The Garage Sale

Garage sale is an innovative retailing concept successfully practised in the West - albeit of secondhand fashion and lifestyle products. Shweta Iyer explores this upcoming retail option for the Indian market.

From where can you buy an original pair of Lee jeans for Rs 200 or a Nike t-shirt for just Rs 50? Factory outlets or black markets? Maybe none of the two, as the third option of secondhand brand retailing is emerging as a quick, sure alternative to get real brands for less than half the cost.

Fad today is fashion tomorrow. The masses can now wear high-end branded fashion apparels, or what have you – trinkets, caps and even footwear, thanks to the concept of secondhand brand retailing. These could be had online, at weekly bazaars, or even at the gradually evolving garage sales.

Be it handicraft or branded apparel, paintings or antiques, buyers are no longer apprehensive to try out secondhand goods so long as they are in good condition. Easy on the purse, and high on snob appeal…

Online and on streets
Internet shopping is a quick and easy alternative. Sometimes it enables consumers to buy things that otherwise would be impossible to get. Besides, it can save time spent travelling. Scour the web, and there are sites like Ebay and Amazon that are doing great business selling branded secondhand goods.

Shopping portals are fast catching the imagination of the tight-budgeted, but brand-conscious, consumers. The portals give consumers variety and bargaining options at a click of the mouse – without compromising on quality.

Markets like Chandni Chowk, Janpath and Meena Bazaar in Delhi are bustling with secondhand products. Some other major secondhand markets include Ameenabad, Naquad and Hazratganj in Lucknow, and the street corners of Ballygunje and Esplanade in Kolkata. In any case, such markets are perhaps there in the nooks and crannies of every other town or city. Street traders, too, are doing great business selling used merchandise.

Another evolving retail concept for secondhand goods sale is the garage sale. Though new in the country, it seems to be catching the fancy of the upper middle class families in metropolises like Mumbai.

Garage sale is a popular retail concept in the West, wherein people exhibit used household items in their backyard for sale. Generally, the products are priced much lower even as they continue to command high brand value. The buyers include neighbours, friends and sometimes even the general public.

The concept may earn a permanent place in the Indian retail sector, promising to be different than conventional forms of retailing. It is taking the shape of what we can call a friendly neighbourhood seasonal business – whereby you meet your neighbour one fine afternoon and buy stuff that you may actually need and the neighbour wants to do away with. The objective is to find and buy what you want with the greatest ease.

Reasons for a garage sale
We buy, buy and buy, whether we need things or not. Shopping has become a compulsory routine or pastime for many. The emerging malls and online sites are proof enough. Finally, a day comes when you have enough of all the clutter in the closet. People have different ways to dispose of their belongings. “Yoga teaches us not to hoard or accumulate. That's where the idea for the sale came up. There are so many things that I've hardly used or don't need anymore,” says Natasha Pratap, who holds a garage sale and is also a teacher at Art of Living.