4 Tips to Make Money With Holiday Kits (On-the-Ground Learnings Revealed)

When CCC team member Kelly was planning her son’s first birthday, she knew she needed to keep up with the other moms in her community and create amazing party packs for her son’s friends to take home.

She set to work collecting fun toys, snacks and goodies and packaging them in adorable little buckets. They were a hit! 

She thought ‘if I can make kids’ faces light up with a few simple items in a bucket, imagine what I could do with a whole art/craft kit box’.

And that’s what inspired her to start her own kit business.

In today’s blog we’ll hear from Kelly herself about all the great tips she learnt from launching her Christmas kits.

 Tip 1: Price your kits for profit (before you purchase anything!) 

Within 2 days (with the help of the CCC pricing calculator) I knew exactly how much my kits would cost and how much profit I’d make - before I even purchased anything!

I filled in the kit calculator spreadsheet with all the items I’d need and went through the list systematically, comparing prices for each item across all of the in-person stores in my area and our local online stores.

 Tip 2: Online shopping is your friend 

Online shopping is the best way to compare prices and find the cheapest. You can have it all delivered to your home, or if there are a few items you’d like to check out in person before purchasing at least you’ll know which stores to visit. This will save you a bunch of time that you would have otherwise spent driving around looking for items in stores.

Online shopping also negates inevitable distractions. “Oooh look at that fun craft item! Maybe I should add some of those, and those, and those!”

If you’re anything like me, you get totally stuck in the art & craft aisle. Online shopping removes all the distractions because you can filter your search to one specific item and ignore all the rest.

 Tip 3: Don't get carried away and buy in bulk too soon 

This is CCC’s number one tip for making sure that your kit business is low risk. You do NOT want to end up with extra stock that doesn’t sell. 

And as amazing as your kits look, you don’t know yet what you’ll learn along the way and whether you’ll need to change your kits after your soft launch, so DON’T get carried away and buy in bulk (yet).  

This was very tempting, as there were so many great ‘buy bulk and save’ deals, but I had Christelle and Stefanie’s voices in my head saying… 

“create one kit first, take pics for marketing, get pre orders and THEN buy in bulk.” 

This is one of the biggest lessons they learnt when they first started selling kits back in 2018. They saved me the trouble of making that mistake, and I felt grateful to have mentors who had gone before me and walked the walk so I could learn what not to do.

Another little tip: don’t buy your box until you’ve collected all your supplies. You need to make sure your box isn’t too small (obviously) but also that it isn’t too big! 

A box that is filled to the brim with supplies and goodies has a much higher perceived value than a bigger box that is half full. For more tips on how to make your kits stand out as the best kits in town, head over to check out this blog post.

 Tip 4: Get your timing right 

I never thought I would start a kit business. I have a full-time job that I love (at CCC) and never thought of branching out to start a side-hustle. But then Halloween rolled around and everything changed.

I noticed that there were so many people in my community capitalising on the holiday. Halloween goodie bags, Halloween cookies, you name it. BUT there was no one selling art/craft kits. “This is it”, I thought. “This is an opportunity I need to grab with both hands.” 

It was too late for me to start selling Halloween kits. Halloween was only 2 weeks away and I hadn’t started planning my kit, not to mention ordering supplies. But then it dawned on me - what’s an even bigger deal than Halloween? Christmas! 

Christmas is a time where parents are looking for gifts for their kids (and activities to keep them occupied during Christmas vacation).

I decided this was the perfect time (and as low-risk a time as any) to launch my holiday kits.

Deciding what to put in my kits was easy. 

Part of my job at CCC is to edit our in-house artist Lili’s art tutorial videos and proofread the step-by-step instruction templates before uploading them to the CCC hub. 

I spend every day in awe of these incredible art tutorials, and the instruction templates are done for you so all you have to do is print them out and pop them in your kits. 

Click here to grab a free art lesson with a done-for-you instruction template (that you can simply print and add to your kit!)

We had just wrapped up the Merry Christmas art series (perfect timing), so I printed out a batch of instruction templates and full-colour reference images and I was ready to go.

My favourite thing about the Merry Christmas art series is the DIY puffy paint! I found the cutest little 60ml shaving foam bottles at my local pharmacy and some school glue on sale and popped those into my box.

I handed out flyers at my local community market, posted on local community groups and I’ve already started taking pre orders (and money!!) via Whatsapp. I’ll be closing sales around the 10th of December and only then I’ll purchase all the supplies. I plan to line the boxes up (kind of like a mini factory line) and pack my kits in one morning and deliver them that same day.

It’s that easy!

What a fulfilling and fun experience this has been so far. When Christmas season 2023 rolls around I know what I’ll be up to.

 Just so you can keep these tips handy while you’re creating your own kit, let’s do a quick recap: 

Tip 1: Price your kits for profit (before you purchase anything!)
Tip 2: Online shopping is your friend.
Tip 2: Don't get carried away and buy in bulk too soon
Tip 3: Get your timing right

Until next time, cheers.

XO
Kelly from CCC

P.S. Did Kelly’s story inspire you to start your own kit business?

Grab done-for-you instruction templates to print out and pop into your kits by joining the Art Lesson Club.