Thanks for the input. We closed our shop today but the children loved it! I'm glad we brought it back to our school and hope to do it next year. One child explained it in a nut shell. "Mommy we had the holiday shop today. It was just like shopping in a store...long lines and everything."
We have our chair person go to a section of town known for wholesale (cheap) prices. She buys things from 10cents to $10. We sell everything at cost, and no tax. We used the science room for our Santa shop and had at least 4 volunteers at a time. 1 or 2 to man the register, and others to go around with each kid. Depending on the age, you need to ask how much each can spend and how many people to buy for. Jewelry went fast. We also had copycat cologne/perfume for $2. The kids came in with $7-40.
flmom:
Here is an idea for next year, regarding bags and the like. A local grocery store should be willing to donate plastic bags for the kids to shop with. For the bags that the kids use to 'wrap' their gifts, try this: Purchase (or get donated from your local Walmart, Kmart, Target, etc.) different sized zip-lock baggies. Walmart has them for a buck a box. Cut wrapping paper to fit inside the baggie, so that both sides of the baggie have paper and you can no longer see inside. It sounds like a lot of work, but it isn't. If you don't want to cut all that wrapping paper, try using holiday napkins for the smaller baggies.
I've done this for years with our Kids Korner at church. It works great, and if done with left over wrapping paper, is cost effective and quite a nice looking gift package.
Good Luck!
The first thing I'd suggest is that you make sure you have enough volunteers-not just names on a piece of paper, warm bodies that will actually SHOW UP!
Our Holiday Shop ended yesterday (thank god!), and it was exhausting. I was there every day, most times ALL day (8:30-1:30) with an almost 3 yr old who had to be strapped in the stroller b/c I was too busy to keep an eye on him, and it was not pretty. Our Secretary had handled signing up volunteers and she did get names for each day, but either they didn't show up or they only wanted to be there first thing in the morning-when I already had help and most kids were in Reading Block and couldn't come shopping;shortly after the volunteers would leave and I was alone lunch would start and it would be a mob scene until the shop closed. I kept being told to just lock the door if there were too many kids, but I didn't have the key and it would mean walking away from the cash box which some of the kids were eyeballing pretty well since it was overflowing due to my not having the time to even yank out the excess money. I was lucky in that some of the teachers saw what was happening and pitched in, and one went to the PTA Pres and told her there HAD to be more help in there, so things got marginally better the last 2 days. Oddly, the first day I had some help was the first day I found empty jewelry boxes everywhere (?).
The other thing I'd suggest (too late for this year, I know),is that if you can,do your own shopping through discount warehouses/stores,Kipp Bros., Oriental Trading Co.,etc. We did that last year and it worked out well, but this year we had no bags, tablecloths, or other supplies, so we went with the Holiday Shop offered by our fundraising co. They said we could sell our own things too, so it seemed like a win-win situation;wrong! They didn't tell us they were only the intermediary for the co. that does the shop and that the merchandise (which I could and did look at on-line) was going to be overpriced and a lot would arrive broken. I had to inventory everything before the shop started and now I have to spend Monday inventorying what's left and then do all the paperwork and send off a check instead of simply putting whatever was left (and there wasn't much left of what we had bought ourselves) into boxes and just taking it to our storeroom.
We've already decided it isn't worth all the bother just to get some bags and tablecloths that we can go out and buy ourselves next year.
Good luck with your shop;hopefully you won't be as exhausted as I am-although it was fun too. [img]tongue.gif[/img]
