You can purchase items from the Dollar Store;
they seem to have better quality than the Santa Stores. Sometimes - they will cut you deals like .80 for items what sells good are tools, jewlery; goodies for brothers & sisters. There's lots of stuff. Don't forget dog biscuits and kitty toys.
We put whatever was left into our storage area for next year. we also held a carnoval for our middle school and the carnival prizes came with our package we had tons left and will use those in the santa shop. Last year we ended up with some nice gifts for the kids to buy and the average price was about 1.75. If you go thei route you just have to remember whenever you go to a store to check out clearanc. We got some great deals after christmas(60 piece puzzles for .20 cents, kids hit clips for 1.50, hetaed ice scrappers for 2.00)
We use the Kid's Korner to do our program. This sound neat, I never thought of doing it our on our own.. What do you do with the left over items? Were you able to return them to the store were you got them from or did you just save them for this years sale? I would like to here more about what you are doing with this program. With the kid's korner we olny make 10% profit and it takes alot of work but we have to use the kid's korner because the other workshops name are not politicaly correct acording to our principal. This might be a great way around that.. please keep me updated to what you are going to do.. thank you.
WE did it ourselves last year. We looked all year long for clearance items at stores and alos went to Ocean State Job Lot to get stuff. It workrd out so much better. Nothing to inventory before and after. We are doing it again this year.
Besides Oriental we receive Rhode Island Novelties (?), and U.S. School Supply. I don't know if U.S. School Supply has anything geared toward the holidays but they have the neatest pencil sharpeners etc. that would make great gifts.
This year we our PTO is not using a company to run our Santa Shoppe. We have decided to buy all our products and set it up ourselves. We have a great bunch of volunteers so I know we can handle the job, but I am looking for different companies that I can buy from. We are getting some products from Oriental Trading, and I have looked at the book from Kipp.
Does anybody else run their shoppe on their own, or where can I get some good wholesale prices and catalogs????
I just love this website. I have been on PTO for 4 years and I am back in the President position again.
THanks, Michelle
