FOR THE PAST 3 YEARS WE HAVE GONE TO THE DOLLAR
TREE, EVERYTHINGS A DOLLAR, ETC WE AVERAGE $700.00 A YEAR DOING THIS. WE USUALLY HAVE TO MAKE TWO TRIPS FOR ITEMS AND NEVER CHARGE OVER $2 PER ITEM.

We do a Secret Santa Shop every year. We had previously used a comapny, and found the merchandise to be cheezy and high priced, allowing little or no profit to our PTO. We decided last year to do it all ourselves...lots and lots of work but FUN!!! And it was said to be the best shop ever. Overwhelming response from staff,parents,and shoppers. We buy from Dollar Stores,Kipp,Oriental Trading,Ohio Wholesale,local craft vendors and fairs. We make up gift basketssuch as a china teacup & saucer with herbal teabags. It's wrapped in a cellophane bag and tied with curling ribbon for $3. Souper Teacher mug with dry soup mixes wrapped for $5.
Bath baskets with dollar store items for $3-$5. Also painted clay pots with garden gloves,seeds,watering spike wrapped for $5.
Most of our items are $5 and under, but we do have a select arae with a limited number of items up to $15. We really feel that any activity of this magnitude to put together should be a fundraiser. After all, all of the money goes back to be used for the school students and staff.
Hope this helps.

We do a santa shop and it goes really well . We have a parent that does all the shopping. She buys all year around. She buys all the bargins. She asks stores for quanity discounts ect.She will go to a family dollar and say if I buy all these what price can I get always a good buy. We price everything at a dollar. We do not make a profit but we dont loose money either and the kids love it. We have parents wrap for the youger kids and help them shop. And dont forget to buy stuff for the pets..

We used our tax exempt number when shopping and yes just purchased items like we were purchasing one. We got 20 - 25 of each thing we liked. Sometimes we just bought all they had. They knew it was for a school because we had to sign the receipt for the tax exempt. The only problem with buying things this way is that you cannot guarantee that the same items will be available if you run out and have to buy more. No one has complained though. We even started buying things when school started and if we saw things while we were out shopping we just picked them up. Hope this answers your question.

Our neighboring school just started a PTO last year and they did a Santa Shop using Dollar General and they did make a deal with them to use sort of a consignment basis. I guess it worked for them. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

I would just like some clarification about using the "dollar stores" for school santa shops. Do you just go in an purchase items as you would do for one item or is there some kind of agreement made between the school and the store. I would also like to know what would be a good start up amount. I would also like to supplement this with items such as pencils and gel pens from Oriental trading Co. Our student body is about 400 students.

We did not use any "return" contract with the Dollar Store. To be honest, we never have much left to return. The items that are left we have been able to use at our General Store at the year-end carnival. Items that we order from Kipp we can return as long as they are in units (dozen etc.) Yes, even though it is a lot of work it is nice to be able to pick nice things that we would like to have ourselves.