Not to cast doubt on my communications business but here is my story. It’s anecdotal yet true: I’ve discovered craigslist.
My Beloved and I have spent the summer fixing up the house we call Shady Hill, doing things we’ve meant to do for a while, some of which since we bought it in early 1999. We are not house-proud. The renovations aren’t much deeper than fresh paint in some rooms and ditching some furniture.
There are two pairs of tables. We’ve gotten a lot of use from them, but we can do without them, especially if we’re shifting the look for a 1963 split-level ranch toward mid-century lean Scandinavian modern from overstuffed suburban.
One set are nightstands with a Wright-ish Prairie look; bought ’em at Target in Little Rock maybe 11 years ago, probably $25 each. True to Target, sometimes it has great finds. These are real wood, not laminate or veneer. Don’t need them because we have my mom’s cabinet-like headboard. The others are end tables from the family house in Fort Smith. They probably were bought at a local store there in the early 1950s. The brand label, also verifying they’re mahogany, still is in a drawer of each.
I got the tables when we moved Mom to assisted living in 2002; their quality was too good to sell like the rest of the furniture that wouldn’t fit in her apartment. However, I never liked them much. Mom didn’t, either. They stood in the living room we all avoided. When I brought them to Shady Hill, I stripped off the varnish and stain and polyurethaned them so we’d never have to worry about coasters.
I put them in my paper for three days early last week — in my paper’s economically significant free classifieds (Hussman’s innovation will go down in communications business texts). $20 for the pair of blond nightstands and $100 for the set of sofa tables. One couple on the first day came to see the night tables but left. Thursday morning I phoned the local “penny saver” and learned it’s published on Wednesdays with a Monday afternoon deadline. It posts new ads on its Web site simultaneously on Wednesday mornings.
What to do for five days? Renew the Demzette ad? I looked at craigslist, the no-frill, generally free Internet classifieds. I’d read of its success, but that was it. The site gave some common-sense con-artist warnings about spam, not accepting money orders and encouraging you to do business within your geographic region. I took digital pictures of the four tables (cutting their resolution to online dimension), and posted them (clear uploading instructions) and brief description on craigslist > Fayetteville > furniture. I did not give a phone number, just used the anonymous email redirect provided. All was free.
That was noon Thursday. By 1 p.m., I had an e-mail inquiry. By 6 p.m. there were five others, all from within a half-hour’s drive. That first one ended up buying the bed tables at my price, picking them up Friday. I still have the fancy end tables — one of the others offered half of my asking and I said no — but the ad runs 45 days. I may donate them to charity and take the write-off.
This is a different deal than eBay. I’ve sold a bicycle and an iMac that way — and have bought things like chemical-free “cat trees” — and been happy with the online auction process.
MB and I throughout our marriage have given away goods to Union Rescue Mission in Little Rock and to the Salvation Army here, after the pieces nearly always failed to sell in the newspaper (and the other paper when I worked there). This includes, before we moved from LR, a fairly new solid oak round dining table and solid oak desk and a full-length sleeper sofa, where I dropped the price on each ad renewal, even revising the text to spell out what OBO means.
It’s “or best offer.”
The newspaper trade publications say that publishers anguish over their classified business moving to craigslist. How hard can it be to make the ads post within 15 minutes instead of all at once every morning at 5? What about Star Shopper? I’m a busy guy, and that’s next week. By which is meant, that’s so last century. -30-
