The very lovely Emma Jackson Photography asked me to write a blog post about all things business, and I knew immediately what I wanted to share. My year so far has been about 50% Christmas focused and some people think that's wild! Even some retail pals think it's a bit, well, out there. Read on for why you should be doing it too and one of my top tips.
Are you ready to jingle all the way to a successful Christmas season? As a small business owner, it's crucial to start your holiday preparations early, just like we did back on 6th January. In this blog post, we'll delve into the benefits of early planning and share tips on how to get your retail business ready for the festive season. So what did we do on 6th January? Top tip number one, tick off the "low hanging fruit" - the emails you know you will send at the end of the year. For us it was the "Merry Christmas we're out of the studio now until January" email along with two about our last order dates. Working backwards from a deadline somehow makes it easier.
Why Start in January?
It may seem odd to begin Christmas preparations in January, but if you're in the retail industry, it makes perfect sense. Q4 is where the bulk of your sales, marketing, and product creation happen. For businesses like Betsy Benn, this period can account for a significant portion of the annual turnover, ranging from 32-45%. Planning well in advance ensures you're fully prepared to make the most of the festive season.
The absolute best thing about Christmas for maker sellers is its predictability. As we will doubtless have all moaned when a customer places an order on the 22nd and wants it to arrive the next day “Why leave it so late, they know Christmas is on the SAME DAY every year”. Well, us makers know it’s coming too, so we have this amazing opportunity to plan.
October in truth is a slow start, but by late November, customers are actively searching for the perfect gifts. So you can really compress Q4 down into an active trading period of about 60 days. You don't want to spend those precious 60 days leading up to Christmas writing product descriptions and emails.
Sixty days, where your customers are actively looking for the beautiful solutions you have for them.
Sixty days, when you don’t really want to be trying to write product descriptions and emails and creating reels all the time.
Sixty days when you really just want to be saying “here are my beautiful wares, thank you for your custom” or variations on a theme.
Sixty days when you don’t want to be working all the hours god sends in your business, leaving you exhausted or ill, and unable to enjoy your own Christmas.
That’s assuming that you COULD even throw all your waking hours into your business for that time and don’t have, oh, a family, a spouse, pets, and friends that are all important to you and need your time and love. You also have to look after your own physical and emotional health so you can keep trading in January, and be ready for Valentines Day and Mother’s Day etc
And you might also need to make the odd meal so you don’t starve.
But break those sixty days down between January and September and you’re looking at just under seven days per month. A month to write seven days’ worth of Christmassy social media content, a month to film seven reels (if you want to do a reel a day which I think is a bit excessive), a month to write one newsletter (if you want to send one a week) – you can see where I’m going with this.
Which is why we started in January!
It’s not just content that needs to be written, it’s everything of course. Identifying gaps in your product range, sourcing supplies, creating new products, working out costings, photographing products, listing them on your eCommerce sites, outsourcing jobs you can’t do, adding temps to your team – the business list is kinda endless and we haven’t even got to the family list or the self-care list. And maintaining focus on something that seems so far away and has so much in it, well, it’s hard!
Accountability Matters
I was already pining for some kind of accountability group around Christmas prep. For a start, I didn’t want to be the only odd sock (or stocking) in the laundry basket, working on Christmas in isolation. I wanted other odd socks to join me! But there is also nothing like a supportive community to bounce ideas around with, share highs and lows with, or just sit and have a coffee with. I’ve been asked so many times over the past 13 years what advice I would give to anyone starting their own business and it’s always the same. Find someone else starting their own business and hang out with them. No-one understands your journey quite like someone else on the same path.
All that’s to say, when Jenny Pace asked if I’d like to run a Christmas accountability group within her Better Business Collective while she was on maternity leave, I jumped at it! We agreed I’d also open it up to the informal notonthehighstreet facebook group I’m a part of, as not every business in the Collective has such a big Christmas focus and I wanted there to be more than three of us on the monthly zooms I was planning! As it turned out, I wasn’t the only odd sock at all. There were lots of us who wanted to get a handle on planning in this way, so many in fact that we had to limit the numbers we could have on the live calls, with the rest of the group accessing the recordings after the event.
And of course, it was joyous! We covered A LOT of topics. One of my favourites was May’s monthly zoom where we looked at dealing with the stress, resting and refueling during peak trade. It’s an emotive topic and everyone had memories of times they’d not been able to manage the stress, but also tips on how they look after themselves now and the sharing was just so beautiful. As is often the way when you’re creating a presentation, the flow of information can feel one way, but when others receive it the pathways open up and it flows right back to you!
