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A school or club Christmas fair takes two months to prepare. The stall that does well is not the one with the most things on it: it is the one offering two or three items that families recognise straight away. A photo of the class, the club badge, a child's drawing. Here is how to put that stall together without giving up your evenings in December.
Start with the photo, not the product
Everything comes from a single image. A group photo of the class, of the volunteer team, of the goat at the school farm, or a child's drawing scanned in. That one image goes on every item on the stall: it is what makes it look like a proper little collection rather than a jumble.
A few simple rules so it prints well:
- Crop tight. On a mug the printed area is small: a group photo taken from a distance becomes unreadable.
- Daylight, outdoors or next to a window. A phone flash flattens faces.
- Use the original, not the copy you received by message. Messaging apps compress images; get the original file from the phone that took the photo.
- Photograph a child's drawing flat, the sheet well lit, with no shadow from your hand.
You then place the image yourself in the online studio: upload it, move it around on screen until you like the crop, add text if you want. No account to create.
Three items are enough for a good stall
There is no point multiplying the range. A trio that covers three budgets works better than a list of ten products:
- The small impulse buy: the photo mug at $25.00, 325 ml ceramic, dishwasher safe. It is the item grandparents buy without thinking twice.
- The set to give away: the postcards at $25.00 for ten, A6 on 300 g card. Handy for New Year greetings.
- The piece that stays up all year: the A4 2027 wall calendar at , fourteen pages, spiral bound, a different photo possible for each month. One thing to know: the month names and public holidays are printed in French. In December it is the most obvious item on the stall.
The tote bag at $38.00 (cotton, 38 × 42 cm) does well if your group already sells things people need to carry home: jam, cakes, plants.
The volume discount changes your sums
This is the thing to know before you set your selling prices. From 10 items in the basket, the discount is 10%; from 25 items, 15%. It appears on its own in the basket, with no code to enter.
And items add up: ten different items count as ten. Six mugs, two calendars and two sets of cards get you over the threshold just as well as ten identical mugs.
Two worked examples: ten mugs cost $225.00 instead of $250.00. Twenty-five t-shirts, $616.25 instead of $725.00. The discount applies to the mug, t-shirt, sweatshirt, hoodie, tote bag, postcards, both calendars, cap, bucket hat, phone case, water bottle, Christmas bauble and candle, as well as the dog t-shirt and dog sweatshirt. The wooden frames and the canvas are excluded and do not count towards the threshold — if you want one for the raffle, count it separately. All the details are on the page for personalised items in quantity.
The ordering calendar, worked backwards
Start from the date of the fair and count back. We quote 5 to 10 working days in the UK, Europe and the US, up to 15 elsewhere, free shipping from €50, even for a single item. So allow at least a week and a half of margin, and add as much again for yourselves: it takes time to collect the photo, get it approved by the parents or the committee, and place the order.
In practice, for a fair on the first weekend of December: photo taken and approved by the end of October, order placed in the first half of November. You receive everything before the end of the month and all that is left is to set up the tables. Ordering in November also keeps you clear of the rush when everyone is ordering Christmas presents. For the record, the last day to order for Christmas itself is Thursday 10 December in Europe, with Monday 7 December the comfortable choice; outside Europe it is Thursday 3 December.
What to tell your treasurer
Nothing is held in stock: every item is printed individually, to order, in Europe, at the site closest to the delivery address. We deliver across the UK, Europe, the US and Canada.
An important point for a group buying to resell: a personalised item is exempt from the standard right of withdrawal. You cannot send back ten mugs because the stall did less well than hoped. Any printing, manufacturing or transport defect, on the other hand, is replaced or refunded. Hence the advice: if it is your first time, order a single piece first, check the result, then place the group order. The how it is made page explains the process item by item.
If you want to go further
The same approach works for the other big moments of the club year: the raffle and the bingo night, or the end-of-year gifts for volunteers. One well-chosen photo, two or three items, one group order: the recipe does not change.
