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I’m just curious how early other sellers start to gear up for the holiday season?
Last year, my wife and I geared up at the end of September, scavenging and listing a lot of items (about 3x to 5x our usual rate for a couple weeks), and started to put up a lot of Christmas items during the last week of September and first week of October. Almost all our Christmas related items were sold by Halloween!
We spent a lot of time and effort, and it really paid off for us – this year we were thinking of putting in the extra work for the whole month of September (we both work 40 hours a week at 9-5 jobs, so scavenging and listing takes place for 4-5 hours in the evening and long 12+ hour days on the weekend). We’ll see how it goes (or if we burn out). We are aiming to get 200+ listings a week and take most of November/December off from listing/scavenging (except for shipping).
Just curious what strategies others have during the holiday rush, any suggestions, or when you start building inventory? Or do you just keep the same pace?
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Last year was my first holiday season and I was too new to start gearing up at all. I had thought that I would get myself in order for this year, but I’ve had so many setbacks, it doesn’t look like I’m going to focus as much as I’d hoped.
What I plan to do is find a few items that I believe will do better over the holidays than any other time of the year (good for gifts, rather than general items) and list those. Apart from that, it will be “business as usual” for listing.
I read somewhere last year that there are so many sales being run by retailers for the holidays that there’s not really much point in competing, and also that people will tend to new or NWT rather than used. That is guiding my selection; I’m going for things that will not be influenced by condition or sales, such as paintings or unusual decor items.
It would be interesting to read what others are planning.
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We’ve put together a plan for our holiday sales gear-up this year.
My wife and I are going to be taking a vacation week next week (stores are closed Labor day so we have 4 full extra days) to do all the scavenging we can and build some piles of inventory. Instead of trying to hit a listing number, we’ve set a budget of $1000 (not including gas/meals) for inventory. We’ve mapped out a route of over 50 thrift stores we are familiar with (some we only get to once or twice a year when we are in the area) and will hit them until our budget or brain goes.
We’ve also put together a strategy for our listings – we will create 4 piles to work on:
1 – immediate / high value items that sell quickly
1B – holiday items (Christmas décor) – list after the immediate items
2 – intermediate items – list by mid-October
3 – smalls / gambles – list by mid-NovemberWe also have a few items that have lingered for over 12 months – some can be consolidated in lots of similar items to try and move them to make space in our storage areas.
One of the challenges we will have is that a lot of the item I buy are old electronics that I strip down, clean, repair, etc. that take some time.
My wife focuses on women’s accessories and she also has a lot of time with some items cleaning, polishing, etc.
For the last few years we’ve had fun putting up lots of items this time of year and using the proceeds for our holiday spending – our family has had a few good Christmas’ the last couple years and we hope to get everything on our wish lists!
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Great goals, there, Inglewood – even with dates! I’m impressed and a little envious! 😉
I read that Christmas decor doesn’t do well at Christmas time unless it’s vintage, new, or very unusual. Have you found that?
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I agree with your strategy. We have found that “Q4” sales really start right around Labor Day, and are in full swing by Oct 1.
Our strategy? List like crazy up to Oct 1, and list like crazy up to Christmas. We don’t really source and hold (I know some sellers that hold on to some items and don’t list them until Q4 time), so our best strategy is to try to have 0 unlisted inventory going into October.
We are also going to try crosslisting on Etsy a lot more this year with SixBit. We have always held off doing much with Etsy because to list manually on that platform took too much time. With SixBit, we are planning to upgrade the monthly subscription to allow for us to list on both platforms with one listing, and SixBit handles the Inventory Control (if something sells on one platform, it removes it from the other so you don’t get into an Oversold position).
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