Such a Deal!

My friends and I are having ourselves a BFLYS (Big Fat Lesbian Yard Sale) in a couple of weeks. I’ll be liquidating the last of my hand-made tie-dye at clearance prices. Everything is priced to go.

Several years ago (in the deepest part of the recession) Kathleen and I tried our hands at making a small (in this case tiny) business go and make a profit. We were in the business of making and selling tie-dye t-shirts, tablecloths, scarfs and bandanas. The name of our business was Serendipity One, Retro Textile Designs, and all our products were hand-dyed and originally designed. Kathleen and I sold our wares at a county park’s flea market in an ice skating rink. The 1st year’s sales were encouraging, and we almost broke even.

I wrote the following promotion piece for Serendipity One’s Facebook page (which is still up and has photos of the t-shirt’s designs and colors) after our first day selling the t-shirts.

Why I Tie-Dye…

About a year ago, I went to my favorite arts and crafts store. This store is like a candy store for me. So many possibilities only limited by imagination and inspiration. I wandered the aisles and found myself in the blank white t-shirt and fabric dying aisle. I have never considered myself a crafter. I have always had loftier ambitions. I mean I’m an abstract expressionist painter. I’ve shown, for god sakes! But I found myself drawn to the tie-dye kit. “Oh, I can play at being a hippie,” something I was never very good at due to my bourgeoisie pretensions. I bought the kit, telling myself that I needed something to do with all my time since I was recently unemployed.

Well, I had a blast! I bought a handful of shirts and did tie-dye. A few of my creations even got compliments from a professional artist friend. My mother in LA was completely baffled by my new venture. “What about your painting?” Well, I painted, and then I fit in the tie-dye. I wore the t-shirts every day and everywhere. Soon I was buying t-shirts wholesale and dye from Dharma Trading Company. I was in production mode. I even got my girlfriend into making them. We bonded over tie-dye, and I even quit my 3 pack a day smoking habit—a miracle!

Soon all the shirts were creating a storage problem. So I bought bins and then more bins. I sold a few but I mostly sought encouragement by giving the t-shirts as gifts to friends. Much to my surprise, my friends raved about them. Quite frankly, I didn’t quite see what they saw. But doing the tie-dye was keeping me off the cigarettes, and I was grateful for the distraction.

Next, my friends began requesting a fall line, with darker colors and long sleeves. So why not, I was into this thing that had overtaken my life and kept me off the dreaded nicotine. I changed my dying methods and voila—a fall line. I sold a few more.

Meanwhile my part-time contract job was finishing up, and I decided that with little prospect of finding another job during this severe recession, I’d go into the tie-dye business. I’d start out with t-shirts and do custom orders for big jobs like tablecloths and bedspreads. So I took $200 out of my checking account and bought a $100 worth of t-shirts and another $100 worth of dye. My plan was to do a summer line of 40 shirts, all of which would be hand dyed.

I tie-dyed shirt after shirt. Slowly I built up my numbers. After approximately 30 new shirts, I mixed them into my inventory from the past year. I was ready to debut. Now I needed to find a location. I’m well aware that it’s all about “location, location, location” when it comes to business. But the arts and crafts exhibitor world is like a food chain; the better ones cost more in entry fees and are juried while the less desirable ones are cheaper but with questionable returns. So with the sage advice of my girlfriend, I decided to start small and hope to grow—I chose an upscale flea market.

Last Saturday we packed up the car and left at 6:45am for the Flea Market in the Park. The location was a covered outdoor skating rink in a county park. We had about 25 vendors ranging from the hat lady to the cake lady. (There were plenty of people doing the typical yard sale thing too.)

My girlfriend and I made sales well beyond the cost of the entrance fee. We felt like a success!

Well, we probably sold over 200 handmade t-shirts over the course of two years. I loved doing tie-dye but just couldn’t afford to keep putting money into the business. You know how it is… cash flow problems. But I have no regrets. I had the time of my life.

Now I need to move about 50-75 of the leftover t-shirts. I hope to sell them at The Big Fat Lesbian Yard Sale. Serendipity One’s t-shirts that sold for $15 will now be marked down to just $3. Where else can you get a cool looking t-shirt for $3 bucks? Such a deal, I’d say.

So if you’re in the DC area and on the listservs, keep an eye out for The Big Fat Lesbian Yard Sale. Details will be forthcoming.