I did my first Mum2Mum Market last Saturday. I really enjoyed it and made a nice little profit too.
A Mum2Mum Market is essentially a nearly new sale where you can sell and buy children’s clothes, baby equipment, toys and books etc. Of course dads can buy and sell too!
My Mum2Mum Market in Surrey
The markets are held all over the country and you can find ones local to you by visiting the website. Prices for your ‘pitch’ vary according to location. I paid what looks to be the highest amount at £25 (that’s Surrey for you!). This gets you a decent-sized table with plenty of room around it to display items. After paying that, you keep 100% of your takings. I wasn’t sure how much I’d actually make as I had lots of clothes to sell – so not high value items like high chairs, buggies or cots. I’d already successfully sold these sorts of items via Preloved UK. As I was a bit chicken, I decided to do it with a friend so that we could share the initial cost.
The ladies behind Mum2Mum Markets do a great job of marketing the events and will ask you if you have any specific items that you want to promote, which they’ll then push via their social media channels. They provide sellers with notes about all of the logistics. They also include some helpful tips about what they’ve found works selling-wise based on their experiences.
Here are my tips:
- Don’t get too hung up over what you initially paid for something. People are looking for a bargain. Think about whether you really want to lug something back home to sit back in the loft
- That said, you can always start with prices a little higher and see how you go in the first half hour (that’s when we were busiest) and reduce a bit after this time. You’ll quickly judge if you’ve priced too high
- Get a hanging rail to display any really good quality clothes you’re selling (if you can’t borrow one, they have them to hire for £5)
- I was trying to shift clothes in large volume so I made boxes of items for 50p and age ordered them. Mum2Mum Market say that secondhand baby and children’s clothes are the least profitable items to sell. Therefore you have to be realistic. This method worked well for me. It also worked particularly well alongside the rail as people could differentiate quickly between the more select items and the more every day stuff
- Don’t take every single item you’ve got stored at home as it risks looking like a jumble sale, which is off-putting. Keep it seasonal for a start
- It’s good to have a variety of things on your stall (and not all piled high). This is where sharing the stall with a friend helped. My friend had more major items, I had mainly clothes. This meant that the stall captured more people
- Make sure you have a good float with you
I did reduce quite a few of my things in price as the morning went on (sales last for two hours), but there were a couple of designer items that I really felt I couldn’t part with for a hugely discounted rate. People kept looking at them but didn’t buy. I don’t think this was the right place for them. I sold these on Preloved UK.
I’ll definitely do one again.
