Seasonal Amazon Strategies with Brenda Crimi & Tracy Hazzard

Protect your brand, product or invention from the hazards of consumer product launching and go from idea to product to big brand. With guidance from retail product design and development experts Tracy and Tom Hazard. Get the insider secrets to put the right things in the right order with the right resources so you can out design, outsource and out profit your way to retail success.

Hey there, product launchers. Brenda Creamy and I decided to team up today to talk about seasonality holiday season planning. Yeah, as you can see, it's a little warm for both of us here. We're on the west coast and it is summer and we're talking holidays, but why not Christmas in July, right?

Oh, love it.

But it is so critical that you start your planning early. And now for many of us, that planning actually happens October of the year before the holiday that you're planning. So we would have done holiday early planning, like thought process on what colors, materials, designs, things like that. We would have started October 2017 for this holiday. And I shared with you this week. Yeah, my color palette, but that's when I developed the color palette was way back then. And then we usually start, I would say our inventory planning in January because you sometimes want to get those orders in so that they immediately follow Chinese New Year depending on the lead time of the product.

Right, right.

And that's just the bigger the orders. When you're in mass market, you need to have them planned in so that your pos, you know, your purchase orders for those not in the lingo here, I gotta remember to keep defining. We are putting in a glossary though, for those of you who are like, what the heck does that mean? What's sku? Yeah, many of you have pointed out to me that we've spelt skew wrong a few times in our blog post because our team, my team did not understand that that was not a word. That it's hey, you. And I didn't catch it everywhere.

Yeah.

Anyway, so if you find one, let me know and I'll fix it. But anyway, we're going to put a glossary in place because there are these terms that go around. The point is that we would place purchase orders in January, like that would be the last opportunity and usually they would follow up. But that made it so that the factory could immediately come back from Chinese New Year and start to plan how they were going to achieve volume necessary. So it gave them planning time as well. It wasn't like they started on the orders immediately. They usually started on them in the spring to early summer. Like right about now, they'd be really in full production for it. But it meant that they had the planning time so they knew how many workers they needed, how much materials they needed, they could plan all of that. So that really is so important for you to make sure that you've got in place. And so let's talk about it from your perspective though, Brenda, because the planning cycle for doing E Commerce is a little bit different and a little. You have a little more flexibility and timing usually because your volumes are tremendous. So talk a little bit about how you've handled that in seasonality.

Thinking about Christmas as a seller versus a buyer is a whole different thing. When we're thinking about Christmas celebrating as a purchaser, we're not thinking until Thanksgiving unless you're really ahead of the schedule. Really a planner, I had a friend that did that by the. Anyway, that's a whole nother story, but I'm gonna go down that road. But when you're selling products, it's a whole different point. You're thinking months and months in advance. We're all E Commerce. So I'll speak specifically to the E commerce world. But the first year that we started selling online, it was like, holy cow, what just happened. We missed out on so much money because we didn't know how to plan, we didn't know what to expect. So hopefully we'll touch on some bases.

Here that, let's mention that real quick. Just kind of encapsulate that because that's what this is all about. And so if it's your first year doing it, it's so much harder. Right. And it's still hard even when you have a new product that you're bringing out that you don't know how much better it's going to do in the fourth quarter. But you start to get a sense of, I'm going to call it percentages. So in other words, you have an idea that I have a product and unless it happens to be a summer specific product or it's its own season, and that's fine, you would know then the season would be from May to August or something like that. So it's the same thing as having a fourth quarter. It's just into a different time frame. So think of when we're talking seasonality, it could be a different season for you.

Right? Right.

How much percentage, Brenda, would you say the fourth quarter does compared to your other quarters?

Our total year, 40% of our business happens in the fourth quarter.

And sometimes it's more for some businesses in some categories.

Absolutely. And at Some point in our call, we're going to switch over and show you some Google trend things. And so you can kind of help decide on your own product if you haven't had a priority fourth quarter to evaluate and compare to. So when you have a new product you have to go by industry standards, so to speak. But typically you're going to sell two to three times more at Christmas time than you would on a normal basis. So it's a delicate balance in trying to plan your inventory because you have a lot of cash outlay of products sitting there waiting to be sold. And so you've got some money tied up in that. So people need to plan for that. Because what will happen is if you don't plan and you're behind the eight ball and you're trying to catch up, what's going to happen is you're just going to lose revenue and that's the worst place to be if you're trying to.