There were some incredibly practical sessions too, and I’m going to share this one with you so you can get a heap of social content out of one piece of writing.
Take your current best seller, or a good selling item you want to promote, and write out the answers to these questions;
Put in as much detail as you can, and then go back and make sure you have as many key terms in this long form copy as possible. Anytime you have written ”it’s”, please change that to a key search term if you can.
What you have just written is a blog post. You can either keep the questions in, or add some sentences between your answers to create a flow. Here’s an example of where I did this for our travel memory print.
Now you can take some extracts from this blog post and turn them into a newsletter or two. You might want to highlight the inspiration story. Or pull out why xxx is such a good gift for xxx.
And in the same week social posts might look like this:
Day 1 – This week we’re throwing a spotlight on one of our favourites… Here’s the creation story.
Day 2 – These are some features/benefits. This is how you could gift this product. It’s really popular with xxx kind of person.
Day 3 – Here’s a BTS of us making this product. Here’s why we still love it.
Day 4 – An anecdote about a standout order for this product.
Day 5 – Customer X bought this for xxx, here’s what they said about it. This kind of feedback makes us feel…..
Day 6 – seeing photos of our product out in the wild makes us feel …. It inspired the creation of this spin off. The features of which are xxx
Day 7 – we’ve loved deep diving on this product, if you want to read more about it head to the blog post here.
A reel of this product being made or packaged or unwrapped would be a lovely addition. Or if you can show footage of anything that inspired it, that would also be lovely.
I chose to publish the blog post I wrote like this back in February because the product I was writing about is not just a Christmas product. But every other piece of connected content is already created and will be published in November to push Christmas sales. And obviously, you can take this formula for three or four products and vary it slightly!
The Countdown Begins Now
If you're worried that it's not January anymore, don't panic. You can still get your Christmas content ready, you just have to prioritize more. Consider joining Jenny Pace's Christmas Marketing In A Day It's a fantastic opportunity to supercharge your Christmas content plans, and the recordings will be available if you can't attend in person. This is something Jenny runs every year so check in with her for dates and prices.
A final thought.
As a maker, your ideal customers are actively seeking meaningful gifts and festive decor. They want to support independent businesses like yours rather than big corporations. So, don't hesitate to showcase your beautiful creations and let your customers decide if they want to make a purchase. With the holiday season just around the corner, love, joy, and opportunity are in the air.
So, start planning now, and make this Christmas season your best one yet!
When you’re buying a personalised notebook as a gift for a milestone birthday, a present for a teacher, or as a treat to yourself, there are lots to choose from.
At Betsy Benn, our bespoke notebooks and custom journals feel so much more luxurious than your average notebooks. That’s because they’re laser engraved in our Cotswolds studio, to feature hand-drawn or typographic designs created by our founder, Betsy. Or – even better – they can feature designs created by you! That’s right, we can engrave your personalised notebook with your child’s drawing, some special handwriting, or a business logo.
If you’re anything like me, you’ll be an avid collector of notebooks and journals. Of course, there’ll be some notebooks you’re saving for best (i.e., you have zero intention of ever using them!).
But, for the ones you do want to write in, there’s nothing like cracking open the cover for the first time, taking a deep inhale of that wonderful new notebook smell (surely there’s a word for that? Scriptaroma? Papernoscent?), feeling the smooth paper inside and wondering what the heck you’re going to write on those beautifully clean pages.
But notebooks are made to be written and doodled in! So, if you’re planning on buying a beautiful personalised notebook from Betsy Benn – whether for yourself or as a gift to a friend, partner or colleague – here are 20 ideas of how you can use it.
There’s been a growing trend for journaling recently, and it’s easy to understand why. Far more than merely recording the events of your day as you would in a diary, keeping a journal allows you to write down your feelings, ideas and observations. Journaling is an intimate process, which is great for exploring and reflecting on your emotions. It can also be a helpful, healing way to support you through stress, anxiety, depression or medical treatment.
That’s why our And Breathe journal is so perfect for self-gifting or as a present for someone you know who is going through a hard time. Personalised with a name and available in a range of jewel-like colours (the mustard is my personal favourite), the And Breathe notebook reflects that feeling when you catch a moment to yourself, or you come home after a tough day and collapse on the couch.
Take a deep breath, reset yourself, get all of your thoughts down on paper and exhale. Let go. Encouraging you to let your feelings take flight, the tactile vegan leather notebook cover is laser engraved with a flock of soaring birds, along with the words And Breathe, plus your personalisation: your name, or the name of the person you’re gifting the journal to.
