Theme: PRICE LESS

Image #Pinterst

18.02.2021

I hate selling stuff.

Especially my stuff.

It makes me cringe so much.

And that is both, things I made as a craft person (which I appreciate) and things I want to sell because I don’t need them anymore (I used to appreciate).

I really struggle to price things.

Am I selling it too cheaply? Or too expensive? Is that why people are not buying it? Or some?

Maybe.

I never knew the answer. Because I also noticed that, no matter how much I’d decrease the price, it would still not inspire others to buy.

My friend J has a knack for selling his stuff. For a good price. And at the same time finding bargains. How does he make people believe that the price he choses is the right one and totally worth it?

Being confident and over pricing is not the way and being timid and underpricing isn’t either.

How to find the win win sweet spot?

How to know where it is?

I noticed that online Marketplaces look sad.

They used to look even worse back in the UK.

I remember being gobsmacked at what junk people sometimes post on there wanting money for it.

Maybe they see value in there because it is value to them?

Maybe the stuff I want to sell is junk to someone else?

True.

But to me it has value because I bought it.

I wanted it.

And I believe it still has value, I just don’t need it anymore.

At some point I chose to buy it and it made me happy to have it. Now other things make me happy. And I believe by someone else buying it at the right price, it can make them happy too. And me.

So what am I selling?

A kitsch painting of two horses in the Carmarque or the happiness it brought me looking at it while on the toilet dreaming?

We sell a vision.

The story.

But is there space for a story on Marketplace?

Telling it without sounding desperate?

The key when selling stuff is not obviously selling it.

That part I could never get my head around.

Caring deeply but pretending not to care.

And pretence gets you nowhere.

When I was back in London and my daughter was little, I had a small label called Olive Clothing, making beautiful linen clothes for children up to the age of 5. It was a pleasure sewing them and for a while I had stall in Spitalfields Market.

Being also a full-time mum, I needed to start making some money.

And I loved sewing.

And I was home with my child while my then musician husband was on tour.

But since we always needed money, I needed to sell it.

Spitalfields Market fees were the most expensive on Saturdays and I had to schlepp the complete content of my stall there on public transport.

So the whole Saturday I was there AND I NEEDED TO SELL.

I was desperate.

Because I had put so much effort, so much work into it and paid out money upfront for all the materials and the packaging and stall fees, that I had to at least break even.

The very least. And I usually just did that. Just about.

I tried not to care but the pressure was building up and I believed it showed although I tried to appear light-hearted.

In the end I managed 7 months and dropped out just before Christmas. Looking back now it was the dumbest thing to do because over Christmas the stall holders would make the big profits and retrieve all the losses they might’ve made throughout the year.

Why did I stop?

5 feet from gold? Wtf?

I even remember thinking about it and deciding that I simply had enough.

Does that mean I didn’t want to make money in the first place? I was sure to win, however, the urge to walk away was too strong.

Why was that?

I was precious about my clothes. I cared too much because a lot I’d work went into them. They were such high quality that the price was never right. Granted, I was a fast sewer and by then I managed to find an great material shop who sold the quality linen I wanted for a good price. But each little linen dungarees were worth about £85 but I felt I could never have charged that.

And where?

Shops add a massive mark up. So I sold them for £30 on the market. Wtf.

The price was never right. But I was too deep in the matter, that I saw the value but could not translate it.

Or maybe I didn’t see it?

Is that the reason why I had to give up in the end?

Perceiving value and make others perceive value in the same way is the challenge.

If I didn’t have sales, my initial strategy was to lower the price.

It’s classic.

Thinking that I priced it too high.

But I quickly realised that even then, it only increased sales marginally.

Curious.

Now, I’m selling the contents of my home and I am being faced with the same conundrum.

Luckily, I have 4 weeks to do it.

I love second hand.

Giving new life.

I see value in discarded things.

To unlock their true value.

It’s my talent.

I love curating.

Especially with fashion I realised that it’s all the same stuff and that quality does not necessarily come with a high priced label.

Often on the contrary.

It is my favourite thing trailing around charity shops finding interesting and unique stuff. The hunt for that gives me enormous pleasure.

For some people it sounds like a nightmare. Stuff of dead people.

Since I was brought up in a household full of dead people’s which I explained the other day, I was so trained to make it more precious in my mind already as a kid because the truth was too depressing.