It makes you really mad as a seller, doesn't it?

It makes you really mad. Some of the timing things that you had talked about specific to Amazon, because that's a big part of E commerce. So I'm going to talk about Amazon. When the fourth quarter hits on all heck breaks loose. And it isn't just in Amazon, it's with all the logistics, the ports, the ups, the delivery trucks, everybody is managing fourth quarter and fourth quarter volume. So what you believe is the most important product, your own product, may not be UPS's or Amazon's most important product.

Or the ports. Or the ports.

There was one season where there is the strike that happened. I mean there's just all kinds of things that can happen. So it's better to be prepared. So time wise though, it's our goal to have our products into Amazon for the fourth quarter by the beginning of November we are shipping our products to Amazon. Now Amazon typically takes, we like to say, about seven days to check in. Sometimes we're here in Arizona, sometimes Amazon tells us to send our product to the east coast. So there's a few extra days in shipping and if it's a busy warehouse that it happens to be shipping to, we might experience two or three days delay before it's actually checked in and live. So when we work with our clients, we tell them to allow at least a 7 to 10 day on the worst end to get that product to Amazon and check in. So if you're shipping out to Amazon the beginning of November, if you follow that seven to ten day rule, you're looking at the second to third week of November before that product is checked in and live. Because remember, you're not the only one sending in product. The whole nation is now sending their products into Amazon. Once you hit the middle of November, things start ramping up a little bit.

This year, just looking at the Calendar, Thanksgiving is the 22nd of November. When you look at the full weeks of it, that's halfway through the third full week of November. So you really probably wanted to be there no later than the 12th, I would think.

Exactly.

So that really you may want to start making sure that you're shipping in the end of October.

Exactly, exactly. So November 1st is our cutoff. We want to make sure all of our products are sent in by the beginning of November. Now that doesn't mean that we don't send product in after the fact, but we want to send enough product that gives us a big enough cushion. If sales take off more than what we anticipated, that we still have another two, three week window to get things going. So on the backside of that sales start, I think Amazon was December 18th last year, 19th, before they cut off and stopped guaranteeing that Christmas delivery.

Right. And sales drop off tremendously on that. And I'm going to anticipate based on that because Christmas Eve is a Monday. So I'm thinking that they probably will cut off like the 20th or 21st at the latest. Probably the 20th, I think in the 20th is probably the.

And on top of that, it isn't just Amazon may give you the comment that they're not going to guarantee. But then you still have UPS and all the other carriers and play FedEx and what are they doing? Are they behind? So even though Amazon's telling their customers we're going to guarantee it, FedEx and UPS may not be able to hold that agreement when it comes down to it. So the E commerce world is a little bit different when you're the supplier of those products. So keep in mind also the juggle is how much do you want to pay for storage with Amazon Amazon throughout the year? I want to say they charge 69 cents a cubic foot for storage of their products. The fourth quarter it goes up to $2.40 per square. So to give you an idea what that might cost, a shoebox normally costs maybe like 21 cents a month to store on Amazon. When you get that up into, I have to do the math ahead of time, but at $2.40, you're looking at probably, I think $1.42 or something like that. Anyway, it doubles it Starts to add up. Yeah. You're sitting here bouncing. It's like, okay, if I send the product ahead of time, I may be spending more in my storage fee, but you don't want to be stuck behind the eight ball either, and not having enough inventory, especially if it's going to.

Take 7 to 10 days to check it in. So if you ran out, it would.

Cost you far more, Right. In lost revenue.

Yeah. So you got to really balance that and be thinking about that and have a sort of quick response as you start to see the sales. You watch it every single day during the holidays, right?

Absolutely. And then on the back end, you had mentioned about the Chinese New Year. So for us, we put our orders into our manufacturers overseas in December.

Right.

And we accommodate our orders to do volume through March because you don't know what kind of backup is going to happen when you're going to get your product. So it's always better to give that little bit of a cushion.

Here you are busy worrying about what's selling on Amazon and worrying about the transaction, and you're worrying about all your planning that you're going to have to do for the first quarter of the year, the following year, because you've got to get your orders in with your backup. So you've got lots going on at this time of year. It's incredibly stressful.

