As the holiday season approaches, businesses in a variety of industries gear up for the busiest shopping time of the year. For personalization companies, this season presents an opportunity to attract customers seeking meaningful gifts.

‘Tis The Season For Breaking Into The Holiday Market

How Can Personalization Companies Capitalize on the Biggest Shopping Season

By: Shelley Widhalm

(Originally printed in the September/October 2024 issue of Insights.)

As the holiday season approaches, businesses in a variety of industries gear up for the busiest shopping time of the year. For personalization companies, this season presents an opportunity to attract customers seeking meaningful gifts.

Whether you’re putting your own spin on ever-popular gifts, engraving items you already offer, or bringing in new products, you can help your business stand out amid the holiday craze with innovation, consistency, and preparation.

  

Understanding Your Holiday Audience

Getting creative with customer requests around the holidays is a good way to identify the products you want to offer, according to Tasia Eraseren, owner and creative director of Three Sixteen Studio. Founded in 2019, the online retailer based in Riverton, California, offers personalized and handmade faith-based gifts and home decor. Eraseren offers her products primarily through her website and Etsy shop, drawing traffic from Pinterest and Instagram.

“Some of my bestsellers have been led by my customers,” says Eraseren. “If that’s one person, who else might be out there? I then create variations to see what the market reacts to.”

Eraseren recently took a request from a customer who wanted a special gift for a godparent, so she created niche ornaments specific to that audience. The ornaments come in a variety of materials, including acrylic, wood, silver, and gold or rose gold mirrors. Plus, there’s space for the godparent’s name and the year of their establishment.

“It’s very minimalist—people like something simple and timeless,” Eraseren says. “People want something to commemorate a time or a relationship.”

Other offerings from Eraseren include ornaments engraved with people’s names and the year of the holiday, Christmas countdown signs in four different designs with slots for the number of days left until December 25, and wooden Merry Christmas signs with a dry-erase area for children to write in things like their ages and wish list items. And she sells crosses for Christmas in a variety of versions that can be customized with a family name and favorite Bible verse. A special version for couples called Bespoke Love Cross has room for the date of their marriage or a home purchase, their last name, and a Bible verse. She changes out the words and fonts on her engravings to create different looks and feels.

    

Expand Your Holiday Product Line Thoughtfully

While knowing what your audience likes is important, being able to appeal to a broader variety of gifters during a busy time of year can also be a benefit, according to Sumita Patel, the owner of Home Bound Custom Decor, an online retailer of personalized gifts and goods based in Alpharetta, Georgia.

“Being able to diversify your products and price points is definitely very important,”says Patel.

Founded in 2019, Home Bound Custom Decor sells holiday-related items for Christmas, Easter, Mother’s Day, and Father’s Day, as well as Indian holidays. The shop’s top items for the winter holidays include ornaments, wooden cutting and recipe boards, personalized keepsake jewelry, and personalized stockings. The ornaments—which come in wood, slate, and leatherette—can also be used for celebratory events like a baby’s birth year or the first year of a couple’s marriage and as gag gifts or a way to memorialize someone. She sells her items through her website and Shopify, promoting them via Facebook and Instagram.

“We are trying to touch on emotions but also [make] things they can gift to people, as well,” Patel says.

For kids, Patel offers ornaments with space for children to write what they want for the holidays as well as Santa Cookie Wooden Boards to hold cookies that can be personalized with a child’s or family’s name.

Patel recommends retailers find items that are easy to produce during a busy time of year when order volume can be higher. This also helps maximize profit margins by reducing the amount of time spent on each product.

When looking to expand your product line, Eraseren suggests doing research to identify gaps in the market instead of simply putting a spin on existing items. For instance, she came up with a Christmas version of a cake topper, and this year she’s adding wooden Christmas magnets with space for a name and photo, similar to those she already sells for Thanksgiving and New Year’s.

“It came from knowing my style and seeing what’s out there and what I can add to the market,” says Eraseren.

JDS Industries, a South Dakota–based supplier, offers an extensive line of holiday-related products for retailers. The most popular are ornaments, cutting boards, and glass and vacuum-insulated drinkware.

“Since our products are primarily personalized by our retailers, the appeal for them is getting a quality item and a reasonable price that can be embellished quickly and efficiently,” says Dan Messerschmidt, national sales director for JDS Industries. “We have items that the buyer uses themselves, like tree ornaments, stockings, and household goods, but also items that can be personalized for gift giving.”

Prepare for the Holiday Rush Early

Preparation for the holiday season can start as early as July or August, according to Eraseren and Patel.

  

“The biggest challenge is sourcing materials,” Patel says. “It’s definitely important to get ahead of planning and know what you want to sell. Order by August what you need for the holiday season.”

The items Patel creates are engraved with a CO₂ laser or a fiber laser, which she uses for leather and metal, or they’re UV-printed (an added feature this year). Eraseren, who uses two CO₂ lasers for cutting and engraving, recommends doing an early maintenance checkup to make sure equipment is clean, up-to-date, and in working order. She also recommends building up inventory and shipping materials to have supplies on hand as holiday orders arrive.

“Space can be tight until you use all the materials,” Eraseren says. “How things are organized can help with flow.”

It’s important to give yourself a few months of lead time before the holidays to market new products. But if a product idea comes late in the season, go ahead and launch it, suggests Eraseren.

“My godparent ornaments launched in December and instantly took off,” she says. “If you have an idea, go ahead and launch it to see what happens.”

Keep Your Brand Consistent, Even During the Holidays

Even though there’s money to be made and items to sell, maintaining a consistent aesthetic and style across your product range is important. Eraseren suggests honing in on what makes your brand special and expanding within that niche. This helps in building a loyal customer base and ensuring brand consistency across all products.

“You have to develop your brand identity, honing in on what you specialize in, and bring it to the market,” Eraseren says. “Once you’re getting a little bit of traction in an area, ask what else you can do with the same look and feel while keeping the brand cohesive [with] similar aesthetics and colors.”

Knowing your holiday shopper, thoughtfully expanding your product line, preparing early for the holiday rush, and keeping your brand consistent can help grow your business and capitalize on the busiest time of the year.

Shelley Widhalm is a freelance writer and editor and founder of Shell’s Ink Services, a writing-and-editing service based in Loveland, Colorado. She has more than 15 years of experience in communications and holds a master of arts degree in English from Colorado State University. She can be reached at shellsinkservices.com or swidhalm@shellsinkservices.com.