We have been going thru Quality Wholesales-KIDSMART Holiday Shoppe for atleast 5 years now (that I have personally been involved with). We really like their products and their service. The items are of good quality and I have have never had a complaint brought to me (been on the PTA board for 4 yrs now)by a parent. I really like this company and recommend it to anyone.
FOR MANY YEARS WE USED FUN SERVESIES BUT IT WAS THE SAME OLD CHEAP STUFF, SO WE WENT TO CRAFTERS THAT WAS ALL SO A BUST. WE ALLSO HAVE DONE THE BREAKFAST WITH SANTA/PICKTURE A TOTAL LOSS. LAST YEAR WE DID NOTHING. AND NOW THIS YEAR I'M THE PRES. AND EVERYONE THINKS I CAN PULL OFF A MIRACLE. I'M AT A TOTAL LOSS,I THINK MY GROUP WANTS ME TO FAIL, IM THE OLD GUARD, AND DONT FIT IN ANY MORE, MY GROUP HAS MOVED UP AND IM HAVING A HAD TIME JUST FINDING COMMON GROUND, ANY BUDDY WITH ANY HELP.
We have run a Holiday shop the past few years. Last year and this year we used a company called Fun Services, but there are many out there I am sure online. This one is located in Manassas VA and we live about 45 miles away in Stafford, VA. It is many many items (all affordable to kids) and you only pay for what you sell. So you "order" a supply of items, and they will even send you more if you start running low. We ran our sale for a week, and also on one Saturday, we combine the shop with "breakfast with Santa". The PTO has a pancake breakfast and families come out to eat and see Santa and also shop in the shop. If I am allowed to post our info., the shop we used can be found at funservices-va.com. It had good items, that kids and parents alike enjoyed. Hope this helps! I have been involved in our PTO for the past 3 years, and am President this year, so I will be checking back on this site for replys and all the great information I am learning while here. Best of luck to you!
We did our first Holiday shop last year. We purchased a bunch of stuff from our local dollar store and sold everything for 1.00. The problem was we sold out of everything in one hour and I had to ride back to the store in the pouring rain with the flu to make another purchase! Kids were coming in with 10-20.00 bucks! It was awesome though. THis year we will make a deal with the dollar store to purchase in bulk in boxes and whatever we don't sell we can return.
Plus, we will keep it to 20 items only.
Last year we tried something new. We bought ornaments from Oriental Trading and had an ornament shop. Some of the ornaments had room to be written on so we would write Mom and 2005 if the kids wanted us to. We made more money with this than with the traditional type of shops like Reindeer Lane. We are going to do it again this year. We wrapped and tagged all of the gifts also. Would love to be able to find another source for cheap ornaments though. Especially the ones that we can personalize.
In the past years we used a company--the items we thought were priced alittle high--so last year we set off shopping to stock the secret santa shop ourselves. This worked great for us we set the budget for the "shopping" we were going to do and hit all the sales--we got lots of clearance items and going out of business stuff--we were able to price the items as we wished--we budgeted $2000---spent almost that and even made a small profit and the kids loved the differnt things offered to them--it wasn't the same old stuff they were offered every year when we used the company--we had teachers sign up once during the week to bring their students in shopping--we used brown lunch sacks --which we stamped a christmas stamp on the outside with a to and from spot on it. We hold our sale all week and even hold a family night one evening for 2 hours. Oh and we even had parents volunteer to make items--pot holders, pillows, christmas ornaments etc. Only thing was we had to go shopping a few times that week because we ran out of a few items--but I really enjoyed it and I know the students did and the parents were pleased to see the differnt items we offered for the kids. But my hubby wasn't happy with all the stuff piling up in his garage until the sale LOL--but he got over it LOL!!
