Each weekend, tag-sale enthusiasts can stop by multiple events throughout the Akron area, searching for deals and treasures from several companies that specialize in the service of clearing out high-end merchandise from homes and businesses.
Those enthusiasts can also now go to a new West Akron showroom once a month for a three-day sale held by Pier & Co.
The 40-year-old business has opened a location at 1915 W. Market St. (behind the Walgreens in the Wallhaven area of Akron). It is open only one weekend a month and features items from Pier & Co. estate sales, storage and furniture and goods from estate sales in Florida, said Juli Pier-Uecker, owner of Pier & Co.
The next sale will be held next weekend and hours will be 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Friday, June 17, and Saturday, June 18, and noon to 4 p.m. Sunday, June 19.
“We had an abundance of furniture and people wanting to buy,” said Pier-Uecker, whose mother, Carol, started the business in Akron in 1975 and moved to Naples 20 years ago. Carol Pier operates her own tag-sale business in Naples; Juli owns the Akron business.
Pier-Uecker said she had such an abundance of inventory and interest from customers that she wanted to find another venue to sell. She is modeling her 5,000-square-foot showroom after one in Naples that has successfully had a storefront for 15 years.
“This is testing out doing it out of a retail store,” she said, of the location, which at one time has been a frame shop and oriental rug store, but has sat empty for two years.
When I asked why she was paying rent for a storefront, but only opening it three days a week, and whether that was profitable, she explained:
“I like the concept of buying power and the urgency to buy,” she said, explaining that if she had the store open all month, “people mosey in and mosey out. When you come in [to a limited-time sale], there’s a frenzy to our sales.”
Also, Pier-Uecker points out that if she stayed open all month, she’d have the extra expense of paying more for lights and employees.
Each month’s showroom sale will have different inventory and the staff’s goal is to sell it all and not put it back in storage or have it reappear in next month’s sale, Pier-Uecker said. Customers can buy on the spot, or put in bids for the last day of the sale or negotiate before the store closes for the event, she said.
“We refresh our stock daily [during a showroom sale],” she said. “It makes it interesting for people to come.”
I went to check out the showroom a few weeks ago during Pier’s grand-opening weekend. The showroom was stocked with several different settings of furniture and decorations, jewelry and art. Pier & Co. also takes consignments, and at this particular sale, there was a large collection of electric guitars.
There are items in all price ranges. There was an English breakfront bookcase that Pier-Uecker said normally sells for $10,000 priced at $3,550 and I saw a cute blue-and-teal modern costume jewelry necklace for $12.
Longtime customers Mary and Frank Mehwald of Strongsville bought a few odds and ends and jewelry at the May sale.
The Mehwalds try to go to one Pier & Co. or other tag sale once a weekend.
“To us, it’s sport. We always find something. It’s kinda fun,” Mary Mehwald said. “Neither of us need anything, but it’s just fun to go.”
The Mehwalds own a horse stable in Strongsville, and Mary has a design degree. Among the items they’ve picked up at tag sales include artwork, hand irons for their fireplaces, a Lenox china set and a horse-drawn sleigh they use for decoration in their stable.
When I asked the difference between going to a garage sale and a tag sale, Mary explained it well. Pier-Uecker politely asked that I not even use the two words in the same sentence — insisting that they’re so different.
Mehwald said the first fun part about going to an estate sale, since they are usually in stately older homes or nicer locales, is the opportunity to go through someone else’s house.
“It’s the nosy side of me. But also, lots of times ... it’s just people who are moving, so their furniture doesn’t fit into their home. You’re getting top-notch things at good money.
“At a garage sale, people are getting rid of their junk or throwing away stuff,” Mehwald said.
Pier-Uecker estimates that 75 percent of what she’s going to sell in the showroom is coming from Florida estate sales. While declining to go into detail, she said it’s lucrative enough to buy a whole estate in Florida and truck it up to Akron to sell in the showroom.
“There are some beautiful homes in Florida,” she said during the May grand opening. Some of her workers were headed to Florida right after that sale to bring two truckloads more back from Florida for this month’s sale.
About 85 percent of the stock at the May showroom sale was sold and the showroom has been restocked for next weekend’s sale. The English breakfront is still available and has been reduced to $3,200 — and there are still guitars available and more that have been added.
To find out details about the sale and other upcoming ones, go to www.pierandco.com.
Betty Lin-Fisher can be reached at 330-996-3724 or blinfisher@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow her @blinfisherABJ on Twitter or www.facebook.com/BettyLinFisherABJ and see all her stories at www.ohio.com/betty