We do a holiday shop, and it's my biggest concern as new PTA president. I assisted with the program last year not knowing I would be in this position this year. It's a lot of work and not a lot of volunteers for this week-long, all-day endeavor. BUT, the kids love it! Ours is called Frosty's Wonderland through Woodall Fund Raising. The only problem last year was the price of the items were a bit more expensive than the previous year. Being in a rural area, with many lower income families, it was a tough sell for some.

We use Santa's Secret Shop ( www.funservices.net ) No complaints ... We probably would never do it on a weekend b/c we think it would be harder to control the crowds or we would get no crowds. We have the classes take turns coming down to the tables and "shop" for a certain amount of time. This has worked out for our school for years with little to no complaints.

Wow, GaMom, sounds like a real bad experience with Reindeer Lane. We sign a contract every year and our rep is great! While I can't say what happened with your group, I can say that we had a very positive experience with them, and based on that, I would recommend them to anyone.

For the first time, we are having our christmas shop open on a saturday morning from 9-1. We are offering red and green pancakes and are advertising to some of the pre-k programs in the community that are private and hoping that helps with the turnout.

A note on reindeer lane: For about 5 years, our school used them for the christmas shop. Well, the PTO group moved on to middle school, and last year we shopped around and found someone else to use (i forget their name). Reindeer Lane called, and wwe explainde to them that we were going with another company. they sent us a letter saying that because we had used them for so long, they had already pre-purchased for our school and wwe were going to be charged for it. We checked and there was no contract or anything between us and them. They kept on and on though, even saying there was no contract, but that we "owed" them because they thought we would be going with them. We got letters for about 6 months. the principal finally sat down and wrote them out a letter. We still get phone calls and letters from them and it is 2 years later. We got a phone call on Thursday as a matter of fact. it was for a while a very intimidating situation and kind of scary. We felt like they were trying to force us to use them because the past group had.
Anyway, jsut get all the information on them before you go through them. They did have good stuff and good prices, although I don't know any other behind the scenes details.

I will see if I can find Reindeer Lane. Sounds like what I am looking for. This sounds exactly like what we run, which we like, but the items are pretty much the same year to year. Would like to offer different items. We usually use American Carnival Mart. Good service.