Christmas: How are you preparing your Shop?

[Former_Member]

Hi everyone,

This may sound silly, but I keep seeing people talking about how they are getting ready for Christmas and setting their shops up for the festive season, but I just wondered what people were actually doing to do this?

This is my first Christmas on Etsy (yay!), so any tips would be welcome? Do I need to change tags, create new products, etc etc?

Thanks,
Michelle
x

[ThePlaidPineconeCo]

I'm going to the local antiques fair this weekend to search for gift-worthy vintage items. I'm going to look for types of items that sold well for me last year. I'm also working on making a lot of candles for an upcoming holiday craft show.

[ThePlaidPineconeCo]

I'm not an expert on jewelry by any means but I'm thinking you could work on some holiday-themed pieces (introducing more green/red or blue/silver and tagging them as Christmas/Hanukkah/holiday jewelry, perhaps?)

[JessicaSherriff]

TotallyCherished - I often think the same! I have just carried on stocking up the shop and keep tweaking tags and titles, also making a bit of extra stock of the more popular items in my shop. I assume that is what people mean when prepping for Christmas. However this too is my first proper christmas on Etsy so will be interesting to see what happens.

[Former_Member]

Thank you :) That's helpful :) I will definitely get on to making some more Christmas themed items - liking the idea of blue and silver x

[PIXELGRINphotography]

I'm not doing anything special for the holidays but I've read people changing the shop banner, and updating policies/ahop annoucemnet for shipping deadlines, and putting out their season wares!

[MythOfTheWild]

This will be my second christmas, but I feel like I'm more established on Etsy now, so I think I may have more luck this year. I don't really remember much about Christmas last year, so it couldn't have been that eventful.

So I, too, would love to know what other things people are doing to prepare.

[Former_Member]

I'm making a ton of Christmas/holiday stuff. I've already listed some things in my shop. According to my shop stats, people are already searching "christmas".

I am also thinking about doing a listing for Priority Mail upgrades so people can get their items faster in this busy holiday season.

[CatherineMarissa]

If it works with your product and market, definitely start listing holiday themed goodies.

I usually update my shop policies and bump shipping information to the top of my announcement.

I'll change my banner from a summer to fall theme.

I also start listing gift certificates (although I'm yet to sell one).

Most of my prep is stocking up on packaging supplies, business cards, etc. and making sure I have a good routine in place.

Hope Christmas is successful for all of us! :)

[Former_Member]

I'm starting to list holiday themed beads, and I'm working on making my finished jewelry as 'gift-able' as possible.

[Former_Member]

This will be my first holiday season on Etsy and I am excited about the possibilities. I am 2 items away from having 100 items in my shop. In a couple of weeks I'll be adding note cards to the mix and both Halloween and Winter Holiday greeting cards. If all goes well, I hope to add some wearable art, as well. A friend of mine keeps saying that the cards are where it's at and I should see a swift up-tick in sales. I am praying she is right!

[spacefem]

Oh, I need to tag some of my items with whose gift they'd be.

But really I'm waiting a bit until August 25, it's my personal deadline for starting Christmas stuff, I'm going to re-list some stuff that didn't sell and really try to get my listing rates up. I based it off the fact that everything I list after that date expires after Christmas.

[Former_Member]

I'm starting to plan a couple of focus products that I will market for Christmas and build up a good inventory of those items. (Upcycled coffee sack star ornaments and coffee cozies.) I thought I'd set a goal for how many I would like to sell of each product. This is my first season with a plan, we'll see how it goes!

[Former_Member]

This is also my first holiday season selling! I seem to be skipping Halloween and am prepping Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas and New Year's, as well as autumn and winter seasons in general.

Here's what I've done so far to prepare for the fall and winter holidays:

LISTINGS:
-working on adding at LEAST two dozen fall and winter treats to my shop over the last week and the next two or three
-tagging items for any holidays they may be appropriate for
-creating 'stocking stuff' items as well as 'extravagant' items
-paying attention to ingredient costs to buy in bulk and get great deals as the holidays approach

PACKAGING - this is all about saving time for me:
-put stickers on 200 candy boxes of various sizes
-stamped Perishable on 100 shipping envelopes and boxes
-lined 100 candy boxes with parchment or wax paper
-cut 100 yards of pretty twine for tying packages

PROMOTING:
-launching a new shop banner on 9/1 to announce pre-orders available
-editing announcement, policies and every listing with cutoff dates for various holiday deadlines
-drafting blog posts for my own website to promote holiday-specific items

[TinyTiptoesBoutique]

I'm already getting my Christmas line out to photographers/models, and have quite a few items up already. I'm also working on several other large-ticket projects to help streamline like printing my labels, getting headband display cards made, stocking up on yarn, etc. Last holiday season, which was the first one for this shop was fantastic, and I'm expecting this one to be even better! :)

[SugarAndPaint]

I have a lot of holiday themed items in my shop so I have been slowly building my Christmas inventory for about a month now, as well as Halloween and Thanksgiving. People are shopping Christmas now and searching for Christmas themed items.
I do try to revisit my tags on all items and think more in terms of Christmas shopping...who this might be a gift for, different uses, etc.

[Former_Member]

I'm building a lot more inventory, frequently checking where I show up in searches, purchasing extra yarn every time I buy supplies, and purchasing plenty of shipping supplies.

Some other things I've done all summer are to build my Facebook following, design all of my new products, put out some well-placed ads, & become established locally through shows and local businesses.

Other things you may want to consider are to make sure you have plenty of promotional material: business cards, product labels, promotional post cards, etc ready for when the time comes.

[Porzana]

I'm doing nothing to prepare.

I'm using reverse psychology.

If I prepare, I'm sure Christmas will be horrible for sales.

If I don't prepare, I'm sure to be caught unaware with massive numbers of sales and I'll be scrambling around like a chicken with my head cut off filling custom orders, packaging things, and just generally having no time to do anything at all because I'm making multiple trips a day to the post office!

That's the plan anyway xD