October Sales

Just a quick wrap up at last month's sales and a look ahead to the next couple of months.  October ended up pretty good at both spaces.  I did have some slow days, but I also had my highest day ever at YesterNook.  While I do wish that there had been a touch more regularity throughout the month, I really can't complain.  I'm moving furniture at YesterNook again and my books are selling well there too. 

The Halloween display at Peddlers Mall did really well.  I had another 75-80% sell through on it, which is the same rate as last year, but with a larger amount of merch this year.  All my skulls eventually sold.  The large skeletons sold, but the smaller ones did not.  I think it's because they were supposed to have eyes that light up.  Since these didn't have batteries in them, they didn't and folks were probably leery about that.  Next year, I'll get some cheapie Dollar Store batteries and put them in, then raise the price a buck and see what happens.

One thing that did not sell well was the costumes.  I still had over half of them left, including an expensive baby costume from Carters.  Next year, it goes to YesterNook.  I think just having them all in a tub hurt the sales, so I'll have to come up with a new way to display them next year.  In the meantime, I'm not buying any more.

I've pretty much wrapped up my post-Halloween clearance shopping.  I scored some of the most awesome skeletons ever for dirt cheap.  They're going to get priced and head to storage for next year.  I'm already excited about it!  The display will be awesome.  I ended up with about four tubs of stuff again.  That amount seemed to work well this year, so I think I'll stick with it.  I'm not ruling out picking up some stuff at a yard sale or thrift, particularly mock tombstones (which sold well) and vintage stuff (which is so freaking hard to find), but I think Halloween 2013 is set.

Now it's on to Christmas!  Oh yeah, and Thanksgiving.  My mother used to say that she wanted to buy a bunch of frozen turkeys and put them in her yard, because no one ever decorated for Thanksgiving the way they do for Halloween and Christmas.  I've got a nice Thanksgiving thing going, but it's not really that large.  If I make it too big, I have lots of leftovers.  I did find some Thanksgiving stuff already on clearance with the Halloween stuff, so I bought it to add to my display.

My Christmas stuff is already selling well.  My new gift items are moving nicely.  I put about a third of them out, and I'm already going to have to restock.  That's a good sign.  Decorations are selling too, especially Snoopy and Disney stuff, and I haven't even put out much of the newer items yet.   I'm anticipating a good holiday season.

We'll have to see how that goes.  Check back next month for more!