For even more inspiration, our Living Your Dreams journal is a beautiful, adaptable notebook which could be used to write affirmations as part of your manifesting practice, as a place to record your nightly dreams, or somewhere to write down your goals and life plans so you can start making them a reality.
“Fantastic quality and a lovely gift. Very personalised and paper quality great.” (Rachel E, reviewer)
I don’t know about you, but my son is 16 and I’m still in the habit of recording his milestones (date of first GCSE exam, when he started shaving - that kind of thing!) on a never-ending note on my phone. When you have a newborn, it’s great to have a dedicated place to write down all of those firsts – their first bath, their first trip to the park, the first word they said, or how they’d say ‘futterdye’ instead of ‘butterfly’… Instead of storing those special moments in a place you’ll never see them, write them in a special place – a special personalised journal. This From Day One journal is the most thoughtful gift you could give new parents on the arrival of their newborn, or to celebrate an adoption.
Expectant parents and pregnant mamas are often deluged with some pretty samey presents. So gift them something truly personal for their baby shower or blessingway, like Betsy Benn’s Bump, Baby and Beyond bespoke notebook.
The best thing about these personalised baby notebooks? They can be gifted to the child once they’ve grown up! What an incredible, sentimental gift for your child to receive a book detailing important moments in their life on a special day like their 18th birthday, their wedding day, or the day they welcome their own first child into the world! Oh, I imagine there would be tears!
It’s been said that life is the greatest adventure, and it’s true – there are so many adventures to be had! Whether it’s for an outdoorsy couple on their wedding day, a student heading on their gap year or celebrating a graduation, or a retirement gift, our Adventure Is Out There personalised notebook is a great reminder that life is about collecting moments, not things.
I always imagine this notebook being crammed with handwritten reflections on exciting adventures and achievements, along with physical memories like train tickets, boarding passes, Polaroid snaps and napkins from that magical beach bar where you sat with sundowners after a day making memories in an amazing new place… You can use this adventure notebook as a really special record of a really special time, something to look back on which will bring those memories and feelings flooding back.
“A beautiful gift. My friend was delighted with it!” (Claire, reviewer)
It’s all well and good having ideas of what you want to achieve in life, but handwriting those goals down in a beautiful personalised notebook really elevates your plans. It’s the same for business – every great business needs a plan! If you’re a business owner, or you have a friend who’s just founded their own venture, then our bespoke business logo notebook is exactly what you need.
You can have your business logo laser engraved on the cover, and choose the notebook colour that best matches your branding. You can use it for quarterly or annual business planning, make a note of client wins (perfect to cheer you up on a low day!), journal on your achievements, challenges and lessons each month, or plan your social media content ideas.
“Such a good quality product and it worked really well as a gift, I couldn't recommend enough! I might end up getting myself one next.” (Conor F, happy notebook customer)
A personalised notebook for a special occasion
When your child draws you a special picture, don’t just stick it on the fridge to get tatty, or shove it in a drawer with the rest of them. Turning your child’s drawing into a practical, useful notebook is a great idea, and the perfect way to enjoy their cute artwork for longer.
With Father’s Day coming up, name me a better gift than a personalised notebook for dad featuring their own child’s drawing... I can’t think of anything! This custom child’s drawing journal is easy to order, and makes the perfect present for grandma or granddad, for adoptive parents, or godparents. And there’s all sorts they can use it for – like day-to-day notes, a gratitude journal, lettering practice, a parenting journal… You could even ask your child to draw a special picture for their mum, dad, teacher or sibling so you can have it engraved on a Betsy Benn vegan leather notebook and gift it for a birthday, special occasion or even for going away to university.
“Beautiful personalised notebook that arrived much earlier than expected, fantastic service that will allow me to give it to my friend for her 50th birthday at the weekend. Definitely recommend.” (Lesley, buyer)
With such a useful, beautiful collection of personalised notebooks available from Betsy Benn, why shop anywhere else?
The traditional wall planner needed some Betsy magic that's for sure. Here's how our wall planner life used to play out, tell me if this resonates. You buy what you think is a BIG wall planner. It's been beautifully designed too, so it looks great on the wall. Then you write ONE THING on a day and, *poof*, no more space for anything else on that day.
Does that sound familiar?
How to create the perfect destination print.The places and the spaces in between |
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We’ve been designing these personalised destination prints since 2010, and know exactly how to make your print look beautiful. Here are some of our top tips on how to choose the places for your artwork and how we’ll space it out to make it perfect for you.
