Five ways to turn the stock you have into a Christmas present

It sounds early to be talking about Christmas in August. It isn’t.

Anything you start producing now is unlikely to be part of your Christmas range. Custom packaging can take four to six weeks. Textiles can take four to eight. Ceramics and anything coming from overseas can easily push into next year.

So your Christmas range is whatever is already boxed, plus whatever is realistically going to land in the next five weeks. A collection you’ve been working on for months. Last year’s stock in the corner, the run that didn’t sell, the colourway you over-ordered. Same job now: get it in front of people who are buying presents.

I made the opposite decision myself. I still had stock left from my first collection that hadn’t sold. And instead of trying harder to sell it, I spent six months designing and producing a second collection so it would be ready for Christmas.

I was pregnant at the time.

I launched it in November, with a newborn in tow, which is already too late for a lot of Christmas buying.

It made £308. Every sale came from people I already knew, including my mum. And the first collection was still sitting there. I had stock. What I needed was distribution. But I made more products. In the one selling season where that is probably the most expensive mistake you can make.

Here are five ways to do the opposite.

1. Make it look like a present

The same product at the same price can sell very differently depending on whether it feels like a single purchase or a gift. And a lot of that difference is packaging.

Packaging suppliers hold stock. A box, a belly band, a ribbon in your brand colour and a card ordered from a stock range arrives within a week. Anything custom printed is takes longer and might not be an option for this year.

That gives you two moves.

A gift-boxed version at a slightly higher price can sit next to the plain version, giving customers a reason to trade up that has nothing to do with changing the product.

It also gives you an easy route into bundles. Gift buyers often have a budget in mind. £15 present. £25 present. Something around £30. If your product is £14 and someone has £30 to spend, two items boxed with a card lands right on that budget. That is your opportunity.

Plus you’ve sold two units instead of one. And you’ve given the customer something that feels more gift-worthy without manufacturing anything new.

2. Get onto other people’s gift lists

Somebody with an audience is assembling a Christmas gift guide right now and would rather not be chasing people for images in November.

Print has largely closed. Monthly magazines work three to four months ahead, so the Christmas pages were filled in the summer. But everything else is still open: newsletters, blogs, online round-ups, people who publish “10 gifts under £30” every December, small-business round-ups, local accounts, town guides. Online lists are still being built into November.

You don’t need a relationship with all of them. You need to make saying yes ridiculously easy. Send: a cutout JPEG on white background, one lifestyle image, the price, the URL, a one-line description, and your Christmas delivery date.

Pitch everyone you can think of, unprompted. Most submissions get ignored because saying yes would have meant chasing you for missing details. So give them everything. Make yourself easy to feature.

This costs you a day of work and, potentially, nothing else.

3. Stand where the footfall already is

The most reliable way to get a stranger to buy a physical product is still remarkably simple: Put the product somewhere strangers are already shopping.

Between now and December there are more of those places than at any other point in the year. Think Christmas markets, late-night shopping events, independent shops, shared stalls, local events, school fairs, other people’s retail spaces.

And some of them will still have gaps. Christmas markets take bookings in the summer and release cancellations right through September and October. Organisers have waiting lists. Ask to be on them.

Stockists who ordered in the spring will sometimes take a top-up in November if the first order selling well. Ask in October how it’s selling. That’s an easier conversation than asking in November whether they want more.

These aren’t your own audience. That’s exactly why they’re worth having. You’re not trying to convince your existing followers to buy their fourth mug. You’re putting your products in front of people who have never heard of you.

4. Set your cut-off delivery date and sell against it

Royal Mail publishes its last posting dates in the autumn. Set yours a few days earlier and put it everywhere: site banner, product pages, the bottom of every email, the front of your stall.

“Christmas delivery closes on Friday” is one of the easiest sales messages you will ever have. You aren’t inventing urgency because the deadline is real. Use it.

5. Reprint, but only if the selling is already sorted

This one comes with a condition, and it matters more than the tactic.

Only product more if you already know where the stock is going. A confirmed market date, a stockist who has asked for more, a product that sold out.

Buying stock now because you hope you can sell it later is how you end up having the same conversation with yourself next August.

“If I just had more stock, I would make more sales.”

Maybe. Or maybe you’d have more stock.

The only fact that matters here is whether the stock is physically in your hands by the end of September, leaving October to photograph it, list it and get it out to markets and stockists.

If not, it’s not a Christmas product. It’s a 2027 product.

Pick two, not five

This isn’t a to-do list. You have limited time, limited money and probably a limited number of evenings between now and Christmas. Doing two of these properly is better than doing five badly, and five badly is what usually happens.

Two questions decide which two to focus on.

What do you already have? Stock in hand, a new product launch coming, a budget, a market you already trade at. Start from what exists rather than what you would need to build from scratch.

Can you control the outcome? Packaging and your cut-off date are entirely under your control. Market cancellations and stockist top-ups depend on someone else, but you can ask this week and have an answer by next. Gift guides depend completely on a stranger saying yes. It’s worth a day of pitching, but don’t put all your eggs in this basket.

Some tactics also work particularly well together. Gift-boxing plus a Christmas market is an obvious one. You’ve already done the work of making the product giftable. Now put it somewhere people are actively looking for presents.

Then one question for anything you’re tempted to spend money on between now and November. Does this help me make money this Christmas, or does it help me make money next Christmas? Packaging, images and getting in front of other people’s audiences come back this year. New production comes back next December, if it comes back at all. Both are legitimate investments but only one of them is something you should be deciding on right now.