The Crafts Report: Public Opinion

Were Your 2003 Holiday Sales Better
or Worse Than Anticipated?

What’s your opinion?

Each month, The Crafts Report invites readers to respond to the Public Opinion question. Responses are published in the magazine.

This month’s question is:
What do you think is the
"hottest" issue currently for Crafts Professionals?

Please respond by March 8. Responses to this question will appear in the May 2004 issue.

E-mail: publicopinion@craftsreport.com; or answer online here.

Send responses to: “Public Opinion,” The Crafts Report, Box 1992, Wilmington, DE 19899; fax: (302) 656-4894.

Anonymous responses will not be published.

Well, since I didn’t expect good ones, I got what I expected … sales were a bit down. If the economy has rebounded I did not see it in my [jewelry] sales. People were still very cautious.

My sales in 2003 were down, but better than I expected. Stores and galleries ordered less than 2002, but they ordered new designs and took some risks.

The year 2002 was an all-time record breaker for us. That trend continued into the first three months of 2003. Business did slow down about the time of the start of the Iraq war and the slow down continued until late November. Our Thanksgiving weekend (Friday and Saturday) was a record breaker and December was up over last year which gave us our second highest December. So, I am encouraged about ending the year on an upward trend.
I attribute this strong end to the year to the rise in the stock market. I don’t think people have any more money; they just feel better about spending it. In generally good times, as we were in last year, the American consumer will dampen their appetite for more stuff for only so long.

Our sales did increase in 2003. We had numerous communications via telephone and e-mail and we acquired several new artists as a result of being in your magazine (TCR, August 2003, Regional Galleries). Client interest in glass and jewelry was especially high this year.

My Holiday Show at Disney/Epcot in December was great! I sold $10,000 worth of cats and kittens in one day. I had really planned my display — I built a ski hill and had kittens skiing down the hill and kittens snowshoeing and throwing snowballs. It was a very different kind of presentation. I guess it worked!

Better. We had a lot more custom orders than last year, and our smaller items were ordered in larger quantities. Our last quarter was up nearly 25 percent from 2003.

Although I wanted to at least keep steady with last year’s sales, I had no expectations for this year. I had decided that this was going to be as good a year as I could make it, and whatever happened, happened. Our sales were slightly down from last year, by about 2 percent.

Holiday sales were worse than anticipated in spite of hosting a second annual open house event, which featured more than two-dozen local, regional and national artists.

Being in a resort area our holiday sales are never as good as the summer, but since 2003 was such a great growth year (30 percent!), we hoped our holiday sales would grow, too, especially since we were hearing all the rosy forecasts for a very good season. In the end, our December was almost the same as 2002.