We do our own as well. We have grandma's or whomever searching around for bargains all year long. They have hoot doing it! We start with about $1000 , and only buy $1 or less items. We usually have lots of items hand made by a ladies auxillary in town as well. Then at our shop everything is $1.50. It has made everything so simple, the kids come in with their list and the right amount of money. This is more of a service to our small elem (250), than a money maker. Our Christmas Store is a joy, because this is the one time we have so much community involvment and participation. The older ladies come in, donning their Santa hats, and do all of the wrapping.

We have used several Companies over the years, and this has really worked out the best for us!

HI! We do our own. We search for items year round at dollar stores, closeouts and outlets. We try to spend under $1400 total on all of our items. This year we priced all of our items under $2 and the parents loved it. If we paid $1 we charged $1.50 and so on. We ended up making $1900. Closeout stores have awesome bargains. I had purchased these beautiful mosiac tea light candle holders for .30 each. I took every one that they had. We sold them for $2 each. We also shopped the Christmas Clearances and my best deal ever....Claire's Boutique at our mall had a clearance sale. I talked the manager into giving me any red lined item for .50 each. I picked up 240 pieces of jewelry, hair bands, gloves and hair clips. We have a school of 400 students and this is the way that we have done it for the past 6 years. Good Luck!

If you do it yourself, you will have to purchase all the merchandise. if it doesn't sell, what do you do with it? The good thing about using a company is that they take it all back and you only pay for what you sold. Maybe you needed to raise the prices a bit to make more money. Our school of 600 typically makes $2500 on this. They suggest prices, but we do raise some of them a dime or quarter. We also bring in vendors that usually go over extremely well with the kids. One woman makes suncatchers and the kids love those. Another vendor sells neckties and the kids pick out some pretty interesting ones for Dad! I think doing it yourself would be a lot more work and more risky.

There is a huge thread around here somewhere sbout this -- search Snowman Shop or Santa Shop, I think.


We do our own, and we use money from our fall fund raiser to do it.

Don't tell anyone but we actually try and time things so that we can pay for the holiday shop stuff after collecting the money for catalog sales (fall) but before getting the bill. The bill is typically not due until after the Shoppe starts generating money, so we actually end up financing the Shoppe with the fundraiser company's money.

It adds a lot more work but a lot more $$ to the Holiday Shoppe idea. It is also a lot more fun and rewarding if you are able to do it yourselves. Work with any local retailer who might help, but also use any of a number of online wholesale and odd lot vendors.

We have talked about it and the biggest thing that we can't attempt it is that cash you put out at the begining buying all your merchandise, you should start months before and that money is basically tied up. With our little budget we can't afford that but I know that there are schools that do it. You have to somewhat know inventory of how much you will need. What groups are you trying to hit (mom, uncle, dad, etc) make sure you have all different price items, so it is possible to do. I am sure someone will chime in that has done it...just remember that money is tied up for months!

Has anyone ever done a holiday store without items coming from a large company? Is it possible? Last year we used Lil Shoppers. In 3 days our school took in $7000! We were floored! But... we owed $6000 to the company. We felt that we were robbed.
A few of us were talking and we were thinking of doing it ourselves. Has anyone ever done this? Are we crazy????