Yeah, it could be. But I tell you, the dip in the summer, it's like waiting for Christmas. Come on Christmas Story. I'll take that stress over the stress of where are the sales at? Where are the shoppers.

That's right.

And come by. Right.

Well, we're going to do a very big special on Chinese New Year planning right before October, because I think that's the best time for everyone to really start thinking about it, because that's when we usually do our planning for it. So that when you hit the holidays and you are placing those orders, you know what you're going to do already. So we start our planning process back in October, and if you're developing a new product, that needs to be done either post Chinese New Year before we've done that actually in the summer.

Yeah, that's going to plan it.

So we're going to talk about that more in detail. But you're right that both things cascade at the same time. Now talk a little bit before we go back into the trend side, because I want to get to that. But tell me a little bit about that selling period, because we hear. So Black Friday is better at mass market retail cyber Monday. But what have you seen across the board from the sort of selling pattern?

Well, it really kind of depends on the individual brand and their business model and what their goals are. If they want cash flow, then certainly put the products on sale for these crazy discounts and you'll see the cash flow for your Black Fridays and your Cyber Mondays and things. There's plenty of volume even if you don't discount your product if you're fairly priced. So our strategy hasn't been about cash flow, it's more about sales volume. We don't typically put our products on sale in the Black Fridays and the Cyber Mondays, and so we don't see that spike in sales, but we still realize a huge jump because there's more people shopping, Right? Exactly.

So you're going to see the bump in that.

Exactly. Now, if your business model is such where you want to move a lot more product and you're okay with that, then you absolutely are going to leverage and see volume through Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

You've done that before where you sold a seasonal item. You sold gift boxes that were available only in the fourth quarter, basically. I mean, you had them all year round, but you were basically promoting them to get through them. How did that work? Did you do a different strategy?

We really didn't. We really didn't. If we wanted to take less volume as less revenue, then we could have put them on sale and move them faster.

Less profit, you mean?

I mean, less profit is. Yes, exactly.

So you opted to keep your profitability where it is and then maybe have a slightly less revenue than you would have had, but your profitability is higher. So it makes a more sustainable business overall.

Exactly. And one of the things that's a little bit more of a struggle though too, is managing the inventory through this process. Yeah, we could sell the heck out of it, but then would we have sold out and then not had. So there's a fine line in managing the balance of this is how much inventory we have, this is how much that we can move, this is how much we can get to you, this is how fast we can replenish. All those different strategies come into play. Then it's the play of like I spoke to a little bit earlier, it's like, okay, how much money do you have to invest in inventory that's going to sit there for 60, 90 days before you even see it moving?

Right.

So there's all that strategy that comes into play. So absolutely. Do the sales work. Yes. But also know that there's a process in Managing it. It isn't just woo hoo, I've got cash flow. Well, what's that going to do on the back end to your inventory? Your numbers, all those different.

Let's back up a little bit farther in the timeline process then. The reality for you is that you're placing orders in the summer, which you know is your slowest revenue time of year.

Right.

That's got to be a serious issue for you in terms of cash flow planning just to support enough inventory to go. So you've had to back up even further to preserve capital for that.

Exactly that. Exactly. And backing up further. We're placing orders in August for inventory to arrive by October at the latest so that we can get our shipments in and get them planned depending on the product and the volume and so forth. Yeah, it ties up a lot of cash because you're still needing the inventory. It's like things don't stop. So you could either maintain the status quo or you can put it into play. Maybe you have a marketing plan that you really want to kick it up and get it up and ranking before the fourth quarter so that you realize even more. So then you've got marketing dollars in play, you've got additional inventory in play. There's all part of that mindful strategy. You really have to put the numbers down and be conscious of them and budget for it.

Yeah, it's such a numbers game really in a sense. It requires so much planning, so much thought. And so you have the benefit of having done it for a couple of years in a row and you go, okay, now there's a pattern emerging. I see that. But when you don't, this is where the trends happen. So share with us how you do that when you're sort of planning a new product or helping your clients with a new product category that you've never done before.

