EWU Surplus Sale manager Katie Emery will oversee a change in the way her department does business. The familiar auctions will end and regular sales will take place each Friday from 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
The mission of the Eastern Washington University Surplus Sale is changing.
After being a place where the university disposed of items they no longer needed or used, the process to acquire these items will move to regular weekly sales. The periodic auctions will be no more.
"The original EWU surplus sales were taking place every six weeks," manager Katie Emery said. "But the volume of bidders had dropped significantly in recent time."
With people just more apt to buy, and not bid, that will now take place every Friday from 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. or by appointment, Emery said.
"The last 6-8 months the number of bidders per sale had leveled off at around 10," Emery said. "It wasn't worth our time to do all the auction setup."
The surplus sales have been a fixture at the former Cheney Safeway store across from the Post Office for about 18 years. They were administered by Floyd Cloke until last May when he retired after a nearly 30-year career at EWU. Emery assumed the duties Cloke once had.
Surplus Sale offers a wide variety of items, much of it electronics and computers that are passed their useful life at Eastern.
Items will now be priced, but Emery said, "There's always some room for negotiation."
Sales will still play an important part as a fundraiser in the community as they had before with the rodeo weekend garage sale that takes place July 11-12.
The inventory will be donated from students on campus, Emery explained and include what is left behind at the end of the year. "Even old food, no joke," Emery said. The benefactor of that sale is the Cheney Food Bank.
Further information on the EWU Surplus Sales can be found at: access.ewu.edu/surplus via email at surplus@ewu.edu or by calling (509) 359-7377.
Paul Delaney can be reached at pdelaney@cheneyfreepress.com.
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