Is the key to be precious about the not so precious and not so precious about the precious? Considering that all value is perceived value? To give a shit where others don’t and not when everybody else does?

Now … how do you price your children?

I decided I will try and make what I sell like a kinder surprise when I sell it.

Sell the potential rather than the thing itself

Kinder surprise are really just a piece of plastic and crappy chocolate. What gives it value is the anticipation. The potential!

That’s what is sold with a mark up.

What would be the reason for someone to sell their children?

Their most precious thing?

And what would be the reason for someone to buy someone else’s children?

What would be the motivation for someone to lead their children into the deep dark forest for someone else to take care of them? Someone with a house made of food?

Desperation.

And hunger.

Is the connection food?

Food being lack of death?

People would sell their children if they believed that keeping them would mean certain death for them. As well as their children. Because why not otherwise simply give them away to someone who has plenty? For them to be properly taken care of, to have a better life?

Giving away your children in exchange for money (food) can mean survival.

Physical survival.

For a while.

And then what?

Hoping that the circumstances magically change?

How can someone live with the thought of having sold their children?

Wouldn’t that mean death already?

Psychological death?

Children who are being bought probably won’t survive very long either.

During the Great Depression they were probably put to work and because they were scrawny and malnourished, didn’t last very long. And in case they were actually taken care of the buyer, they were dead too.

Psychologically.

So the parents could’ve spared themselves the hassle of pricing them and instead kill their children themselves and eaten them. At least they would’ve had a proper meal.

I wonder …

Was the act of Hansel and Gretel burning the witch their way of taking charge by purging (burning) their oppressor?

Wasn’t the witch in the gingerbread House of Abundance (lol … Pose) the complete opposite of their own mother in hunger? So the children had to be confronted with the parental betrayal (ultimate evil) in a setting of abundance (ultimate food from the child’s point of view) and conquer it.

To gain ultimate freedom.

I wonder what happened to Hansel and Gretel afterwards?

Did they really become famous witch hunters? To keep other children save from that betrayal?

Would their today jobs be in child psychology? Or why not parent_child psychology since all parents are children to other parents too?

Eggs to chickens.

Children are priceless.

Because they are us.

Pricing them is impossible, because when they are priceless, any price will be too low.

So what we get for it will never be enough. Because we would always price them too low.

Are the things we own, we wear and we surround ourselves with not like children too? We get them because we love them. And we believe we need them to make us feel good. We have them around, they make us feel pleasure. Somebody priced them and we thought it was the right price. For us. We bought someone else’s babies.

At a price.

Is that why I adore second hand things? They are not shiny and new but discarded. Babies someone else didn’t love anymore and priced very cheaply.

My price.

And I love them.

I love them because I feel they already had a life. A life I don’t know about. And I am giving things a new life. I love that idea.

And I presume they were not valued otherwise they would’ve not ended up on a flea market to be sold.

Come to Mama!

But I have to sell my babies now.

Because I want to be free from them.

From everything.

My home is so minimal.

Everything I have in there is exactly what I want.

Everything in there I treasure because it gives me pleasure.

So how do I price my treasures?

My babies?

They are all connected to memories and different parts of my life.

And that’s why they are precious to me:

My first bit of serious artwork I bought on Waterlooplein market.

The grey mohair cardigan with the fur collar which I got in exchange for something simple but it is the most glamorous piece of clothing I own. I always said that if my house was on fire the three things I’d rescue was my child, my cat and the cardigan.

The three CCC

Is my house on fire now?

Kinda feels like it.

I am purging.

My past?

Sure I could always keep the cardigan since both my child and my cat are well looked after …

(Un)fortunately my destination is Costa Rica so I can’t use it there.

Awwww, and my roller skates!

Can I keep them, please? I love them! I bought them at a flee market in Hamburg ages ago. They were the perfect fit (this really means something to someone who has feet size 41 trying to find even second hand shoes) and I had the best time rollerskating in Vondelpark..

Ok, I realise that I am happy to give them away. For free. But only to someone who would love them as much as I do and I’d know that they would give them as much pleasure and maybe more. That they will be appreciated.

But where are I find such persons? It would be someone like me.

Does putting a price on things make them more valuable?

Maybe.

