Articles
Sniff Sniff…I Smell Spices!
by Marianne E. Alexander of
Bear Faced Bears ™
Something strange happens at this time of year. On an occasional passing
breeze, I begin to smell spices. It starts slowly towards the end of summer when
it is still very hot and green outside, gets a little more frequent as the year
progresses until by December it is floating in the air like a heady mulled wine.
I have likely mentioned this before, but each year it seems like something new
and special all over again, so the fact that it has started makes it well worth
repeating. To be honest some people cannot smell this at all, but most can smell
it sometimes, especially when it is pointed out to them, which leaves me not
knowing whether there is a change in the chemistry of the soil and plants as
they approach dormancy that I can smell and not everyone can, or whether its
just that I am distantly related to Christmas elves, and since it appears to me
to be a special little piece of Christmas Magic, I am not sure I really would
want to know the explanation.
Either way, it acts on me like cat nip, filling me with an unreasoning joy that
slowly but very surely turns me into a Christmas fool every single year
regardless of how hard or easy life may be at the time.
It’s hardly all that surprising therefore that I find myself preparing for
Christmas to a greater or lesser extent pretty much all through the year. Now
while that is all very personal, none the less it does dovetail nicely into the
professional life of anyone involved in the toy, gift or collectors’ market.
In fact almost all retail sales are heavily dependant on the last quarter of the
year to keep afloat and in many cases will make more than 2/3rds of their entire
annual sales from September to about the 20th of December. So while we all enjoy
spring, summer, autumn, birthdays, vacations, picnics and the like, throughout
the year, it is not a bad thing to have Christmas as a small spicy pot simmering
always in the background of our minds. It can look something like this:
- January - Sales of all kinds of materials. Stock up and take advantage
of great prices.
- February - Valentine’s White and Red. Also make for great Christmas
colors. While those materials are to hand, make a couple of Christmas bears
to add to stock.
- March - Spring is in the air. Easter pastels abound, but remember that
little girly bears dressed in soft colors make for lovely Christmas gifts,
so perhaps take some of those pastels and make a couple of special party
dresses for a darker winter colored bear, and put away for the last quarter.
- April - Showers and stronger brighter tones. How about raincoats and
umbrellas for snow time bears? Again do a couple and put away.
- May, June and July - Full summer time, and the slowest time for sales.
Stock pile a few naked generic bears for later in the year when you can pull
them out and give them a festive finish if you find yourself running low on
stock for Christmas. Also take this time to explore new ideas, enter
contests, take a class and generally hone your skills.
- August - We pretty much covered that one last month. Clear the
decks and get yourself ready.
From September onwards you should be working on Christmas stock, with
Thanksgiving and Halloween as a “prequel”. Make some of your Thanksgiving and
Halloween bears generic well constructed naked bears in removable costumes so
that if they do not sell, they can be quickly repurposed for Christmas. This is
where you will also be glad you made the naked generic stock bears in the summer
time.
This system holds true if you make seasonally specific bears, if your work is
not seasonally specific at all (ideal) or if it is a mixture of both. All the
system really deals with is making sure your supply is adequate to meet the
demand
Now why do I say that it is best not to be seasonally specific with your
products? Well I want you to think a moment in terms of brand names, even if you
do not normally buy that way. Right now you need to have your manufacturer’s cap
on rather than your consumers cap, because even if, as a consumer, you are a bit
“anti” labels in general, as a manufacturer having and building a strong brand
is the surest way to success.
Think of wildly successful brands of products of any type at all. Here are a
few:- Tiffany, Prada, Burberry, I-phone, Sacha. Most of us would dearly love to
find one or more of those under our Christmas tree this year, and we would
greatly prefer that it not be done up in Christmas colors because we want to
flaunt it and enjoy it year round.
So now I want you to imagine that you create “The Blue Bear Company”. You make
wonderful creative bears that are all blue. Old bears, young bears, baby bears,
teenage bears, naked bears and dressed bears, but all with a strong recognizable
style and all blue, because, like Tiffany’s box or Burberry’s plaid...that is
your trademark, and part of your own design that makes your bears unique and
collectible
Over time you nurture and build a customer base that wants to own bears from the
Blue Bear Company. They want them for Christmas, they want them for birthdays,
for Valentine’s Day, and when they get their tax returns they rush to add to
their Blue Bear Company collection. If they happen across one while they are on
vacation they will buy it with their vacation money, and they will enjoy and
display their Blue Bear Company bears year round (which leads to more word of
mouth sales)
Now whether or not you choose to issue a special edition Blue Bear at Christmas
time, that might for example be sporting a removable white furry coat, the fact
is that it will be the label and the recognizable and desirable design features
that make up your brand, that sell your bear.
If you just think about it for a moment, you will realize that the vast majority
of gift money spent at Christmas time, is not spent on seasonally specific
goods, but rather on things like clothes, jewelry, bikes, and consumer durables
of all kinds. The percentage of monies spent on Christmas specific goods is
really quite small and often thought of as “disposable”. Christmas trees,
special foods or candies make up the vast majority with the often infamous
Christmas sweaters, light up ties, snowman umbrellas etc rounding out a tiny
percentage of the budget. These are things either used up during the season or
put away until next year. They are also things that rarely command serious
prices, and they are the first purchases to be seriously curtailed in times of
tight finances..
What you have to understand as a business person is that regardless, you will
make most of your sales in the last quarter of the year, so you must prepare for
that, but that, especially as your business matures and grows, you should be
careful of producing the kind of item, that begins to look out of place come
January.
If you are already making a generic bear that is selling quite well, you can
also stretch your product line nicely by offering clothes and toys that are
appropriate for the seasons made to dress up your previously purchased bears. If
you have not done this in the past consider doing it now. People perceive an
added value to dolls and bears that they can dress up and change around, and it
adds tremendously to your bottom line by creating a whole aftermarket line of
products that did not exist before. As a nod to the economy too, people will be
attracted to the idea since they can justify buying a new dress for an existing
bear easier than they can justify buying another bear, so it is another income
stream.
Another way to look at this is that it can become a gateway to producing a
very high end beautifully constructed bear that commands an appropriate price
because people will buy that bear if they can purchase aftermarket products for
it far more readily than if they cannot.
An excellent way to make this transition from making seasonal specific items to
making a more brand conscious bear is to invest just a little time and effort in
photographic backgrounds. Take pictures of your products under the tree, or
against snowmen backgrounds so that you quite literally put them into the
picture for the season even when there is nothing about the bear itself that
says “Christmas”. You could take a lime green bear that would normally be found
on the beach, plunk it down among holly, add a poinsettia or two, put a snowy
background behind it and that bear all but sings jingle bells! You can also
perhaps offer gift wrapping either as a free service or for a small fee to
further make the point.
Soon you will see cars filmed in snow with giant bows on them, and toasters
sitting in displays of cotton wool sprinkled with glitter. Retail managers walk
through the store with arms full of red sticky bows that they attach to anything
on the shelves (especially slow moving items) and that thing instantly, in the
mind of the consumer becomes the perfect gift for great aunt Edna, mother
sister, brother, second cousin twice removed or whomever is on their lists.
Anything can become the perfect gift for the season when presented in a seasonal
setting
So really, without killing ourselves, we can follow along and find ourselves
going into the last quarter with at least a dozen products on hand, a good set
up to present our goods, a plan for increasing brand recognition and a whole lot
less stress. And that, of course is another way to, until next time…
Be kind to yourself
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