Last month I successfully destashed 10-15% of my total stash. I had never done anything like this before, and really dreaded the time and effort I thought it would take. However, I was able to come up with a few specific guidelines with the goal of keeping things quick and easy! It worked out so well that I thought I’d share a few tips for those interested in doing the same thing.
PRICE TO SELL!
Honestly, this is probably the most important part. You must be ok with not getting top dollar for your fabric. This is not about recouping sunk cost.
I was looking to offload a lot of miscellaneous fat quarters, leftover yardage, and large-ish scraps, so I divided everything into bundles/groups that I then sold in bulk for the very low rate of $40/box. And yes, that included shipping. I ended up with 7 boxes to sell, and $40 per box (which became ~$25 after shipping) was enough to make the destash well worth my time, even if it was far less than what I spent when I originally bought this fabric.
(A note: there are exceptions, of course. If you’re trying to get rid of never-opened precut bundles, I’d probably aim for a few dollars below retail price, maybe ~$8/yard. And if you happen to have older Tula Pink fabric, well, it fetches ridiculous prices. I sold the bundle of Slow and Steady scraps below — a total of around 2.5 yards — for $75. I probably could have asked for even more but it just seemed greedy!)
Sell by weight.
This saved a TON of time, as I didn’t have to measure anything. Quilting cotton averages around 4 ounces per yard, so I was able to weigh each group on my kitchen scale. Each grouping weighed at least 3 pounds, which equates to at least 12 yards (!!) of fabric.
Take advantage of USPS flat rate shipping.
You can ship a medium box for $15.50 (or less if you are set up through stamps.com or similar). I could easily fit each 3+ pound bundle into a single box.
Take clear photos, but don’t waste time on styling.
You can see an example of the photos I took below — I took about 30 seconds to fan out the fabric so that people could get a quick feel for the colors/values/prints, and variety of fabric that was in each bundle, but I didn’t worry about making it too pretty, or post-processing photos, or doing any kind of fancy styling.
Be honest about what you’re selling.
This should go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway! I had a lot of good quilting cotton in my destash, but there was a lot of lower quality big box store fabric as well that I had left over from my first few years of quilting. I was up front and honest about that, and I did take a few minutes to make sure each box had enough high quality stuff to make it worthwhile.
Talk about your sale on social media.
Get your friends to share it if they can. I have a large enough following that I was pretty confident I could sell my bundles quickly, and did it almost entirely though my Instagram Stories. But there are plenty of other methods and destashes happen on Instagram all the time. (A good hashtag to use is #thegreatfabricdestash.)
Use the tools you already have.
A lot of people use IG comments and then invoice via Paypal, which I think is probably simple enough. But since I already have an Etsy shop, it was easier for me to just list the bundles there and use Etsy’s existing checkout system. I was also able to simply buy and print my shipping labels (at a slight discount, no less) through Etsy. Yes, Etsy has fees that took a bit more away from my profit, but again — I wasn’t going for profit. I was going for EASY.
Enjoy your results!!
I emptied and sold one whole Ikea bookcase cubby of fabric. I was able to use the space to spread out my other fabric bins to given them a bit more breathing room. And it felt GREAT to find new homes for fabric that I was unlikely to use anytime soon!
I hope you find these tips helpful in your own destash!
aquilterstable says
VERY helpful! Thanks so much for sharing! Glad it went well for you.
Melanie says
Good tips for destashing EASILY. Thanks!