Brecho Variedades

The holiday season (I'll save my defense of using that phrase for another post) is a time of rampant consumer joy in the US and most businesses want to take advantage of it. Many B&M stores deck the aisles with lights, trees, and Santas, and many online retailers do the same to their sites. Now I see nothing wrong with capitalizing on this to increase my business but I think you should do it in a way that preserves your brand imaging.

Here's an example from my shop this year. My usual banner:
My winter banner:
I kept the same blue background color, still the product images in overlapping circles, switched from a green cuttlefish in the logo to the same one in red, changed the text to white, replaced the watery swirls with snowflakes, and made sure to include one of my platypus ornaments prominently. When I changed my profile photo on Etsy I only made the minor change of adding some snowflakes and slightly reworking the cropping:
So while my shop now looks quite festive and wintery it's still quite clearly consistent with the visual branding my shop uses the rest of the year.

So go ahead and show off your seasonal items, change your banner, welcome Santa to your shop, but keep it clearly your shop not another random holiday site and stand out from the crowd.

It's that time of year, holiday shopping season. Here are the holiday shipping deadlines for the 3 major US shipping companies:

• USPS Holiday Calendar
• FedEx Last Days to Ship
• UPS Holiday Calendar (.PDF)

As the holidays approach it's worthwhile to take some seasonal photos of your products. Whether it's holiday items like ornaments or cards or just your usual items a few props can make your product listings or advertising a little more fitting for the season. Here are a few ideas for simple props you can get at your local dollar store this time of year.

• Mini artificial tree, those between 6-12 inches would work well for draping jewelry on.
• Artificial wreath. The image for this post is of one of my platypus ornaments displayed with a 6 inch wreath laying on it's side.
• Silk poinsettas as a backdrop.
• Plain glass ball ornaments. I'd stay away from too many colors and highly decorated ones, solid colors will distract less from your own items.
• Wide metallic ribbon.
• Gift boxes.

And a few natural items that you might be able to find for free out on a walk:

• Pine cones
• Branches
• Evergreen boughs (be careful of pitch getting on your items or your backdrop if it needs to be reused)

Do you have any ideas? Go ahead and share them in the comments.

Between preparing Thanksgiving and the whole Black Friday/Cyber Monday hoopla it's rather crazy so no normal posts this week. However not wanting to leave you with nothing here's some useful links for you.

• Etsy Seller How-To: Get Involved With Black Friday and Cyber Monday Promotions
• Handmade News: The Black Friday/Cyber Monday Weekend Sale ArtFire, The MyEtsy Facebook Application, And Coupon Codes at Zibbet
• Sellers Assisting Sellers Blog:  How to use a light box and photo editing software to make beautiful photographs
  

Here are links to the shipping deadline calendars for the USPS, UPS, and FedEx. Use them to figure out when the last day you can take orders for the holidays to post on your site, blog, and/or shop.

• USPS Holiday Calendar
• FedEx US Holidays Last Day to Ship
• UPS year-end holiday service center

I know it's only August but the holidays are busy both for selling and personally so if you get prepared well in advance you will save yourself a lot of stress.

❄ Ramp up production. My personal goal is to reach 200 items in my Etsy shop by mid-October. This includes making seasonal items now.
❄ Stock up on supplies. You don't want to run out around the end of November.
❄ If you get priority mail boxes from the USPS they usually have a deadline for ordering more boxes before the holidays. Do it now and you don't have to worry about it. If you ship international stock up on customs forms as well.
❄ Make a list. If you write down all the stuff you need to do before the holiday season starts and get working on it now you're less likely to get overwhelmed.

About the beginning of the holiday season:
While the day after Thanksgiving is the traditional kickoff of holiday shopping plenty of people start earlier. So don't be surprised to see some holiday shoppers earlier than that (especially important if you offer gift wrapping).