How to pull off a holiday sale and have fun while doing it
The true story of being a small business during BFCM
Dear Kula Diaries,
Today I’m going to do something completely different… and pull back the curtain to give you a sneak peak into what goes on behind the scenes for a small business (like Kula Cloth) during the fabled HOLIDAY SALE time. I’m sharing this information for a few reasons:
It’s interesting and fun in a nerdy way (at least, I think so)
There are some folks here who own small businesses and they might benefit from hearing what another small business does during the holidays
There are also customers here who will (hopefully) gain some new insight into the amount of effort and thought that goes into something like this at Kula Cloth (and other small businesses)
This is all that I have been working on over the past few weeks (and even months before that too), so it’s at the front of my mind, and I’m excited to share it!
The holiday season feels like my ‘final exam’ — we’ve worked hard all year long to keep a business (somewhat) floating with its head mostly above water… and then, we launch our big Holiday Sale… and it’s kinda like… well… a celebration! For the record, BCFM stands for ‘Black Friday/Cyber Monday’. Until 6 years ago, I didn’t know what that acronym meant. Ironically, I have never gone shopping on Black Friday… and these days, I usually am so busy monitoring our own sale that I don’t have time to consider my own holiday gift-giving until the last minute.
So, what’s it like to own a business during the ‘busiest’ shopping season of the year? To be honest, it’s REALLY FUN… but it can also be REALLY NERVEWRACKING. Every single year, I don’t know if people are going to show up. I don’t know if I have enough inventory. You simply can’t know those things until the day that you make your sale live. It’s the closest that I usually get to feeling like I’m about to jump off a ledge into the void — trusting that people will show up, with no proof that they actually will. October is usually the slowest month of the year for sales… and it’s really easy to work yourself into a complete panic in October/Early November and tell yourself things like: THIS IS IT, I’M DOOMED…. WE ARE CLOSING UP SHOP.
What I have learned over the past 6 years of running a business is this: you are not doomed. Don’t shutter your website quite yet. Just give it a few weeks. As my friend Lloyd at Garage Grown Gear says, “It’s just October being October.” During the month of October and early November, instead of panicking (which is completely unhelpful), I try to throw myself into creative projects — I put extra effort into writing love notes to customers… I write more poems… I pursue more silly ideas… I do everything that I can possibly do in order to avoid sinking into the downward spiral of fear. I don’t always succeed, but I dust my knees off… wake up the next day… and I do my best.
The very first time that I ran a holiday sale was in November of 2019. We usually participate in ‘Small Business Saturday’… instead of Black Friday or Cyber Monday. For my VERY FIRST Small Business Saturday sale, I sent ONE e-mail offering 15% off to all of my subscribers. I had a snowshoeing trip to an overnight hut planned on that day, and miraculously, I had cell service at the hut. Over the course of my very short and very un-planned attempt at a sale, we had 174 orders and our store earned over $5,000 — which was $5,000 more than I had ever earned on a holiday sale in my entire life. In fact, I had NEVER seen a number like ‘174 orders’ (in ONE day!) on my website… EVER. At the time, Kula was barely squeaking by… I wasn’t earning a paycheck, and I could barely afford to manufacture more Kulas to add to our website, so earning $5,000 felt like a huge influx of cash during the very very early phases of a small business.
Over the past few years, I’ve really ‘streamlined’ our Small Business Saturday strategy … and I don’t find it particularly stressful, instead, I find it a lot of fun. It’s a really amazing opportunity to think outside the box and be creative. It’s also really fun to use the opportunity to genuinely appreciate the people who support your business. I *love* packing up a lot of orders and shipping a lot Kulas out into the world. When I plan our holiday sale, it’s my goal to make the entire experience fun, festive and focused on bringing something good to each person who chooses to shop on our website… and also bringing something good to people who choose not to shop. I’m a bit non traditional, but it seems to me like most sales are focused on ‘getting something’ from the customer — i.e. money. However, if you can shift the focus from getting to giving… it allows you to bring something special to the people who are a part of your community — it makes the entire experience so much more enjoyable, purposeful and meaningful. In order to be successful, a sale must come from a place of abundance… not from a place of needing anything in return (which is entirely counterintuitive).