Yeah. So it's like planning seems to be the key that we're talking about here. Planning, especially if you don't have prior years sales tracking to compared to. We love Google Trends. So I want to show a place here, I want to show some samples on Google Trends. I'm going to share my screen here and before I do that, let me actually pull up Google Trends. So that's what you're looking at. Because nobody wants to see my screen.

Nobody wants to scream. I know, I'm always like, what's on my screensaver?

Oh no. Let me be clear on this. Let me close Facebook. There we go. Okay, so one of the things, if you're a Product.

Gotta love that. The example sitting there is Taylor Swift and Kim Kardashian. Like we don't have.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. So one of the things I wanted to show some examples of some products that really are flat during the holidays that really don't experience a fourth quarter. Then there's products that like you said, their fourth quarter is really during the summertime and things like that. So use Google Trends as your benchmark to help plan for your inventory flow. So I came up with the idea of motor oil. I'm like, what Cannot really have a fourth quarter. And so I'm like, motor oil probably is not one that has a fourth quarter. And so something that products that will be affected by fourth quarter sales are gift giving products or products that are themed for the holidays or winter. So I just went into Google Trends, I typed in motor oil as my search term and I'm just going to change it to I want to see the last five years of history going on here. So this is gonna.

And just to be clear with everyone, this is showing search interest. Okay. It's not showing sales, it's showing search interest of people Googling something about motor oil. Now they might be looking for the right motor oil, Ford Mustang, whatever it might be they're looking for. But motor oil is in the search term?

Absolutely. I believe that it loosely translates into demand. Yeah. When you're looking at this line, obviously there's some ups and downs and things like that through the year, but it stays pretty consistent. There's no hu spike. Like see this is December. You don't see a big huge spike in December. So this is an example of a product that's pretty consistent along the way. Google Trends we also use when we have an initial product that we're exploring to see if it's on an upward trend. It's a low trend if it's already hit its peak. So we like to initially do our product search in Google Trends too. But for the point of today, this is a great way to see what the seasonality of your product might be. If it's not obvious to.

So something to note. What you're seeing here is actually the overall search trend time on Google right now. So this is pretty indicative. So there's always a summer dip. It looks like this hill kind of thing. Right? There's always a summer dip because people are busy and not necessarily Googling as much as they would be otherwise. So they're on vacation, they're doing something and then we see that same thing drop off at the holidays. Where they're just a little busy Right between Christmas and New Year's, going on vacation, going skiing, whatever. And they're not googling all day long. And so you see dips at those times of year across every word. But if you were seeing something that was a spike in interest, you'd see a bigger spike here.

Right. And let's go with copper mugs. Let's look at copper mugs in comparison. Let's up to our five years so that you can see it more clearly what's going on for the holidays. This one's fun. These are like ski slopes.

So what that tells me is that it stays pretty consistent throughout the year. But then at December, look at the huge spike. So that would tell me if I was selling copper mugs, I'm like, oh my gosh, look at the huge spike that I see in the holidays. This is a gift giving product, right?

Yes.

So you'd want to accommodate that.

Gotta wonder what happened in it looks like maybe August. September of 2017. Must have been in the hot drink item or something.

Yeah.

Because you got a little spike in 2017. That's before December, so.

Oh, right there. I see what you're saying.

It's August. Yeah, that's what I think is August. Some summertime spike. It must have been featured on the Today show or something.

Ah, good point.

Yeah.

Okay, so look at something like pools, for example. This was something that we talked about. You mentioned your fourth quarter may be a whole different season.

That's right. So look at that.

So December is your low point in pools. So they're not even something people consider giving for gift ideas and things. These are obvious. The point of doing these was so that you could really see an obvious difference in these trends.

Right.

So I'm going to do one more and then let's do Christmas stockings. That one was really fun.

Which you would expect to be.

Fourth quarter you would expect to be. So you'll see an extreme other side of it where it's like flat, flat, flat and it's Christmas. Yep.

So where does it start on there? Let's look at that.

August, September.

August, September. People start thinking about it and that's.

Pretty consistent with what we see in sales throughout the year. Different products, we have different dips and things. And other products luckily are coming up when other products are seasonally dipping. But overall trend, we'll start seeing September. October is when the climb hits. Sometimes you'll see that low at Lowell.

