Selling off old items

[Former_Member]

So my business plan for 2015 is to sell all made to order/custom order items. I'm having a really hard time selling my RTS (ready to ship) items. Most of them are marked at 30% off all the way up to 50% off. I have ran out of ideas for selling them off. I don't want to give them away to people, I still need to make a profit. I have about 50-60 items in my store ready to go, and about another 50 items in the house to get up on my store.
If anyone has any ideas that would be greatly appreciated.

[Former_Member]

What about putting together gift sets? People love sets, and then you could still sell them at a decent price point.

[Former_Member]

I do have gift sets for sale and those don't seem to be doing well at all. I also don't have many items I can put together as a set

[Former_Member]

What are you doing to make your target customer aware of your sale?

I've found that simply offering things at a reduced price doesn't do very much unless you get the word out.

When I'm running any sort of promotion I'll include it in my newsletter as well as the other places that I reach my customers.

[Former_Member]

It's in my shop announcments, my Facebook page and when people purchase from me I always let them know in their receipt. I also tweet and pin items daily. I'm stuck on what to do next though

[PotteryLodge]

@crochetgal

Is your newsletter something Etsy offers?

[Former_Member]

Casi, no Etsy doesn't offer newsletters. Etsy provides you only with a storefront.

I've been sending my customer newsletter long before I opened my Etsy shop.

[BrushStrokeOrnaments]

I've never had luck with sales either. I finally resorted to taking certain things to Good Will/Sal Army and taking the tax deduction! I no longer offer sales on my items and I recommend that you not bother with them either. Just sell things for normal price - someone will either buy them for that.... or not at all.

Maybe when the items expire, you can just pack them away for a bit and relist them in 6 months or so (possibly with different tags, titles, etc).

[RisC]

Have you ever done any craft fairs? I bet your ready made stuff would sell well at the right market. Your stuff is way cute!

[Former_Member]

@Marissa, I have done craft shows, I lose to much money and put to much time into them to do them. I might just take apart some of the items and use them for something else.
My family is planning on moving soon and I don't want to have to take all of those items with me

[Former_Member]

I'm bumping this to see if anyone else has any other ideas

[StuckOnSilver]

Olivia you have over 150 sales since you opened in 2011. What number of sales per month/quarter would keep your etsy shop open?

[Former_Member]

I'm keeping the shop open all year round, it's just that I'm looking for next year to only selling clothing and custom items. I would keep some crayon rolls since those seem to be great during the Holiday rush

[Former_Member]

Why not donate them to a cause's auction, benefit, or something? You would get a tax deduction and can use it as a way of getting your name out there.

[Former_Member]

Olivia have you tried Ebay? I totally feel your pain, I would LOVE to sell ready-to-ship, so much more efficient to produce items in volume, and so much less delivery stress than custom....but custom orders are where my (and your) business on Etsy is.

Things that don't move, I mark way down, sometimes give away as a bonus to customers if it's similar to what they ordered, donate at Christmas to organizations collecting for kids....but once in a while I'll throw things on Ebay. I think of Etsy as "custom" and Ebay as "bargain".

[DejaVuHomeInteriors]

You might try a garage sale or a craft sale.

[Former_Member]

I have tried ebay but the problem with that is I have an account but they don't give me my number thing to sell. I'm not able to sell on Ebay at all, just buy and purchase things

[AVisionToRemember]

I have a sale/clearance section in my shop. I have over 1000 items and so it gets hard to promote everything over a short period of time. I have had some items in that sale section for over a year. So I decided to go back through the listings and edit them to get them to be more SEO friendly. Update things. Clean them up a bit. While I was doing that I accidentally moved one quilt from that section so it was no longer on sale. Within 1 week of editing, and then promoting it to around 10 different sites it sold.

Now that doesn't always happen with everything, but sometimes giving a listing a makeover and then promoting it in many different places really will help. You might not see immediate results like I did, but I have done this many times over the last couple years and sometimes it takes a month or so for all the work to filter through everything online, but the more you promote outside of Etsy, and the more you tweak your listings the better off you will be

[Former_Member]

Thank you Bobbie that really helped. I'll look through some of my items up tomorrow. It's hard since we will be moving soon and I don't want to bring all of the old inventory with me. I think once we start moving I will send some of my items to models as thank you gifts and then I will have some go out as a giveaway on my Facebook page.

[HeidiDiCesareDesigns]

I do a few craft fairs each year and bring all my old inventory, put it on a table with a big, red "sale" sign, and everything goes! I agree; sale items don't sell well on Etsy, only occasionally around the holidays.

[SpangGangDesigns]

Are there any online/in person charity events going on? There are always people asking for donatated items. It may cost a couple of bucks to ship, but you'd be donating to great causes and could use the item's value (maybe shipping?) as a tax write off. I'd also be a good opportunity to get your items seen by people. Just an idea!

[Former_Member]

I posted on my modeling group letting them know that most of my items are on sale and that they all need to go. I haven't made any sales yet off of it, but I found out that my aunt is doing a garage sale this spring so I might be able to put my items out for people to purchase.
Today I may just take a count of how much I have to sell and how much of it I'm willing to donate.

[Former_Member]

I took some of you guys advice. I started selling my crayon rolls on a local online garage sale, since then I have sold almost all of my girl ones and one boy one. I'm in the process of selling a blanket too. This wasn't to bad of an idea, wish I would've thought of it earlier.

[JaxtonandJill]

buy 2 get one free type of sale, or buy 3 get 2 free.

I have not had the same type of Etsy experience as I wished with custom orders, I hope you don't regret going to all custom order. people are nice and some are not. this year I will not open my shop again until I get all my custom orders finished and new books ready to sell, 2014+ will not be doing custom orders. sad and enlightening at the same time.

[Former_Member]

I had items i realized were not either or "vintage", so I put them on Listia.
Everything on Listia is done in credits-so after a bit you start to amass enough credits to get something you might want. I was just going to give these things away to Goodwill etc., but have "sold" enough to get a new pasta machine for my polymer clay habit habit:) It's not the money making way to go, but it helped me get rid of some things