I’ll mention one other thing about planning our sale, which was very deliberate (and this is my personal opinion, so feel free to have your own take on this): I do not believe in doing early Black Friday sales that start weeks and weeks before the ‘official’ gift-giving season begins. It’s been my experience that these ‘sales’ feel more like an annoyance and noise, and they miss out on the opportunity to participate in a special, time-sensitive ‘event’. The whole fun of the BFCM is that it’s a short duration sale that is only available at one time throughout the year. So, while it might be tempting to start a sale weeks in advance — I’ve found that those sales really dilute the effectiveness of an ACTUAL holiday sale. Save your good stuff for after Thanksgiving, and give people a break from the incessant e-mails! Plus, if you always discount your products… whey would anybody ever pay full price?
Our planning for Small Business Saturday 2024 actually started during the summer! Amanda (our creative director) and I started to decide on new Kula Prints to launch on the website… because we knew that we’d be running out of our current artist series prints very close to the holidays. It takes several months for a Kula design to go from artwork to the final product, so we had to start our planning very early. We worked with artists like Shelby Thayne, Madison Perrins and Emily LaVelle to create a brand new line up of Artist Series Kulas that all feature mountains. In addition to adding new Kulas, we also worked with our manufacturer to have all of our inventory re-stocked so that our bins are FULL and ready to go on the day when the sale hits.
Last year, we had over 1,000 orders in 3 days. For a big company, this might not seem like a large number… but for a very tiny company like Kula Cloth, packing and shipping over 1,000 packages is a colossal effort! Every single solitary package is individually labeled, picked, packed and shipped by a human (not a robot), and it takes a lot of time and effort to make sure that everything goes well. In order to do this, we pre-pack our shipping envelopes ahead of time. When we ship out a Kula, we usually include an info card + a sticker in the envelope. In order to expedite our order-packing, we pre-stuff all of our envelopes with the postcard and the sticker … otherwise, it would take us considerably longer to pack orders.
In addition to stocking up on Kulas and all of our other products, we also started packaging our misfit Kulas a few months ago. What’s a misfit Kula? Well, we had a big FLUB this past year… where a WHOLE BUNCH of Kulas were manufactured with a slightly off-center snap. The Kulas themselves are perfect, but the snap is crooked — which means that we can’t sell them to a big retailer (or anybody else). Anytime that we’ve ever had a ‘mistake’ — I always try to see it as a new opportunity for something better… and so we decided to incorporate this misfit conundrum into our holiday sale.
This year, I decided that our sale was going to be BIGGER and better than ever before, and I wanted the focus of the sale to be on giving little tokens of appreciation to our customers. We only exist because of YOU. Seriously — I cannot begin to describe how much that matters. Absolutely nothing that we do would be possible if people did not show up to purchase and use and recommend and love our product. Without you, nothing exists — and I wanted to try and find a way to acknowledge that a bit. So, this year — instead of just giving a discount (our entire website will be 20% off!)… we’re including three different tiers of gifts in our sale: the first tier gets a free misfit Kula… the second tier gets a misfit + a free mini Kula… and the third tier gets a misfit Kula + a MYSTERY Kula. Giving gifts is a big expense — we’ve spent thousands of dollars purchasing gifts to give away — but, it’s a small way to make the experience more special and unique. If you own a business, you definitely don’t have to go completely overboard and do three tiers of gifts — you could start with just one special thing!
Since we are doing three different tiers of gifts… that means that we are pre-prepping 3 different tiers of envelopes. So, prior to Saturday’s big sale, we will have pre-packaged our shipping envelopes and organized them by tier… so that when an order arrives in our store, all we have to do is grab the correct envelope that is pre-stuffed with the appropriate gift. For the holidays, I also decided to add a special, limited edition sticker to each order. I asked Amanda to create a custom, peppermint bowtie creepy cat… and then, I asked the sticker company to make them sparkle! I’m really excited about this sticker, and I can’t wait for folks to receive it in their order.