However, I see a lot of things which are cheap, branded and highly priced. Still being cheap.

It’s about perceived value.

Uniquely personal value and that’s impossible to gage.

Unless you brainwash everyone into believing in the same value.

Helllloooo … Marketing.

The irony.

I read somewhere that Nike’s annual marketing budget is something like $3bio. … if that is the marketing budget WTF88k are their profits then?

Why don’t they just make their shoes more ‘affordable’?

It would save them on their marketing budget because they can slow down with screaming at us that the ridiculous price they are selling them for is legit.

But that’s not how it works.

Because if I they’d stop screaming at us (or we’d stop listening) sales actually would go down.

The key to making money is producing something cheap, putting a ridiculously high price to create a perceived value on it and then incessantly shout about it to uphold the belief.

And that costs money.

And that has to be included in the price.

Raising the price.

In order to shout louder because now the prices are even more ridiculous.

Raising the marketing budget.

Raising the product prizes.

Sneaker inflation.

Fascinating.

And people supporting this by buying into the belief while piling up sneaker stock at home.

Lol.

We should charge Nike for storage .

Nevermind Nike.

Now back to selling my things.

How am I pricing (valuing) my life?

How can I put the right price on my treasures?

My memories?

The moments of happiness?

The markers of different stages in my life?

That’s what I’m gonna do.

I give all that away for free.

But only to the right person.

The different personalities I have been when I got them.

And the different settings they brought me happiness in.

So.

The roller skates need to go to a person who wants to look funky and feel freedom in Vondelpark.

My grey cardigan with the fur collar to someone who wants to look glamorous while saving on the heating.

Win win

And win.

However, there always has to be an exchange.

Of value.

And whatever that is I’ll accept.

Sure. By taking things off me that person indirectly helps me to gain my freedom.

But since that is already mine,

money will do it too.

Interesting.

Wow, my first listing for the complete collage of all my sewing stuff had over 100 views.

WTF?

My strategy seems to work. And I put a price on it which I feel is right. And I told the story. That I’m basically selling a (my) lifetime of fashion and not sewing supplies. And I laid it all out beautifully. It’s still a bargain since it includes my Rolls Royce of fabric scissors but I’m happy if some is inspired.

My Greek landlord kept on saying this morning that I have so much stuff.

WTF. Everything I own is in one room. I have no idea what he is talking about. My closed literally fits 20 hanging items. That’s it.

I decided I’m also going to sell all my clothes.

Everything.

So I thought it’d be a good idea to get everything out and asses what I have. All my personal stuff but also everything in the big suitcase which i kinda wear sometimes, like winter stuff etc. as well as the stuff under my bed which I bought ages ago and was unsuccessful selling on Depop.

Holy Mother of God.

My room suddenly looked like the storage back room of a second hand store.

How could all this stuff have been in my room without noticing?

It was shameful.

I was a secret clothes hoarder with Tetris skills pretending to be a minimalist.

And then suddenly I got inspired.

Instead of looking at the stuff as stuff I wear, stuff I sometimes wear, stuff I used to wear and stuff i don’t wear but want to sell, I pretended I’m sorting out stuff for a photoshoot. Which was true because I had to photograph it all.

The astounding thing was when I sorted everything out according to Bling stuff and animal print and dresses and coats and jackets etc. I started looking at things differently.

And everything looked cool because I was the common denominator and I chose all of that stuff for a reason. Because I liked it.

So I took my time (which most people don’t take when they are moving as there seem to always be more pressing stuff to do like cancelling insurances), and starting with the dresses, remembered when I wore it and what made it so special that it inspired me to buy it.

I appreciated. Remembered the happiness I felt.

It was so much fun.

So a black and white polkadot dress with transparent sleeves and a belt became “My Favourite Cool Mum Moment” Dress because I wore it to my daughter’s graduation from London College of Fashion. With heels and a leather jacket. I thought I was cool and we had a beautiful day, taking the riverboat down the Thames to the Southbank Centre and had posh cocktails at the Lyaness Bar.

So that’s what I wrote.

And I gave every single of my dresses that treatment. And priced them all the same. Just some price I felt they deserved. Not what I bought them for or anything.

See what happens.

The key was that I remembered.

Why I loved my babies.

The pleasure.

Priceless.