitfalls, etc. for my idea. Keep in mind we are a small
group...what's needed for San Diego or Dallas isn't necesarily needed by us.

Also, if you do this and keep some of the money for the club, what
percentages or straight fees do you use?

Richard,

I have been running the half-yearly Swapmeets for AUSOM Incorporated, Australia's Leading Apple Macintosh User Group, for over 12 years now. See http://www.ausom.net.au/macmarket.html for details on the one we ran earlier this month.

I think we have been through every possible combination for income generation but now work with the following concepts;

We don't charge a commission on sales (very very messy to calculate and collect)

As the swap meet has grown over time, we now now attract a number of "professional" vendors such as Apple Dealers, Second Hand Dealers, with a ton of new and used used to sell. We also still have our ordinary members wanting to dispose of one or two items.

I take the view that without the dealers, both professional and members, there would be no reason for the people to come along to the swap meet, so I look at encouraging the vendors to attend by offering "free stalls" to them all.

With the professional vendors we ask that they take a minimum of a half page display ad out in the appropriate issue of AUSOM News, our printed magazine. This has the dual benefit of raising funds by charging for the ad and more importantly promoting what the dealer will have on sale and their specials, which encourages people to come along.

For "members" with a "few" items only, we don't charge at all as they are great for filling out the room and making it seem there are more dealers there (and besides they often have some of the more exciting items for sale)

How we now make the majority of our money from the swap meets is by charging an Entry Fee to the BUYERS. It is a small amount of AUD$3 and we provide a coloured sticker that allows them to come and go all day from the swap meet (we also run our Monthly Main Presentation and Special Interest Groups at the same time, so people come and go through out the day)

We also promote our $2 Monthly Raffle, often with the promo of "Give us a Fiver" which gives the visitor all day entry to the Swap Meet ($3) and a ticket in the raffle ($2) - it promotes sales of raffle tickets and makes change a lot easier to handle (we have coins rather than notes for $1 and $2 here in Australia which means our smallest note is $5)

We will also promote our Major Raffle, as well as our normal membership services so we sell a dramatically increased number of tickets on the swap meet days and sign up a few new members.

Between the two swap meets we run each year, we now raise about AUD$3500 of funds for the club through display advertising in our magazine and entry fee sales, let alone increased raffle and membership sales.

In the early days of the swap meets, we charged the dealers a small stall fee (I think AUD$40 for professional dealers and AUD$5 for members) and in Richard's case I would recommend this until the swap meet grows.

Then if it becomes a regular event, progress to lowering dealer fees and introducing an small entry fee (say a $1 or $2) and then ultimately dropping the dealer fees and having just the entry fee.


--
AUSOM Events (email@hidden)

AUSOM Incorporated - Australia's Leading Apple Macintosh User Group
http://www.ausom.net.au
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