We used to do a holiday shop but a bunch of parents complained that stuff is throw away gifts. We moved to doing a a craft workshop for kids. We work on getting material donated from craft stores and individuals and we charge $20 per child to attend. It's for 2 hours on a friday night and parents love it because they get a break and they get a few homemade gifts out of the deal. WE get high school kids to help man the craft and gift wrapping station (they get volunteer hours for this). We love it.
I fould some great buys on close out websites. One of my favorites is holidaygiftshopcloseouts Sometimes it is hard to find those specific family member items at the dollar store so I fill in from here.
we had 417 students last year, and I made several stops at the store to restock. i would suggest figuring 80% of students and 5 items per student. and then have an additional 100 items to cover anything else and pray you have a dollar store in your area if you have to refill
We purchased everything through either the dollar store or through catalogs, our christmas shop is only to help kids shop for family was not supposed to be fundraiser and we made over $500 because of the catalog buys and because of some of the 2 for 1 at the dollar store, everything was $1 apiece at the shop. easy checkout. and we got to pick out the items not some company
I'm planning to do my own shop as well...and not use a company. I guess my question is - how much inventory do I actually purchase. It is only a one-day Bazaar. This is my first year running the shop, so I don't have the luxury of knowing the quantity we went through in previous years. Any suggestions would be very much appreciated. Our school enrollment is around 225 students. Thanks!
Last year we sought donations from local crafters and businesses. We have a low-income school, and each item was marked from .25-1.00, and the students were allowed to purchase one item for each family member. The kids loved it, and we enjoyed the gifts much more than the products we could have bought from a sale. We're wanting to do it again this year, but every single teacher vetoed the idea. We're considering having it at our Holiday Fun Night this year.