That's a really good strategy thought process. So I want to break that down just a little bit to be thinking about. Because look at here, your October 12th to October 18th, this is where it's starting to go on the incline. So being the first product in, if you've got a new product or you're new in the category, this is the time for those people that you might hate, the ones who make lists and do planning and do research prior to the holidays about what they're going to buy. This is where they start shopping. They start in the month of October. They're looking for deals, but they're also looking for the right gift or the right product or the right thing. And so they're out there searching. And so to start showing up in search terms in that time and have some product in already may be a tremendous early entrance strategy for you to get picked up. The other thing is that those of us that write articles about the best holiday gifts, you're writing them in October. So if your product doesn't even show up till November, it's too late. We won't see them.

Yeah. And there's a strategy too. If you're a new product that you're launching specifically again, around Amazon. Amazon is all about the ranking. So if you're ranking up in the top pages, you get the exposure, you get the sales. So when you're a new product, it's really hard to launch in the fourth quarter because your sales are in comparison with established products. So you're a new product that's only maybe getting a handful of sales and you're competing with these others that have traction and exposure that are now tripled and quadrupled in sales because of the holiday. You're fighting an uphill battle. So certainly launching in the fourth quarter can be profitable. It's not. I'm not necessarily discouraging it. What I'm encouraging is realistic expectations of what can happen. The good news is the shopper volume has increased. I don't know, quadrupled. Doubled at least. So the chances of you getting sales are good. But I wouldn't set the expectation that as a new product that hasn't begun ranking and hasn't had an initial marketing strategy that's played out to realize triple and quadruple the sales that month.

Yeah. So the strategy is probably not to launch at that time, but to do it sooner so that you build up that ranking and you do what you can in there. But also then you also have a better expectation because if you're going to do 40% better than you've done in the prior quarters, or the prior months. Then you could be looking at that and saying, okay, I need more inventory. Here's how much I can plan. At least you have a baseline even though you've not sold through the season before. So you'll be thinking about that.

Absolutely. And I would even go to the point of not saying don't launch. I would not do a big marketing campaign. I would do a soft launch. And so what that would look like is at least get your listing up, put it on the platform because it's still may get exposure because of the volume of shoppers and maybe just do some real low level sponsored ads because you'll get an idea of how the consumer is responding to your product and maybe get those first initial reviews and things like that. I wouldn't avoid putting your product up and selling it. I would avoid a big launch and.

Market going deep on inventory and things like that. Yes, now that's a very good point. Is there anything else you wanted to show us on Google Trends?

No, I think the point was made. But it's a great tool to use to help predict your product and the seasonality of it.

Drop us out of sharing.

So that's why I'm.

So we can see your face.

Stop. Share. There we go.

There you go. Wonderful. So I think that's really great tool. We look at this overall too when we try to figure out timing. So when we have something that is a summer product, we want to start seeing when the start of the trend is. Because there's always delays in a new product launch.

Always.

Yeah, there's always a delay and there can always be delays. And we'll talk about that minute when you have manufacturing issues because of capacity at the holidays time. Yeah, not your favorite subject. I know, but you gotta mention it. We look at that and so that's where I always like to be at that front end of it because that gives me a little bit of that buffer room. And if I get in there early, then you're just exposed to those early adopters, which is actually really great because they will spend a little bit more time going deeper in the listing than picking the first thing. Because they're not impulse shoppers. They're not. I gotta get in, I gotta get a gift and I gotta get out. We're recording this and it's Father's Day week. And so I put together a Father's Day article that gave my best things to basically buy last minute 3D printing so that you could download it and print it yourself, right? Oh yeah. Because you Waited till the very last minute. And ironically, as I was writing it, I was rapidly ordering Tom's gift on Amazon to make sure that I was.

You were one of those. I know.

I was like, darn it, I forgot about Tom. No, I didn't totally forget.

Wait, is that this Sunday?

Yes. Oops.

Anyway.

Yeah, I know.

Can you just buy two and send me one, please? Yes.

Steve needs the same thing. I'll have him bring it with them.

The buddy method.

There you go. But this is what happens. We all get into that last minute and we will pick the thing that's on the first page when we're doing that. But if you're early shopper, if you're a planner, if you're researching it, those people will go a little bit deeper and it gives you an opportunity to be seen and to have your product actually evaluated by somebody who's interested. And so that could be really good for your brand development and your growth overall. So that's a great point, Brenda, but it requires a lot of planning.

