Another cute thing to add to your holiday...santa....elf shop.....etc. is to include a small amount of Wrapping Paper. Maybe you could get that donated. The children love to wrap their own presents, and this way it is their own paper. We had a mother that volunteered to cut the paper ahead of time into sheets to include in their shopping bags. We put it in the shopping bags, and had them ready to go at the cash registers.
The years that I have been around our "ELF SHOP", we have bought products from local discount stores or dollar stores. We don't make a profit on what we buy. We also purchase some things from Oriental Trading.
We go to our local dollar store and purchase things there. Our school also has mostly low income families.
We do not use our Santa shop for a fundraiser. We charge our students $1.10. We only charge $.05 for the bags we purchase (thanks to our treasurer who is very cheap). The children love it and we do it for them.
We always used a Santa Shop company for years and frankly the stuff was mostly junk, so last year we went to wholesalers and bought our own stuff and everyone was much happier. (In fact, it seemed no matter how much we bought we kept running out because teachers and parents kept coming back for the good deals.)
This year we were lucky enough to work out a deal with our fundraising vendor, who also has a Christmas shop, where we carry their merchandise as well as our own. This way we get the gift bags, tablecloths, etc. that we would have needed to buy, plus we can still sell things we pick up at wholesale warehouses, Oriental Traders, etc. I don't know if this deal would be offered to everyone or if we got a special deal since it's our second year using them as our fundraiser, but we just love this company. Good luck!
I need some feedback on Santa Shops. I'm a new Prez this year and can't decide if it would be better to buy Santa Shop items wholesale, or use one of the many Santa Shop companies that I've seen advertised.
We are in a very "economically challenged" rural area . . . so the kids cannot pay high prices for gifts.
Our school has used both methods in the past and they seemed to have liked the 'buy wholesale' way the best. But some of these Santa Shop companies seem to have a lot to offer.