List out your places. Take a day to let your mind remember all the places you've been, and what they meant to you. Here's a few suggestions on what to include.
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Step twoA lot of text, or not much text? The more characters you have per line, the busier it will look. This is down to personal tast and the aesthetic you'd like to achieve. Using single words/places per line will result in a cleaner look and feel. Adding details, such as a hotel name to a town you visited will allow for more variation in the text. |
Choose a background colour. Orange is the new black (or ocean, or stiffkey, or rose, or sage, or smoke...)
Bask in the glory of being the best gift giver ever. Extra brownie points if you had it framed.
Rocks or crystals.
My other half likes dragon tooth pebbles, but in fairness his pocket likes any stone that is interesting. I found a crystal shop last year that had heart-shaped stones and crystals and all sorts of other coloured and shaped rocks. Most were reasonably priced and made for a great addition to his advent calendar.
A morning cuppa!
I’m a big fan of breaking open the packs of individually enveloped teas – I especially love the Pukka ones and T2 – to create a nice morning treat in an advent calendar. If you want to add more then I’m also a big fan of individually wrapped biscuits like snack packs of Jammie Dodgers, Lotus biscuits, or Jaffa Cakes. This also works with different flavour coffee pods or hot chocolate sachets or the melty spoon individual portions. Mmm with hot chocolates you could even add a marshmallow!
Mini toiletries
There are so many around now, from the kind you get in the supermarket to go on holiday, to something more “treaty” such as the small bottles of shower gels from Molton Brown. FYI these tend to come in a box set which is perfect for splitting across your days. Last year I ordered sampler fragrances from Abercrombie and Fitch and they were all fab. Since then I have discovered Le Labo and Vilhelm Parfumerie who both sell unisex samples.
Face masks
No, not those face masks - the pamper ones! The beauty of a face mask is that they tend to be single use and so they already come individually wrapped and normally in a box of three or more! I love the Spacemask ones that heat up and they are normally about £15 for 5. And the branding is all starry and I’m a sucker for great branding.
USB Mini Disco Light
Instant disco glow up from your laptop, PC or USB wall charge socket. SO. MUCH. FUN
Sock it to them!
Where do socks go to die? I seem to forever have a range of unmatched socks that live by the washing machine, waiting in vain for their lost partner until months later I end up throwing them away or making pet toys from them! Replenishing the sock drawer via the advent calendar is either going to be acceptable or not and I think the choice of socks makes a difference. Last year I found socks that featured famous works of art and they raised smiles-a-plenty, but were not that comfortable to wear if I’m honest. I’m raising the sock game with fun ones with slogans on about gaming and super lux ones of cashmere and bamboo varieties!
Miniature bottles of their favourite tipple
With our paper advent calendar, I pretty quickly realised that a miniature bottle of port would fit in the Father Christmas pocket – which seemed very appropriate as we always leave a glass of port out for Santa on Christmas Eve. Substitute alcohol for weird, wonderful or rarely allowed soft drinks for the teens or alcohol free folks. My small loves the San Pellegrino can drinks but we rarely have them in the house. They would be a welcome addition to his advent calendar. Or this Pokemon novelty drink which thankfully isn't brim full of sugar!
Novelty foodie bits.
Similar to the concept of herbs and spices with the recipe prints outs, but a bit more whacky. There’s always Christmas themed gift food around in November and December but they can be pricey for not a lot, wrapped in excess packaging and ribbon. So, I tend to buy unusual bits that I know are around all the time. I mean, check out the Gin-Chup and Gin-Mayo. Or for something sweet how about these gourmet marshmallow bundles from The Naked Marshmallow Company.
A personalised Christmas tree ornament.
Yes, I’m going to plug our own products here, but a beautiful Christmas decoration is a really wonderful addition to an advent calendar. And if you add a date as well it becomes a special reminder of that year. Our Matisse Inspired Stars are new for 2022 and can be personalised with a name and a year.
Winter wear
So practical and so beautiful. I always think it’s a bit of a waste to wait until Christmas Day to give or receive a new woolly hat, knitted gloves or mittens. I mean it’s cold from October onwards. That’s two or three months of hat wearing opportunity right there! This is a bit bigger than your average advent gift, but so worth it. My fave bobble hat ever is from Eka Wear.