Yes. I want to just touch on this light bulb moment I forgot to mention when you asked me the question about the strategy and things about marketing and so forth for fourth quarter. Stocking stuffers are huge, obviously. So capitalize on those keywords if your product in fact can be utilized as a stocking stuffer and maybe change up one of your images on your listing to look like in a stocking so that you're planting the seed and the messaging. I want to reiterate in that is shoppers will shop from the images before they read the bullet points. So don't just put it in your bullet points and your back office keywords and think you're going to get the information across. Put it in an image. So when that shoppers just scan, I'm like, oh, this is a great idea. Especially stocking stockers for men. I mean, we're always looking for unique gift ideas for men. So capitalize on those words.

Yes, yes. So important. And another thing that I want to mention is this is an important reason to start to consider your package design as well. Because this is the thing at this time of year. Yes, it's easy. Amazon lets you throw them in the little sacks and you're going to get a gift. I've got a huge amount of them here at the house, so I don't need to do any wrapping this year. I'm just going to stick them all in Amazon bags. But if your package is not conducive to wrapping, it annoys people or at least odd shape. Yeah, it does annoy people. And they're like, now I gotta get a gift bag if they didn't order a gift wrapping from Amazon or whatever. So just be thinking about that. Is that if you don't really have it friendly or if you've been thinking about redoing your packaging time for fourth quarter to make it gift friendly is a great idea and it gives you a good reason to update that listing at that time and show the new packaging. Yeah, it's a good reason to be doing that. If you've already been thinking, I need to do this, that's a good time of year to do it.

Yeah. Or showcase it in a basket. Because people love creating gift baskets.

That is, that is. And that's also another reason to be thinking about because I know you're a big fan of bundles. I love bundles too. Bundling. So this is the thing. It's like when you can make a shopper's life easier by pulling together items that they would already naturally want to buy. It is great. Amazon pops up and if you buy a certain item and it says, oh, and people who bought this also bought this, right? And it shows you what you might want to put together. But if I had one place in which I could get it all together all at once, wouldn't that be better? That would save a lot of time and energy and people will spend more because they didn't have to work that hard. And this is the other thing. It's like when you're at a last minute for a gift, right? You're concerned if you order these five things from all the different places or three things from different places, that one of them might not arrive. And then what are you gonna do? You have like a quarter of a gift, right? You don't have everything you need. So this is where we want to pull it together. And shopping, that's a lot safer choice for them. So paying a little bit extra to make sure everything is going to be together and work together, that's a great idea.

And Amazon's going to tell you what those are because if you go to the detail page, there's always frequently bought together right below the bullet. Look at that. So if that's a product, it's a great idea for development of a second product in your brand. You could get something in that same genre. I mean, no brainer, do it right.

So let's say go back to your copper mugs idea. You were searching the copper mugs and copper mugs have a great spike so what might the drinks be that you're doing? Copper mugs. So if you were able to then bundle like prepackaged cider powder, people have that mulled cider and cinnamon sticks or something and just put that together and make it a bundle, then all of a sudden you didn't. Right. You just improved your ability to sell even more copper mugs than the other people.

And like you said, packaging is huge. So I'm gonna go off of a crafty thing, but putting it in cellophane and tying a bow on it, it's like, okay, boom, I'm done. Now what you've done is not only sold the product, but you've also increased your brand awareness that that person might come back and buy more copper mugs for themselves after.

That's right. They were like, that was really nice. I wish I bought it for myself or I'm gonna put it on my wish list. That's what I do actually is I like, I'm gonna buy this for my sister and I'm gonna put it on my wish list too.

I haven't learned that trick.

Well, you gotta do that I wish list everything. But here's also another thing to think about. A couple of other gift giving things that you may not be thinking about, but if your product is conducive to it, plan for it. At the end of the year, we have a problem as parents. We have teacher gifts. And sometimes they're like coaches teacher gifts, hairstylist gifts. There's a whole bunch of little gifts that go around to the people who serve us, who will do so much for our kids and for us every year. And we're looking for something that's beyond just giving them a gift card or giving them a card.

Right.