The MYSTERY Kula is something that I’m personally really excited about, and it also is the result of yet another small ‘mistake’ in the Kula world. A few months ago, we printed a custom Kula Cloth for a customer, and somewhere in the digital abyss, the logo experienced a glitch that wasn’t noticed — we ended up printing a bunch of Kulas with a wonky logo… and so we had to do a reprint of their order to correct the mistake. When we make Kulas, it’s actually MORE expensive to make LESS of them at one time, because the efficiency of the sewing machine operator goes down. Since we only needed to reprint 100 Kulas…. in order to get the best price on the batch, we had to add another 150 Kulas in order to get the better price. We didn’t have a Kula Design that we needed to print… but I was deep into the thick of Small Business Saturday planning, and I had this little ‘vision’ of being able to offer folks a mystery/hidden treasure Kula. Amanda worked her magic, and we created the COOLEST, limited edition Mystery Kula… that will be given away for free with some of our Small Business Saturday orders. We aren’t revealing the design at all — so it’ll be a complete surprise until it arrives in the mail. Hint: it’s so cute, and I’m in love with it!!!
Once we had a basic plan… and three different tiers of giving determined, I had to come up with a schedule for sending out e-mails to ‘launch’ our sale. We use company called Klayvio for our e-mail management, which means that I pay them a lot of money to ‘hold’ our mailing list and to give me the ability to send out messages to large groups of people. On Wednesday before the sale, we’re going to be sending out a ‘preview’ e-mail… which will let folks know what to expect, so that they can plan accordingly if they want to snag a freebie gift. Currently, our BIG sale is set to go LIVE to the public on Saturday, November 30th at 6:00am Pacific Time. This means that I get to send out an e-mail to 100,000+ people (which is also semi-terrifying). Our VIPee folks will get early access to the sale and the free gifts the previous day on November 29th at 5am. The sale lasts through December 10th, and over the course of its duration, we have a variety of e-mail campaigns and social media posts that are planned. It’s a lot of work to coordinate all of the messaging, but I love writing (obviously), so it’s also really enjoyable. I’ve had fun filming some special videos for the VIPee folks.. and I’ve got some other creative tricks up my sleeve as well, so stay tuned!
After we planned out our e-mail schedule, the next task was trying to articulate my ideas and plan to Amanda, our Creative Director, so that she could turn those ideas into beautiful art for our e-mails and social media! Amanda came up with the idea of a stack of gifts that beautifully display each of the gift tiers in the sale, and I love how it turned out, and I can’t wait to send out this beautiful e-mail to everybody on our mailing list. Amanda’s art always brings my ideas to life in the most special way. In addition to the e-mail art, we also have to make a new banner for our website that will go ‘live’ on the first day of the sale — this lets visitors to our website know that the sale is happening… and it gives a fresh, exciting new look to the front page of our site.
This is our main e-mail banner that will be sent to our subscribers on Saturday, the 30th — Small Business Saturday:
I’m not writing the e-mails alone. My marketing unicorn Olivia is helping me write some of the newsletters, and I’m writing a few of them myself — but it’s a lot of work (and also oddly enjoyable). My first big announcement e-mail will go out to our MASSIVE e-mail list, but the follow-up e-mails, will get sent to progressively less people. For instance, we will have some specific e-mails that will be sent out to folks who didn’t open the first e-mail. Keep in mind that anybody is free to unsubscribe from e-mails at any time, so you absolutely are not obligated to receive them.
I’m going to be very honest with all of you: I really do not like ‘junk mail’ — which is why I try really hard to make sure that our e-mails are not junk mail. We make each of our e-mails a fun experience to open and read. Over course of the holiday season, we’re planning to include some poetry… music… and fun activities (like a free downloadable Mad Lib) that you’ll be able to watch or do without spending any money at all. My goal is to keep everything fun and not pushy — which is a fine balance because, in all seriousness, sending out these e-mails is very important for a small brand — and we genuinely do rely on the sales during the holiday season to help us continue into next year. I’m not going to sit here and tell you that they aren’t important, because they are. Kula Cloth, as a small business, is the livelihood for a lot of people — and without customers, it doesn’t function.
