Getting Ready for the Christmas Market Season: A Prep Guide for NZ Makers
The Christmas season is decided in September
By the time the first Christmas market opens in November, the makers who do well have already made every decision that matters. Their range is set, their packaging is on the shelf, their labels are printed, and their stock is sitting in boxes ready to load. The ones scrambling in the last fortnight are usually scrambling because of one thing: they ordered packaging on the same timeline as they made product, and the two don't run at the same speed.
This is a working-backwards plan for a New Zealand maker with a first market somewhere in November. Shift the dates if yours is earlier or later — the sequence is what matters.
Working backwards from your first market
| When | What to lock in | Why then |
|---|---|---|
| 10–12 weeks out | Your range and price points | Everything downstream — vessel sizes, label sizes, stock quantities — depends on this. Changing it later means reordering. |
| 8–10 weeks out | Packaging ordered, including lids and closures | You need it in hand before production starts, and you want time to fix a wrong-size closure without it becoming a crisis. |
| 7–8 weeks out | Labels designed and printed | Label size depends on the actual vessel diameter, so this follows the packaging decision, not the other way round. |
| 4–7 weeks out | Production, plus cure time where it applies | Candles and some balms need curing. Building the batch the week before the market removes that option. |
| 3–4 weeks out | Second packaging order for the restock | The reorder you place in December is competing with everyone else's December. Placing it now costs nothing extra. |
| 2 weeks out | Stall kit, float, payment terminal, gift wrap | These are the things that get forgotten because they aren't product, and each one is a lost sale on the day. |
| 1 week out | Labelled, packed, counted stock in transport boxes | Counting stock on the morning of a market is how you find out you're short. |
How much stock to make
There's no formula that survives contact with an actual market, but a few principles hold:
- Depth beats breadth. Six products in real quantity outsells fifteen products with three of each. A thin-looking table reads as an end-of-season clearance, and shoppers browse rather than buy.
- Expect a hero. One product usually takes a disproportionate share of sales, and you rarely know which one until the first market. Carry more of your best guess and be ready to reorder its packaging fast.
- Price ladder deliberately. A low-price entry item — a small tin, a roll-on, a mini jar — converts browsers who won't commit to your hero product. It also gives you a natural add-on at the counter.
- Count your closures separately. Running out of lids while you still have jars is the most common way a production run stalls. Order them together, in matching quantities, and keep a few spares for damage.
On the packaging side, this is where the tray and carton model works in your favour. A half tray suits a product you're testing at a market for the first time; a full tray gives the better per-unit price on the lines you already know sell. If you're carrying a range across two or three markets, full trays on the proven lines and half trays on the new ones is the sensible split.
Packaging choices that earn their place on a market table
A market stall is a different selling environment from a website. The customer picks the product up, turns it over, and decides in a few seconds.
- Weight signals value. Glass reads as substantial in the hand in a way plastic doesn't. For a gift purchase, that matters more than it does for a repeat online order.
- Give the eye a reason to stop. Consistent vessel shapes with varied labels look like a range. Mixed vessel shapes with varied labels look like a car boot sale. If you're carrying several products, holding the vessel constant and varying the label is the easiest way to look established.
- Think about the gift, not just the product. Christmas buyers are buying for someone else. A tin that survives a handbag, a jar with a clean lid finish, a roll-on that fits a stocking — these sell as gifts in a way an unboxed 250ml bottle doesn't.
- Build a bundle. Two or three small items in a simple box lifts your average sale without new production. Small jars and roller bottles bundle particularly well.
- Height and levels. Flat tables sell badly. A riser at the back, product at two or three heights, and your hero item at eye level.
- Label the price clearly. A shopper who has to ask the price often doesn't ask.
Breakage, and the boring stuff that prevents it
Glass and market days are a combination worth planning for. Transport in the original trays or cartons where you can — they were designed for exactly this. Pack the car so nothing shifts, carry a small kit for on-the-day repairs (spare labels, spare lids, a cloth, wipes), and price in a small percentage of loss rather than being surprised by it.
Don't forget the online side of December
If you sell online as well as at markets, December splits your attention. Courier companies publish their pre-Christmas cut-off dates in November — find yours early and put it on your website, because the orders that arrive after it are the ones that generate complaints. Work out in advance whether you're stopping orders at the cut-off or continuing with a clear "arriving after Christmas" notice. Either is fine. Silence isn't.
Keep enough packaging in reserve to cover a late online surge. It's a smaller number than your market stock, but running out of jars on the 18th of December is a particularly frustrating way to end the year.
Reordering in the busy weeks
Everything we stock ships from our Tauranga warehouse rather than an offshore container, so a mid-season restock is a matter of days rather than months. That's the reassuring part. The less reassuring part is that November and December are busy for everyone, and a courier delay that would be invisible in March is a lost market weekend in December.
Two habits cover it: place the reorder when you're at about a third of your stock rather than the last few units, and keep a small buffer of the closures and lids you use most. Prices are ex-GST, bulk pricing over 1,000 units is available on request, and there's no minimum beyond the pack size — so a top-up half tray is a perfectly normal order to place.
Stocking up for the season
If you're building a market range now, the use-based collections are the quickest way to see what suits: candles and home fragrance, balms and salves, skincare and cosmetics and perfume and roll-ons. The tray and carton pricing page explains how the quantities work if you're ordering wholesale for the first time.
And if you'd rather talk it through, call 07 262 1073 and tell us what you're making and how many markets you're doing. We can usually work out the right quantities in a few minutes, and we'd rather help you order the right amount than sell you a season's worth of the wrong tray.