A paperback book or a magazine
Remember when things we read were made of paper? Yes, me too. Le sigh. Little plug now for bookshop.org. It’s the best of online shopping for books because you can nominate a local bookshop that you wish to support, they get all of the profit from the sale, and you still have the convenience of online.
A keyring
Yes, your person probably already has keyrings, but we have so many goddam keys these days! Bikes, sheds, lockers, so so many keys! I found one last year that matched the tattoo design my person has so it worked a treat. Or take it up a notch with these tweed ones, paired with a wooden tag that has your own handwriting on it. Or tug at the heart strings with your small ones handprint engraved on the keyring. It’s ALLLL good.
Tea light candles
Scented ones work a treat and normally come in packs so you can spread out across a few days. I love these ones by Homecrafted Candle Co.
Stationery items
Who doesn’t love a nice pen or some funky post-it notes? Or pencils that say funny things - like these ones from Newton and the Apple.
On the same stationery theme - how about a gorgeous notebook, like these personalised notebooks from, oh look, us! (Wink)
Packets of seeds
It’s really lovely to grow a plant from seed. You could go seasonal and try to grow your own Christmas tree, or opt for something a little more culinary with a fast-growing herb like basil. This grow your own herb garden gift set has a few different herbs,
Chocolate
Okay, you have to admit that it’s pretty impressive that I got all the way to 16 suggestions before I landed on chocolate. You know the kind of chocolate your person will love and what kind of chocolate you want to indulge in before breakfast, so suggestions from me are kind of redundant. A personal fave in this house though are the mini penguins or reindeer that Hotel Chocolat make. I just wrap each one in a bit of greaseproof paper before popping in the advent calendar. Or for a touch of nostalgic luxury, these gold foiled chocolate coins from Fortnum and Mason which can be spread out across the days.
Gingerbread, or other biscuity goodness
Did you see our stop motion on Instagram where we filled our advent calendar with gingerbread shapes? Everything about that was fun - from making the gingerbread, playing with the animation, and eating the gingerbread! Okay, mostly eating it was the fun part. If you love to bake then Christmas gingerbread is really cool. You can get the kids involved as the dough is pretty forgiving and one batch tends to make dozens of biscuits. They will not stay fresh for 24 days so it probably can’t be the only thing in your advent calendar. Extend the life of each biscuit by wrapping in foil or grease proof paper and load the biscuits in the first few days. They can be frozen - so you could always refresh the advent calendar a few days at a time, but my December is too busy for that level of organisation! If you’re not into baking then there are lots of places to get amazing iced biscuits or you could search out individually wrapped artisan bakes. Waitrose make these individually wrapped Gingerbread men. Or you could buy an amazing set of iced cookies from The Biscuiteers. These dog ones are amazing and if you sign up to their newsletter you’ll get a handy 10% off code on your first order.
Popcorn
Amazing artisan popcorn makers at Popcorn shed - have this taster set of small bags of amazing flavours. Utterly delicious.
Tickets to something
Something happens to time during the Christmas season. Ordinary time is out the window and there are days that seem to last 32 hours! But we do normally get a window of opportunity to slow down and appreciate time with our loved ones. And just sometimes, a little bit of structure is a good thing, like taking time to go to the pantomime together, or the cinema, or a show at an art gallery, or one of the many illuminated forest trails that pop up in arboretums. And if it’s something you’d be doing regardless, then add it to the advent calendar! Even if it’s not a “paid for” event, why not create your own tickets for it anyway? Your time together is beyond value!
Enamel pin badge
Every human I know has an enamel pin badge. Maybe it’s just my echo chamber, but these small little accessories have exploded over the past few years and it seems there’s one for everybody, every topic, every occasion, and every colour scheme. For something seasonal and full of Christmas, how about this “ I believe” pin from Clary and Macy.
Tiny Christmas Lights
Last year I found a simple string of lights that you can plug into a USB - a really easy way to add some Christmas cheer to your workspace, or working from home space!
Micro magnetic beads
A very cool desk toy but definitely not to be left around young children or inquisitive pets. These tiny magnetic balls can be shaped and piled and constructed and are really pleasing to play and fiddle with.
Paper Sculptures
For the crafty ones this is a great project. There are so many different types out there and once you start looking you’ll see you can purchase completed ones, DIY kits that include the paper, or just downloadable instructions like this one on Etsy.
Nailed it
A new nail varnish, or a curvy emery board, or funky nail care product of your choosing. We literally all have nails - we should all be looking after them in one way or another. And no, biting them off does not count. Also nailed it - 24 suggestions for an advent calendar for the grownups (or nearly grown up teens)