That being said — it might sound cringeworthy, but my goal for the holiday sale season is not monetary. I don’t have any specific ‘financial goals’ — because that’s not how my brain works. If I told myself that I needed to earn a ‘certain amount of money’ or ‘sell a certain amount of things’ — first off, I’d be limiting myself in what could be possible, and I’d much rather be open to the infinite flow of abundance…. and secondly, anything lower than that number would be considered a ‘failure’. Many years ago, I had the ‘cha-ching’ noise turned on within my Shopify app. Every single time that somebody placed an order and I heard a ‘cha-ching’, I got really excited. Until… one day… I started noticing the lack of cha-chings, and I caught myself saying things like, “This wasn’t a good day.” Really? It wasn’t a good day because you didn’t sell a lot of pee cloths? The reality of what I was saying was harsh and from a complete place of lack: I had lost sight of what actually mattered.
I have no idea what to expect on Saturday when our sale goes live… but I do have ONE goal. My goal this holiday season is very simple: to have fun. I want to enjoy it… I want to have fun packing up orders… I want to write fun poems… I want to film silly videos…I want to have fun writing notes to our customers… I want to make cookies for my employees… I want to savor the experience of being where we are at this exact point in time. It’s easy to want to be somewhere else. It’s easy to think that my life would be ‘better’ if we were in a massive fulfillment warehouse with a bajillion employees… but then I’d be missing out on the chance to have fun right now. It’s really fun to be ‘in the thick of it’ — to be hauling bin after bin of packages to the post office and knowing that this all started because one day, many years ago, I had an idea to make a pee cloth into a real piece of gear.
Last year at the holiday time, I was coming out of a complete brain fog — I had just been scammed by a con man and still felt like I was living in the twilight zone. I’ve worked really hard this year to get myself back to a place where I genuinely trust myself and enjoy the experience of work. We have a new employee at Kula HQ, and it’s been very fun over the last few weeks to train her in the ways of Kula — watching her write ‘love notes’ to customers… and seeing her get excited about her job as she starts to get the hang of things has been very rewarding as a supervisor.
The very first time that I ever packed up and shipped Kula Cloths, it was while I was sitting on the floor of my office in my (previous) house in Everett, Washington. When our very first batch of Kula Cloths arrived, Aaron and I printed out all of the shipping labels and instead of printing up packing slips (because we didn’t know any better), we wrote the quantity and an abbreviation for the name of the print on the outside of the package. At the time, we only had two prints — Galaxy and Nice Axe — so this task, while tedious, was somewhat doable. Aaron and I sat on the floor and quickly stuffed Kulas into 350 packages. The next day, I drove the packages to the post office and proudly presented them to the USPS employees, who looked at me with a confused expression as they asked, “Where’s your shipping manifest?” I had no idea what they were talking about. “Mani-what?”, I responded back to them.
It’s been over 6 years since we shipped out those very first Kula orders from our home office, and we’re much more organized now — but we’re still tiny in the big scheme of the outdoor world. On Small Business Saturday, when the sale begins, there will not be dozens of employees monitoring the sale… instead, it’ll just be me. I’ll be sitting at my computer (probably at my kitchen table), making sure that all of our website and coupon codes are running smoothly. On Saturday and Sunday of that weekend, it will be me and my husband Aaron who go into the office to try and get a head start on orders, so that we aren’t completely overwhelmed. It will be me and my husband and Jared and Ashley — four people — who will work hard to pack all of your Kulas. We will write notes. We will try our best to put love and intention into every single order. At the end of the day we will drive them to the post office and we will send them out into the world, where they will embark upon a journey towards their new homes. To this day, please know — I do not take this for granted. It is a gift to do this, and there has never been one day when I have not felt deep gratitude for that. There is a reason why I pulled our fulfillment out of a 3PL warehouse, and back into our own hands — and it is because I wanted you to know how much you matter. Whether you shop at Kula… or with another small brand this holiday season… please know, that it really does make a difference in the lives of real people who are trying to make a living doing something that they love.
There’s a line on the back of our packaging, that rings true as I share this with all of you now — and always — “From the bottom of my heart, I hope that Kula is a small part of your best adventures.”
Thank you all SO MUCH for your kindness and support — I cannot begin to describe how much it means to us. If you have any questions about our sale… or about hosting your own sale… or anything else, please don’t hesitate to ask — I’m an open book. If you are a small business owner planning your holiday sale this year — have fun with it! This is supposed to be fun, and it really can be.
