Shoppers take part in the Sara Sells sale in April. Sara Sells is a monthly shopping event that offers furniture, home decor, lighting, rugs, and more at 40% to 60% off retail prices. By: Sara Sells/mainstreet-nashville
We've often heard that the key to retail success is location, location, location.
But price, style and availability seem to be key at the monthly Sarah Sells Sale in the Wilderness.
Sara Sells is a monthly shopping event offering furniture, home decor, lighting, rugs, and more at 40% to 60% off retail prices. It will be held in College Grove, Tennessee.
There's nothing wrong with College Grove, but it's not your typical shopping destination. Except for once a month, when Sarah Young opens her doors to a crowd of eager shoppers for her RH, West Elm, and Pottery Barn “looks,” she's offering similar prices to Rooms to Go and Ashley Furniture. High quality.
For example, Sara Sells sells upholstered sofas in a similar style to the RH and West Elm models for $1,399 or $1,699, but some reputable stores sell them for $2,000 or $2,500.
“Low prices don't mean cheap quality. Low prices mean high quality. We buy in bulk, so we get the lowest prices and operate with low overhead,” she said. “It keeps prices down. And we like the atmosphere of the warehouse.”
Shoppers take part in the Sara Sells sale in April. Sara Sells is a monthly shopping event that offers furniture, home decor, lighting, rugs, and more at 40% to 60% off retail prices. By: Sara Sells/mainstreet-nashville
Young, a mother of four, has been selling furniture since 2016. That's when she started bidding on furniture from her Franklin garage “just for fun” and reselling it on Craigslist and local buy-and-sell sites.
She bought a truck and eventually expanded her business with a warehouse in Lebanon. Now, she and her husband Jim, who joined the company a few years ago, go to six of her furniture markets in 2018, buy from multiple suppliers, and have her own manufacturers for some furniture. Sometimes.
Sara Sells has about 40,000 followers on Facebook and 50,000 followers on Instagram and has doubled the size of her College Grove warehouse from 6,000 square feet to 12,000 square feet. Mr. Young started a similar operation in a 30,000-square-foot warehouse in Eads, Tenn., east of Memphis. And she's also considering opportunities elsewhere.
mary hans
It's all about quantity, Young says. He says 90% of the items on the sales floor are in stock in the warehouse and available for shoppers to pick up the same day. The most popular items are sofas, chairs, and stools, but contemporary dining tables and some outdoor gear are also available.
“People are so happy to be able to look at the work, sit down and take it home with them the same day,” she said. “We have people coming from all over Middle Tennessee and as far away as Knoxville, Huntsville and Birmingham. I think it's the quality, the price and the ready availability,” she said.
The ability to buy on the spot is especially important because many traditional furniture stores face supply chain issues that can delay deliveries by weeks or even months, she said.
Each month, we have one in-person shopping day on the Saturday and one online shopping day on the Sunday of designated sale weekends. The next in-person sale will be May 15th at the warehouse located at 8436 Horton Highway in College Grove.
Saturday's in-person sales day lasts just five hours, and organizers are adding to the appeal with food trucks and music playing in the parking lot where shoppers line up for a chance to shop.
“People comment on how much fun it is,” Young said. “A lot of people come in every month to see what's new,” she says, and nearly every shopper buys “something.”
“It might just be a dish towel or something small, but they know us well when they need something bigger,” she said.
Mary Hans, who has 40 years of journalism experience in the Nashville area, writes the weekly “Ms. Cheap” column for Main Street Media. She also appears on NewsChannel 5's Talk of the Town on Thursday. Contact her at mscheap@mainstreetmediatn.com and follow her on Facebook at facebook.com/mscheap.
On most Saturday sale days, 100 to 200 shoppers line up when the doors open.
We also have an online sale once a month on Sundays where you can order and choose your pickup time.
The warehouse has no heating or air conditioning.
We have a delivery service and prices start at $200 for deliveries within 50 miles. The price increases depending on the distance from the warehouse.
All sales are final. But Sarah Young says: “I definitely want to support everything that comes out of here.”
Don't miss our clearance corner where you can get 25%% off select items.
The next sale will take place on May 15th from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the warehouse located at 8436 Houghton Highway in College Grove. His May Online Sale will be held on May 16th from 11am to 11pm at sarasells.com.
Upcoming sale dates at College Grove are June 12-13 (in-person June 12, online only June 13) and July 10-11 (in-person July 10, online only July 11) ) is.
On the Friday before each sale, Young posts a social media video of the upcoming sale's aisles so shoppers know what to expect.
Cash and credit cards are accepted, but checks are not accepted.
A portion of sales from Sara Sells will be donated to Mercy Multiplied, a free housing counseling program for young women, and Narrowgate, a program for young men.
More information: Email questions to info@sarasells.com, visit sarasells.com or follow Sales on Facebook and Instagram @sarasellstn.
