Selling a ballroom dress is not much different than selling a house. In order to sell it, you should think like a real estate agent, meaning you need to come up with a way to expose it to potential buyers. The following are some ways to expose a ballroom dress.
Sell It to a Fellow Competitor
As a competitor, you are always searching for a new look. The same thing is true of your fellow competitors. If you have a dress to sell, why not ask people around you who are also ballroom competitors? You might be surprised by the response you get just from letting other people in your circle know that you are interested in selling your dress.
Pass It on to Your Students
This is probably the most convenient way of selling ballroom dresses if you are a professional and have students who are taking lessons from you or your partner. You can also try selling your dress to someone else’s students. If you find someone who is the same size as you, they may become a repeat customer. Many times, students don’t have the money for brand-new dresses, so it is not unusual for them to be interested in buying used ones for a discounted price.
Ask a Professional Competitor to Dance in Your Dress
Did you know that many dressmakers use professional couples to sell their dresses by letting them dance in them for free? This is win-win for everybody. The professional has a new look and the dressmaker has a free advertiser. If you have a dress to sell, there is nothing stopping you from doing the same thing. However, if your dress does not look good, you might have a hard time finding someone to dance in it. In the end, the professional wants to look as good as possible.
List it on Resellers’ Websites
Finally, you can also list your dress on the Internet on websites such as dreamgown.com, ballroomdancers.com, dress.danceplaza.com or eBay. The good thing about listing your dress on this type of a website is that you can expose it to a much larger audience. Often, the way this works is that you pay a one-time fee to be able to have a listing, and then, it stays on the site until it sells. The negative is that the dresses never look as good on a computer screen as they do in person, especially when the dancer has beautiful makeup and hair. And of course, it helps make a good impression of the dress when the dancer can dance well.
One of the best things you can do when you list your dress on a website is to take very good, well-lit photographs from several angles, so that customers can really get excited about the dress and also be sure when they make their decision to buy. Oftentimes, when there is only one photo of a dress, it leaves the customer unsure, so they just move on to other listings. You will never know that you just lost a sale. They need to be able to see what the dress looks like from both the back and the sides, and what it looks like in action.