In the spirit of giving and uplifting others, I’m going to share some links to my other favorite small brands below — if you are planning to give gifts this year, and you have the ability to direct your dollars to a small brand, I can personally vouch for the difference that it will make in their lives.
Wishing you all a holiday week filled with gratitude, wellness, ease, peace and love. And if you do end up placing a Kula order this coming holiday week… please write me a note in your order. I’d love to read it and give your order a little extra love.
Here are a few of my favorite small businesses that I wanted to share with all of you:
SAMBOB — custom, handmade fleeces from Maine (I own 2 and have purchased many as gifts… he’s having a Small Biz Saturday sale too!)
YOUER — woman-owned/designed clothing made in Missoula and the USA by my friend Mallory
AlpineFit — outdoor apparel woman-owned and designed AND made in Alaska by my friend Jen
ENZI the ONE EYED PUFFER FISH — an illustrated children’s book written by my friend Lateefah Simpson and illustrated by Kula Creative director Amanda McIntyre — a perfect gift for kids! (this book is being released this week, so if it’s not available yet — keep checking back!)
Noofah — a travel loofah/washcloth combo made by my dear friend Lia (who is also a Kula Diaries subscriber!). It is the BEST shower product EVER.
Kitty Town Coffee — coffee that gives back to shelters that care for cats!
Hiker Trash Apothecary — a small soap company that makes soap for stinky hikers (started by my sister, our friend Laura and me!). I’m biased, but these soaps are the BEST.
Triple Crown Coffee — coffee made by my friend, Chris, aka ‘Cookie Monster’
Tough Cutie Socks — adventure socks made by a woman (my friend Brittany) for women!
LAKA Living — the ABSOLUTE BEST matcha EVER — a small, woman-owned business based in Kauai owned by an amazing woman named Liz
Ombraz Sunglasses — armless sunglasses created by my good friends Jensen and Nikolai who are wonderful humans and big Kula supporters
Heather’s Choice — dehydrated backpacking food made by a woman-owned brand in Alaska
KSXArt — Handmade, cyanotype one of a kind clothing made by my friend Kellie
JitterbugArt — Original Art, Prints, Clay Items and More by plant-lover and Kula artist Latasha Greene
Rawlogy — cork massage balls and self-care tools (owned by my dear friend Marek!)
Bead by Bead Adventures — a small, woman- owned business that makes necklaces that are also trail maps so that you can follow your own adventure (or a friend’s adventure) on a long trail hike! These are so, so cool and the sweetest gift for thru-hikers!!
AbstractHikes — Original Art, Prints and Stickers by Kula Artist Alina Drufovka
Tawa Threads - Home decor inspired by National Parks, woman-owned by Tabria
Gnara - Woman owned company that makes pants with a built in pee zipper
Wild Brush — woman owned and designed backpacks and outdoor gear by my friend Julianne
Lauren Echo Art — woman owned art and apparel by my dear friend Lauren Echo
Penn and Light Art — woman owned mountain art and stunning calendars by my friend Shelby
Koi Cat Creative — woman owned art prints and originals by Kula Creative Director Amanda McIntyre
The Adventure Art Academy — give the gift of painting with PNW artist and one of my dear friends, Claire Giordano
PillowStrap — one of my favorite new pieces of gear, created by two members of our Kula Community who purchased a Kula in my very first pre-sale… Rita and Brian!
Yes, I’m Hiking Solo — a virtual outdoor self defense course created by my friend Nicole Snell, CEO of Girls Fight Back
krō bär — give a gift certificate to my favorite restaurant in the whole wide world! This restaurant is a small restaurant located in Bothell, Washington.
I love so many things in this post, but especially I love the way you view life. Thank you for sharing your struggles and your joys. Thank you for always making me smile. You are a light.
As the owner of a small landscaping business, I really appreciate your willingness to openly do things in a way that is NOT the way an owner is "Supposed" to do them!
I have different kinds of business struggles, but I know we have similar ideals in our hearts. I often render people confused/horrified when I say things like, "No, I am not looking to get more clients" or "No, I am not actively trying to increase profit" or "No, I don't do any marketing"
Feels good to know that I have a companion out there, running a business not of maximum profit, nor maximum sales, but maximum quality of joy and connection.
See you at the dance!