We want to give them something a little bit special. And so if you've got something that's on the inexpensive side that you could put into a multi pack. Usually when I choose something, I buy like the same one for all the teachers, for all the kids. Right. And so you just kind of buy like a six pack of something. Right? Exactly. So if you could multi pack something so that they could get them that way, that's also a strategy and idea. And then make sure that you're tagging them that gift for teachers, because that's exactly the way people search for it.

Well, and more so off of Amazon, Pinterest. So when I'm looking for inspiration, I usually go to Pinterest for the inspiration. Don't forget to include Pinterest as part of your Marketing strategy.

Right. And if you don't have the photos yet, there's great ways to create them. I just did an interview with Adobe and they've got this whole set of new like 2 to 3D. So if you have 2D skills in Adobe, like Photoshop or Illustrator, if you've got skills there or if your graphic designer does, they have this whole way of creating that in a three dimension so it looks better than a photograph. I could not tell the difference. So they were taking generic product and putting labels on it like wine bottles and coffee cups and things, and it looked like it was printed and made and photographed. It was.

So.

So there's a lot of ways to do stuff like that now, so you can find a designer who can help you with those things. Even if you have to recreate it or create it ahead of time and you don't have your product yet, it can be done.

Yeah, yeah.

So that's a great way. Also on Pinterest and Instagram and other places, stuff hasn't come out yet. So they don't always know what's going to be new for this Christmas. They are actually still looking at last year, the cool sell that happened yet last year that they missed. Even if it was your last year product, you should put it up again and tag it for 2018.

Last year we buy out liquidations and so we actually had a liquidation. That's all we do. But one of our things we do was a cosmetic line at Walgreens went out of business. And so we took a lot of cosmetics and I put them in those little dollar felt Christmas stockings and then tied them in the clear cellophane with little bow and I did the imagery and I put a listing and I targeted it to girlfriend gifts. Stocking stuff for all that. And I didn't have to do any promotion of it. But stocking stuff for all those keywords to use, I made up, I think like three dozen of them, but we sold all of them and I was like, look at there. So I mean, look at that.

Yeah. So I mean, people are out there looking for stuff and they're looking for ideas and so when they see something nice, they go for it. So these are some great ways to do that and think about that. So we've covered so much, but predicting the season, it requires lots of planning, lots of researching, sometimes some history. Any other advice you have, Brenda, from your experience to help our product launchers here?

The thing I always go back to is don't be afraid just to do it. Fail forward don't be afraid of the fourth quarter. Do the best that you can and jump in. You have to experience it once and then the next year will be better and better and better. So don't stall out, don't be intimidated. Don't bury your head because you don't have all the answers. Just jump.

Absolutely. And so Brenda's here for you to answer questions. And she has her next office hours coming up in the next, I think, three weeks or something like that. You've got another one planned. She's here. You can ask her those questions. You can always send her an email, check out her profile in the experts area of the platform. And these are just the kind of questions. So even if you get to October and you're like, panic, I need a consult with Brenda. She's here for you for that. So it is her busy season, too. She's here for you. Send her a message and get with her if you have questions. A good thing for you guys to set up post season is a postmortem with Brenda. What did I do that went wrong and what could I do better next year?

Because she is.

I know I didn't do as well as I could. I failed forward. I did something, but I could do better, but I'm not really sure what it is. So go over your numbers and bring the information and set up a consult with Brenda to talk about that because that's a great topic for you to really be better so that you can capitalize on the opportunity and the learnings that happen for you over that fourth quarter for next year. So that 2019 is even better.

Yes. Yay. Happy selling.

Yeah, exactly. Happy selling. So I want to remind everyone that I've got another design trends coming up, so holiday design trends, which is different than the color trends because we're going to talk about patterns and some things that you do different at the holiday season from design side of things because it's gift giving, so you got to be thinking that way. And I've also got Timothy Bush has come in on to talk about inventory management and planning for mass market. So if your product's about to be in mass market for the first time and this is a stressful planning process and it does start much earlier. So you really need to be thinking that through. And he's here to advise and tell you what's gone wrong, what's gone right. So that will be coming up later this week. Week as well. Anyway, got all of these exciting things for seasonal planning and we want to start early. So we're here to support you. We're here. Thank you so much, Product Launchers. And until next time, thank you for.

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