Let's Get Ready To Auction

UPDATE (September 12, 2013): The auction's over! It was a huge success thanks to all of you who participated! I'll slowly be adding new inventory so please do check back from time to time. Or as always you can follow the blog in your favorite reader. 

If you haven't heard by now, I'm refining my business yet again and auctioning off everything in the shop for a fresh start. I've told many of you before that auctions are a great way for me to buy furniture to resell. I normally purchase something at an auction for half the price, thus allowing me enough margin to resell it. But auctions aren't just for shop owners like me...now it's your chance to get a steal. Here's how: 

1. Sign up and register through ayptoday.com. You'll get a bidder's number and choose a password to login with. 
2. Click on the auction. There's one ending today, so you can play around and see if you like anything in this one. Bids start at $1 and you can enter in your maximum bid if you prefer not to wait around till the end. 
3. If you win, you just pick up and pay for your item on the pick up day specified, or contact the company to make other arrangements. 

 I chose AYP because I use this website to buy a lot of my furniture, too. They're a family run business (like us) and I feel like they run things with great integrity and care for their customers. Plus, I think auctions are super fun! Working with them to sell has been a breeze as well. Here are some pictures below of the process. Yesterday was shooting day where three photographers came in and shot all my merchandise. Normally they do this in their warehouse, but since I have an entire store they humored me and came here. The crew was here from 11-9. It was a long day, but they were troopers. I, on the other hand, am taking today off to recuperate.

Everything got broken up into "lots" and got its picture taken. 

The photographers set up three stations. Two for accessories and one for bigger items. They used rulers to show perspective to online bidders. 

These are all "behind the scenes" shots.

After everything was shot and numbered, we staged it for the preview  (Saturday, Sept. 7th 9am-12). 

I had no idea I had this much stuff! 

You'll be able to see individual pictures and descriptions of all the merchandise online soon. 

It was a little overwhelming, but I'm excited to see the end results online. And it's a great feeling to unload everything so I can really focus on re-purposing specific pieces.

*Thanks Doug, Kathy, Jamie, Jackie, and Jack for all your help. It was a pleasure to work with you.