DALTON – Last Wednesday was the first day people were able to buy merchandise at Trail Resale, a small shop in which nine vendors sell, buy and trade collectibles, antiques, vintage items, crafts, woodworks and other merchandise.
However, the first sales took place two days earlier, on April 8, when video was streamed over Facebook Live during a test of Trail Resale’s online claim sale. These claiming events will occur at 5 p.m. every Monday.
“We wanted see how the audio and video looked,” said Gregory Balaskas, who used his iPad to produce the video. “We wound up selling three items.”
Balaskas was behind the store’s planning and introduction but insisted he is not the owner.
“It’s a group effort,” he said. “I’m just a vendor. I’m like any other vendor in here.”
The nine sellers share the cost of rent and utilities. Vendors having retail experience volunteer to work shifts at the front checkout. Balaskas said there is room for one more vendor to join the store.
“People that collect toys, collect antiques, vintage stuff – that’s our main audience,” he said.
Balaskas sells toys, baseball cards, trains, stamps and coins under the name of the Vintage Toy Co. in a space at the front of the store.
“Anything collectible – that’s what I’m into,” said Balaskas, who began selling toys online in 2005. Most of the other vendors also sell their products online, and Balaskas said the vendors believe their new brick-and-mortar presence will act as a complement to the transactions they perform online. The store at 107 W. Main St. will also make more efficient the task of procuring inventory.
“It’s easier to buy stuff when you have an actual location as opposed to getting a phone call to meet somebody at a strange location at a strange time of night,” Balaskas said.
Trail Resale is open from 3 to 7 p.m. Wednesday through Friday, from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday and from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday.
The store is closed Mondays so the vendors can prepare for that evening’s claim sale. It is not an auction; rather, various items in the store are tagged with unique identifiers and prices. They are shown during the live video feed, and are sold to the first viewer to post a claim.
“People can shop from the luxury of their home,” Balaskas said. “They just type in the word ‘CLAIM’ and that item is theirs. We deliver it to them if they’re local, or they can pick it up.” Items sold to remote participants will be shipped out of the area.
Auctions are planned for the first Monday of every month.
Every Friday from noon to 4 p.m., the vendors inside Trail Resale will accept donations of collectibles, books, DVDs, CDs, sporting goods, sports memorabilia, toys, seasonal décor and other items of value which will be sold during the auctions.
“For every donated item, we’ll donate 20 percent of the sales to local nonprofits and other organizations,” Balaskas said.
Next month begins the annual buying season for the vendors of collectible toys. The increase in buying occurs every May and runs through August as surprise treasures turn up in the less-used portions of homes.
“Everybody is cleaning out their attic and cleaning out their basement,” Balaskas said. As a toy vendor, Balaskas says his sales are briskest from late October to just before Christmas.
For the store’s other eight vendors, which all deal in different lines of merchandise, sales rise and fall at different times of the year.
“Every item has a cycle,” Balaskas said. “Furniture sells when college kids are moving into the dorm in August.”
The store’s other vendors are Two Kids Merchandise, Endless Collections (which is comprised of four vendors), Alchemy Stones, Cheryl’s Creations and Lacoe’s Custom Woodworking.
Balaskas said he analyzed state traffic studies, and found that about 600 people a day drive past Trail Resale. Perhaps half of them are merely cutting through as a shortcut from Waverly to bypass Clarks Summit, but the other 300 have business in Dalton and Balaskas wants them to come inside the new store.
Every Sunday, the vendors will host sessions, which are open to the public, where board games are played on old sets of Monopoly, Parcheesi and other classics.
“We hope for foot traffic and local community support,” Balaskas said. “But we do have the advantage of being able to sell online every week, too. That’s one way of sustaining it, as opposed to 20 years ago, where we could have relied only on foot traffic.”
