Not you feelings. Don’t bottle those up. This blog is just about bottles and some sales experiences buying them.
Let me first explain the context of these sales experiences…
Who: Noah and I have been the customers
What: We have been looking to buy affordable vintage apothecary bottles
Where: Every antique shop in a thirty mile radius of school, our homes, and anywhere we visit
How many: We just need a few, like 230. Maybe a few more…
Why: To accompany foraged flowers on tables at a shindig this summer
Sales Experience One: Antique Annie’s in Franklin, PA
Let me tell you all- swing by Franklin, it’s positively darling with some fabulous shops and a great pizza place. There’s also a cute cafe down there on their main street, and next door to Bossa Nova and it’s brews is an antique store called Antique Annie’s. I went down to Franklin with some friends to go to the coffee shop one Saturday, and on our way back to the car we popped in. They have lots of fun stuff, but what caught my attention (because of reasons previous noted) was a clump of bottles on a shelf in the back behind the register. I had seen some bottles elsewhere in the shop, but they were nice old baby bottles and so more expensive; unfortunately $10+ per bottle doesn’t exactly work when you’re buying 230…
Anyways, I inquired about the bottles and started explaining my position (that we need many, many bottles and hopefully at a very affordable rate). The couple behind the counter was so very helpful, brought all of them down, and started chatting it up. It turns out that their daughter works with GCC students over the summer at a nearby camp (what we call a bonding and rapport win). I sorted through the selection they showed me, picked out a few, and they cut me a deal. The husband told me that they have totes of bottles downstairs and that, “if it meant [they didn’t] have to go through the work of sorting and pricing them, [we] could have them for a buck apiece.”
MUSIC TO MY EARS. Also, a matched set of desires– we needed cheap apothecary bottles and they didn’t want to take the time and resources to sort through theirs.
Noah and I returned later and Noah helped carry the tote up from their basement- it’s always fun to see the back of an antique shop. We ended up being able to buy around sixty bottles that day which put a big dent in what we were needing! We also got to talk with the couple about their favorite antiques and see the husband’s prized books. I definitely feel like we’ve built some trust and friendship in this relationship and we now take our friends there every Franklin trip, which has resulted in some more sales for the shop! We have been super grateful to Antique Annie’s for this positive and helpful sales experience!
BoweryJE22
This is interesting, in that it shows you in a position of sales that we don’t think of as being sales; you were looking to buy, but that still involved moving others!