An easy, inexpensive gift for men -- golfballs. Buy a set and sell individually for next to nothing. Same with fishing lures. We used a company this year and one of the best offerings they had for men was the "I love dad / grandpa" coins which we sold for 75 cents.

Here's a GREAT pet gift to consider for your shop- The stores around here have begun selling plastic clamshells filled with live wheatgrass for cats for $3. It's super simple to make, costs about .10 per kit.

Get new deli containers donated from your local grocery, add potting soil or peat moss plus a baggie containing 2 oz. of Organic Organic Wheat Berries (.69/lb). They sprout and grow similarly to bean sprouts.

Email me if you want the printed instructions I prepared for our Santa Shop! We sold about 24 of these this year.

We also just finished our Santa shop week. In the past we used companies and all we heard were complaints about the prices/quality, so we did it ourselves this year.
It was our BEST ever. Our entire PTO board is like Heather_067's woman---super bargain shoppers. We've been accumulating things since the beginning of school and we fleshed out our offerings with many donations. We were able to keep 99% of the items under $1 each, but also had price points from 5¢ to $15 to be able to accomodate even teachers/parents who shopped. We have parents who have home businesses like Home Interiors/Tupperware/Mary Kay/Avon and a florist. Most donated outright or gave us things at their cost. Plus, our local Maxway store had all of last year's Xmas leftovers on sale @ 50% off. We spent in total half of what we spent last year with a company and cleared 200% more than we would've made using the company. OH YES--we WILL be hitting all the after Christmas sales for next year's goodies.
Our most popular items were candles, cologne for men & women,gel pens( WalMart 30 for $2.50!!), hand made lapel pins and snow globes. As far as toys--we offered mostly sets with paint/crayons/colored pencils/coloring book( Oriental Trading) that went like that and put it together yourself gliders and hacky sacks. We even included pet items--we bought a huge bag of dog biscuits and portioned them into baggies with a sticker that said to my dog, catnip toys for kitty came from the dollar store. We kept the prices for both @ $1, but still made money since the extremely low cost to make the dog treats more than made up for the loss on the cat items.
The only thing you have to remember when you do it yourself is that you DO have to work a little harder, have to have a cash register( $99 at Staples and if you order through the Boxtops Marketplace, you get a rebate), and you have to purchase bags whereas using a company is a turnkey operation. Hands down, I vote for doing it yourself since you have the control over the items you offer, the quality is better and you can gear the items to what you might like to receive or give yourself. We had been hesitant to do it ourselves previously because we didn't want to get "stuck" with a lot of items when the sale was done. But, what we had leftover this year, we can sell in the school store since the only thing we had left was Christmas pencils and erasers! I admit, we had to run out after the first and second days and purchase more larger items because we seriously undersestimated the amount of merchandise we'd sell.All in all, we're thinking of starting a side business and offering our services to other schools.hahaha
Ah yes, it IS SO hard to find good things for men that they might actually want. We had to forego tool sets due to a problem encountered last year. Anyone who has good men's ideas please post!

I love your ideas! Sounds like you had a great shop! How many kids shopped at your store?

I did want to add one note of caution: Before adding items to a company provided shop, make sure to read your contract or agreement. Nearly all of the national companies have a clause in the contract specifically prohibiting selling any items not provided by the company; Some contracts specify a $$ penalty for the potential breach of contract.

All of the companies we auditioned would not let us run a Scholastic Book Fair in the same area at the same time, so we declined their offers and did it on our own.

We've just finished ours, so everything is very fresh in my mind (and my lower back too...lol...).

I used several different avenues this year. As a base company, I used Kids Go Shopping. I found their items to be very fair in pricing, very nice items that weren't just pieces of junk. As a matter of fact, the merchandise was really very nice. Of course, we didn't get the Hope Diamond for a quarter, but what we did get was wonderful. It is always nice that I didn't have to pay for anything I didn't sell, didn't have to pay freight, and if it was broke or got broke, I just sent it back. Customer service was also provided and they shipped overnight. I also used Oriental Trading for some of the items, as I felt that there weren't enough quarter items (KGS only provided one item for less than .25 and I have always felt that even the poorest shopper should have at least a few choices). So from OT I ordered rainbow tattoo bracelets (.09 cents each - sold em for .25 - sold 1 gross in two days), mini backscratchers (.08 cents each - sold em for a quarter - still have lots left, but sold lots too), regular 16 inch backscratchers (.25 each - sold em for .75 and have 25 left - started with 288 of em - worked great as gifts for Dad, Grandpa and Uncles), but by far, the best item was the long stemmed red or white rose candles. They aren't scented. They come in red or white. They cost us .50 each. We sold them for $2.00 each. We sold about 100 of them. They are very pretty, easy to display, easy to hawk, etc. They really provided us with a win-win product. Of course, OT does not pay freight, does not provide a service for returns or overnight shipping without cost to me, etc. I also had a wholesaler help me out by providing me with items left over from catalog sale prizes. I didn't have to pay freight, but only because she drove it down to me herself from Vegas. I was also unable to get any items not previously ordered in advance, so when the cell phone buddies ran out, they ran out...

If I had to single out the best stuff, it would be (not necessarily in order)
1. Long stemmed rose candles (Oriental Trader)
2. Cell Phone Buddies (wholesaler)
3. Spongebob/Patrick/Squidword plushes (KGS)
4. Sticky Slinkers (KGS) (those things you throw at the wall and they slowly climb down the wall)
5. Glass Chess Sets (KGS)
6. Sports Bears (wholesaler)

And the 5 worst:
1. Full size footballs (KGS)
2. Pen/Pencil Set (KGS)
3. Mini Book Light (wholesaler)
4. Dog/Cat toys (KGS)
5. Sports Cups (KGS)

Dad Gifts are always the toughest. We broke up gift sets of Kellogg's Cereal bowls; each dad received a jumbo-sized cereal bowl, matching spoon and a single serve box of cereal.

Some of the other offbeat gifts included the original steel slinky, boxed wrist watches, Jumbo Flashlights, a talking Simpsons' watch, Mcdonald's Gift Certificates and Filled Tootsie Roll Banks. Everything was $3.50 or less, so finding good gifts is always tough.

[ 12-17-2003, 02:06 PM: Message edited by: PTA Renegade ]