A market for cages
Well, I no longer work in the Mt. Juliet, TN area, having completed that construction project. Boy, do I miss Garr's. They had a great line of organic gardening supplies, they knew their stuff and they would sell me fencing by the foot. Since I expanded my garden a bit this year, I needed some material to make more cages. I couldn't find any business in the tiny town on Murfreesboro (100K people) to sell me fence by the foot. So, I had a look around at the prices for a full roll. This is standard stock fence. It comes on a 330 foot roll. Co-Op priced themselves out of the market entirely at $220 per roll. Home Depot, however, only wanted $129 for a roll of the exact same stuff. My cogs started turning. What if I get the roll, make my cages and sell some more cages to make my money back?
So, I bought the roll, made 8 cages for myself and built a display for the front yard. The display had my standard 39" tall cage and a double 77" cage. I also ran an ad in the farm/garden section of the Nashville Craigslist. The cages started selling almost immediately. I decided to go with $5 for the small cages and $10 for the double ones. To date, I have made all of my money back plus around $150. I still have enough material left to make about 10 more cages.
If you build your own cages, you might be surprised with the results if you attempt to sell some. There is no good alternative to homemade cages here. The dinky three ring commercial cages are $4 each and up here.
I may even hold on to my profits and use them to improve my light system for next year. I am already considering buying another roll of fencing for next year. Here it is July and they are still selling but I think the tomato cage season is on the wane now.
If you try the same thing, I would be interested to know if you have the same type of success.
mater
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