When I first thought about recycling my unwanted goods I never expected it to be a community event. I had moved a year ago and didn’t realise how many things I had until I started to put unpacked boxes in the loft. Initially I put them on an Online market place but this was taking too long and I was messed around quite a lot. The idea of taking my car full of my belongings to field did not appeal to me. A yard sale sounded ideal but how would I encourage enough people to come to one yard sale which would justify taking everything I wanted to sell out into my garden. The answer was to get my community to do the same and make it an event.
Being new to the area I had joined a community chat group on facebook. The group had over 10,000 members so had quite a ride reach. I posted on this group to see what kind of a response I would get.
I posted my first post on the 9th May – I received 28 likes and 12 comments. All the comments where very encouraging but the response was relatively small for such a large group. Despite this, I still set up a facebook group with ‘jumble trail’ in the title. There are many variations to the name of this kind of selling technique but the most common and most searched one is ‘Jumble Trail’. The name of your jumble trail should be specific to the area covered too. This may be self explanatary but dont call your jumble trail ‘Watford Jumble Trail’ if you plan to just make it available to just south Watford residences – be specific with the area in the jumble trail name. The beautiful thing about a Jumble trail is it can be as big or small as you feel comfortable with organising. If you live in a street where everyone is on board with the event taking place you can just name it after the street although its advisable to have at least 20 stallsholders.
The next thing to construct is the rules of the jumble trail.
I set an “Event” on the page with the date and a time and acted on the basis that even if I was the only person doing this I would have lots of people at my yard sale. I also set up a Gmail account for people to email me so I could keep a list of people who wanted to do the jumble trail all together.
My first post was the date and time that must be so clear, and I made this an announcement, so it stayed at the top of the page. I then made some rules and regulations – this is so important. You can’t close roads or block pavements etc.
I kept posting on my jumble trail group – I shared videos from You Tube about what a jumble trail was, videos of people who had done a jumble trail and what their responses were and what they were selling. I found most of these videos from a You Tube channel called ‘Jumble Trail’ and I posted every day. I even made the posts fun I used Ikeas “chuck out your Chintz” advert but the posts that received the most likes were those about other community’s responses to Jumble Trails. The videos that showed communities interacting with each other.
The main thing about my jumble trail was that I wanted it to be inclusive I wanted the whole of Fleetwood involved I didn’t want it to be a specific area or road. Without knowing it, at the time, this was a good idea I had cast my net wide and soon people found they had the same need to get rid of things and people started to sign up.
I received my first email to sign up on the 10 of May and quite soon I had 10 fellow jumble trailers. I kept sharing posts daily anything I could find that was relevant and encouraging. I shared posts on how to make bunting, selling cakes having rummage boxes how to make your stall visible . My Fleetwood Jumble Trail page is public so please feel free to have a browse.
The next step, for me was to make posters. I had no money for this event but really understood the need for visibility within the town. How do houses taking part indicate they are taking part before the day? As a hobby I screen print and decided to do a very simple poster with stuff I already had. I made 50 posters on coloured paper and It took me 2 days as I used 2 colours. I gave one to everyone taking part which did seem to work as after a couple of weeks I had handed out all the posters. However, this would not be something I did again. It was too time consuming. A better solution was to upload a poster onto the Jumble Trail group page and let people download them and print them. This is also a great way to keep the budget down to a minimum.
It then came about via the group discussion that leafleting would be a good idea. I printed off bundles of 50 flyers and gave about 300 leaflets to various stall holders and helpers to letterbox drop. Again, I had the paper and a laser printer with plenty of toner, so I didn’t mind providing these but I’m not sure if this is as effective as online advertising and simple word of mouth. It is always a good idea to upload printable information and I have some templates for flyers and a step by step guide for uploading them as a printable document to your Facebook page here.
Some local newspapers allow community events free advertising under their Events section in the printable additions, which is always worth looking into. In Fleetwood we have a Community Matters booklet. It’s produced each month but beware these papers have deadlines, so you need to be quick off the mark to get your event in.
Another good way to advertise your Jumble Trail to buyers is in the free Ads website online. This has a far wider reach than I imaged and, I quickly started to get messages about the event. I also posted in other Facebook pages dedicated to jumble trails and car boots in the area. I used the Jumble Trail Events Facebook page which I created specifically for Jumble trails and then I used Manchester and North West car boot and Jumble trails & Sales, Car boot Sales Morecambe Bay area and all the buy/sell Facebook pages including Facebook market place I could find for my area. I’m in the North West of England so find similar Facebook pages and groups more specific to your area or if you are in the North West use some of the same. Jumble Trail Events is nationwide so you can use that wherever you are.
Another great way to advertise your Jumble trail locally is to tell everyone who signs up to spread the word. Confirmation of their place on the jumble trail is a good opportunity to pass information onto the jumble stall holder. Confirm that they qualify to be on the map by checking they live within the allocated area. Make sure they are selling from a residential property – I do have stall holders at a local carboot constantly trying to get onto the Fleetwood jumble trail – this is not what you want. Give stall holders ways to help themselves by telling them how to advertise their stall with bunting and balloons (this is also a good general post for the facebook group).
Check your hard work is paying off by looking at the analytics of your facebook group. The group should be growing which means you are getting the word out there and the event is becoming known about within the community. Make sure you are part of the group and listening and answering questions as much as you can.
I also did a post on personal safety. Make sure money is not left on your stall unattended and that keys are not left around, don’t be distracted and try to hold your yard sale with a friend or neighbour.
As people joined the jumble trail I compiled an excel spread sheet of the address so that when it came to the map I would have everything in place. I cannot recommend this enough as in the few days before the jumble trail people join and leave the jumble trail and it can become quite confusing. Also people contact me through various means. I received requests on messenger, Gmail and on Facebook posts to join and leave the jumble trail. On the Jumble trail on the 26th of June we had over 90 participants so it can be quite a headache if you are not organised. I also publish the map the day before in case I had missed anyone off.
For the map I used Google Maps because I’m familiar with it and compiling the map does take some time. Choosing where to start your map and how to number it can be challenging especially if you have some houses on the outskirts of the area.
People using the map may not be familiar with the area so numbering the houses to indicate one way streets or dead ends was also important. I also highlighted car parks, ATM’s and public toilets as well as some places to eat and grab a tea or coffee. You can use other maps such as What3words but I haven’t tried this yet and may be more specific than google maps.
One of the things I found really difficult was posts, on the Facebook group, regarding the weather. In future the posts will be approved by admin and no posts other than mine will be posted about the weather and this is because it will invariably put people off coming to the jumble trail. After the last Jumble Trail of 2021 I changed the the Facebook group settings so that any posts now have to be approved before they go public.