How to Sell Your Stickley Furniture? 5 Important Steps

sell your Stickley furniture

Stickley furniture is undoubtedly classy and so easy to fall in love with. But as much as you love them, there could come a time when you need to sell them.

Possibly, you want to move to a very distant location, you want to get a new set of furniture, or simply need some money. But how do you sell your Stickley furniture?

To sell your Stickley furniture, you need to clean it and evaluate it properly.

Original Stickley furniture pieces are collectibles, and you may need to consult your local consignment store to get the proper value for your piece.

After that, take some beautiful but genuine high-quality pictures of your furniture. Once this is completed, you may list your Stickley furniture on online platforms for sale, providing adequately descriptive details on your piece. 

There is a lot to know about selling Stickley furniture. How can you be sure you are not overpricing or underpricing your product? What platforms can you find valuable buyers on? These are some of the nuggets we will learn in this piece. 

Related Article: 7 Online Stores to Buy Stickley Furniture (For Cheap Deals!)

1. Revamp your Stickley furniture 

The current condition of your furniture will strongly influence the attractiveness of your piece and how quickly you get it sold. This explains why your Stickley furniture needs a bit of cosmetic revamp before you start pushing it out to prospective buyers. 

A slight deterioration – however negligible – can cause dramatic devaluation in your furniture piece. 

You may need to refinish or reupholster your Stickley furniture, depending on the condition. When minor mending like stitching up (via tailoring) is required, get the repairs done before selling it.

You may not always need extensive restoration procedures like refinishing and reupholstering. A thorough cleanup – say with a solution of baking soda and warm water – of your piece would just do. 

Related Article: How to Refinish Stickley Furniture? 7 Important Tips

2. Time to get quality pictures of your Stickley furniture

Unless your prospective buyers can personally inspect the piece of furniture, you will need quality pictures accurately representative of the condition of your Stickley furniture.

Most digital used-furniture selling platforms (which we will detail soon) require photos of your Stickley furniture when curating your product listing.

If you want to sell your Stickley furniture fast – and for a reasonable price – you need pictures of the piece with spectacular resolution. 

To give buyers an encompassing appreciation of the furniture, it is recommended that you snap your piece from multiple angles. 

It is critical to remind you how important it is to take your pictures in good lighting conditions. As you would have known already, pictures taken in areas with insufficient lighting tend to appear stale, old, and even dirty.

Given that the buyers are not seeing your Stickley furniture physically, they will judge it poorly and underprice it inevitably. 

We will like to emphasize the importance of your pictures genuinely representing the condition of your Stickley furniture. 

Don’t artificially enhance (with the aid of photo-editing software) the pictures; neither should you hide the defects of your piece.

3. Get it listed on an appropriate e-commerce platform

Of course, you could follow the old-school approach of physically scouring buyers. Aside from being draining, this localizes your pool of buyers, excluding potential buyers outside your vicinity.

This explains why the option of selling your Stickley furniture is more recommended. Tapping into the enormous powers of e-commerce, you can sell your piece to just anyone across the globe provided shipping facilities are in place.

There are several famous online platforms where you can list your Stickley furniture and sell it for a good price and fast.

AptDeco

AptDeco is an online selling destination particularly adapted to selling used furniture.

This is a brilliant online platform to sell your Stickley if you reside in Connecticut, New York City, New Jersey, San Francisco Metro Area, Long Island, and Philadelphia Metropolitan Area.

Selling here is easy and quick. All you need to do is list your Stickley furniture and publish it. Typically, AptDeco would make price suggestions for you. But it is up to you to go with them or ignore them and set yours.  

AptDeco presents an integrated system for conducting sales, with the whole process – from customer communication to payment – done on the platform. The platform also has features like discounts. 

Note that while AptDeco doesn’t charge you a cent for listing your Stickley furniture, you will need to pay a commission of the price you sell your piece for on the platform. 

This usually ranges from 9% to 38%. Depending on your location (and that of your seller), AptDeco can handle the delivery.

Craigslist

This is one of the oldest classified ad websites. It is a ready means to sell your Stickley piece within your locality.

To sell on Craigslist, you need to create a listing for your piece on the local board designated to your area. The end-to-end process on Craiglist comes at no cost. 

Craigslist is a hands-on selling platform, with protocols like delivery, buyer verification, and payment handled by you (the seller). 

Well, you can’t complain too much since Craiglist costs nothing and doesn’t charge any fee on your sales.

Etsy

Etsy brings together the features of a conventional online shop and a marketplace. This is one of the most prominent online destinations for the sales of vintage ware. 

Your Stickley furniture rightly falls under this category. Selling on Etsy comes without a fuss. 

First, you need to set up your storefront. This gives you the advantage of customizing your page to better resonate with your aesthetic feel. 

After creating your storefront, you need to populate your shop with pictures of your Stickley furniture.

These are the details that will accompany your Stickley piece when it shows up in the Etsy search results of prospective buyers.

To list your furniture on Etsy, you must pay 20 cents. 

Of course, you can pay that without a sweat, but Etsy will take 5% of the price you sell your Stickley furniture for as commission. Ouch!

4. Evaluate your Stickley furniture and set a fair price 

Expectedly, the price you set for your Stickley furniture will affect how appealing buyers find it. Here is where it gets a bit controversial. 

A subjective evaluation of your Stickley furniture may not always mirror the market price. So you need to check out people with similar Stickley furniture pieces like yours and how much they are selling them.

We admit this may not be the easiest way to nail a price given the exoticness of Stickley furniture. Not many people have them in the first place. 

Since original Stickley furniture is valued collectibles, it makes sense to get authoritative pricing guidance. You can source this by checking the consignment store around your neighborhood or checking pricing guides at libraries. 

If you are convinced your Stickley furniture is worth a premium, you could pay for a professional appraisal from an antique expert.

This is advised when your piece has the famous Stickley shop marks, especially those with the “Als ik kan” indentation.

A rule of thumb is to set your price at a percentage of what you got it for depending on how long you have used it and its current usability.

Providing the receipt (of procuring your Stickley furniture) among your listing pictures is also a way of adding credibility to your pricing.

Regardless of whatever pricing you set for your Stickley furniture, be prepared for negotiating (not haggling). If you are keen on selling the piece fast, you may need to compromise with buyers to get it sold speedily.

5. Promote your Stickley furniture

Sounds odd? But in some cases, just dumping your Stickley furniture on an online sales platform will not get it sold. 

You can facilitate the sales process by promoting your piece. This can be via words of mouth through your network of family and friends. 

This can also be done (preferably) via social media. 

You can post pictures of your Stickley furniture on social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp. 

If you mean business, you can even run paid ads to get pictures of your product on more eyeballs inorganically. 

Related Article: Is Stickley Furniture Worth it? (Explained for Beginners)

Resources

How to sell furniture online

6 Steps to Successfully Selling Your Furniture Online

21 Best Places To Sell Used Furniture (& Make Money Fast!)

18 Best Places to Sell Used Furniture for Cash ‘Online & Locally’

8 Tips To Sell Your Used Furniture Online Fast (And For The Most Money)