Big Shift for 2024 Picking, Painting and Re-Selling
My strategy for 2024 starts with a confession from 2023. it has taken me an entire year to notice and accept big changes in decor style, economy, and thrifting. It was a hard year. Painted furniture sales slowed and if I were to think about it, sales really started to slow in 2022. I blamed the slowdown in sales on myself not able to zero in on THE popular style that would sell quickly. I blamed it on the antique mall where I rent a booth (though there really was a mismatch there). I blamed it on my inability to set the right price for my ‘masterpieces’. I did everything but see reality.
So What Happened in 2023?
Furniture Fashions Moved Toward Exposed Natural Wood Finishes
The year is marked by seeing less farmhouse white distressed on Pintrest, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook and more natural and bleached wood furniture. So, I learned how to bleach wood and painted a few pieces expecting them fly out of my booth. After a long couple months, they finally sold. I moved my aesthetic around to simple colors and styling, less bedazzling with paper clay and image transfers, etc. Then back to farmhouse white distressed and to modern and blingy. All seemed to sell equally slow. Scratching my head I thought that perhaps my rust-belt automotive industry region lags behind those touted hot trends on the internet. What else could be going on?
Lush Covid Money is Long Gone
Though styling is always a factor, there had to be more affecting sales. Could the problem be price? I lowered prices each month to those found all the way back to 2019. Beginning 2022 and solidly through 2023 I could not get for my pieces what surely what I should fetch, especially factoring in soaring inflation. I miss those days in 2020 and 2021 when furniture flew out the doors. Finally, while my thinking cap was on it occurred to me, that all that Covid money dispersed by the government was no longer circulating. Little did I know, Covid money was the thing that made my painting side hustle profitable and easy, and I thought I had it in the palm of my hand. I can adjust sales expectations and pricing with a better understanding why and that it’s not just blaming antique mall or my painting work.
Thrift Industry Went Wild
Just as I was getting in the groove of picking for small items to resell, the thrift industry went wild. During the lush years there was no thought given to stocking my booth with smalls. I paid rent and made good profit painting and selling only furniture. As it became harder to make rent, I looked to staging and reselling smalls. That meant going to thrift stores and estate sales (my regular source for paintable furniture). Prices soared last year! Thrift stores learned to display items much better and started rotating them in and out. Dang what fire got lit under them? It’s a perfect storm of Inflation and Conservation, Millennials and Boomers. Boomers are unloading years of accumulation into the thrift market. Simultaneously, as prices for new stuff inflate, Millennials are using their purchasing power and concern for global health by buying used.
Now the gap in prices that used to exist between thrift stores and antique stores is smaller than ever.
My Strategy and Trend for 2024
Grandpa Chic Academia Style
The days of light minimalism may be limited. I’m hearing and seeing it in stores, podcasts and pintrest a new old style that uses dark and moody colors. Clear on the other end of the spectrum. I’ll be picking colors for furniture for resale items very narrowly and targeted towards the Dark Academia aesthetic. Colors I’m starting to use on furniture are black, sage, walnut, rust and dark denim. While picking, I’m looking for style that would be found in an old English den library like brass objects, dark framed classic art, and a few old style encyclopedias. A related style, called Grandpa Chic includes brighter colors mixed with dark country club look.
Pick By Curating Your Theme Carefully
Prior to 2023, I spend very little time and thought towards smalls. Booth rent was made easily by selling painted furniture. But, as the quality and price gap between thrift stores and antique malls close and as sales are generally lower due the tight economy and as the styles are shifting, making rent as gotten harder. This year I’m expecting to spend much more time picking and spreading out buying sources. Adding to my usual Saturday estate sale-ing, I’ll seek out church rummage sales and garage sales (ugh). New to me as of late last year are online auctions.
To adequately price items for resale for a some profit, my booth will have to offer something above and beyond thrifts. It’s a time decide whats sets my booth apart from a thrift store. For me it’s to focus picking by style AND objects for furniture staging. Modge podge picking what I think is cute or pretty won’t work. I’ll be thinking about specific styles to shoot for, what objects will go with a piece I’m painting and things to add to basement inventory. I am having fun ‘shopping my basement’ as it were but it does mean tying up some money there.
Competitive Pricing
Painted furniture pieces that would have fetched $300 in 2021 goes for only $200 today. Since my mall has pop-up storewide sales (not a fan), proper pricing is made especially difficult. Painted furniture prices have been set lower as of late, but high enough to suffer discounts the store offers. Yeah, it’s a tight rope but adding targeted smalls in my booth, more and more, will help off set reduced furniture prices. Picking thrift stores has made it way more difficult for buying for resale. If I don’t think I can double the price I won’t buy it, which is why plenty of alternate sources for picking has become important.
Summary Plan for 2024 Booth
Darker and moody furniture colors and style, reduced prices, targeted and curated smalls. Much more of my time will be spent picking for smalls and painting able furniture mostly estate sales and on-line auctions. I’ll put more money into buying and creating a smalls ‘basement inventory’ to help carefully stage furniture. Wow. this has gotten serious!
