The fall installment of the Greater Crothersville Community-Wide Yard Sale will be Saturday, Oct. 7, but with a change. Locations of the yard sales will not be listed in the newspaper gratis.
“For the past several years there have been fewer and fewer residents submitting their yard sale locations. But there were always more yard sales that those advertised,” said Curt Kovener, editor of the Crothersville Times, sponsor of the community event.
“Perhaps that lack of response was waiting to see what the weather forecast would be, maybe it was procrastination on getting ready for a yard sale, maybe it was an attitude of setting up but not bothering to promote a sale and taking advantage of the crowd,” said the editor. “Even some churches and organizations had special events they chose not to promote in the newspaper but took advantage of the yard sale crowd traffic.”
Whatever the reason, the lack of response to promote it made it difficult to encourage visitors to come to Crothersville for bargains.
“When we first started this event around 20 years ago, there were 50 locations signed up, most recently it is difficult to justify a community wide event with just 11 yard sales advertised,” observed the editor.
So the Oct. 7 yard sale will be a “ya’ll come” style event. Residents will need to develop their own promotional technique of getting customers to their location.
