Valentine’s Day – Boom or Bust?

Valentine’s Day has never been a good sales holiday for me.

It never seems to matter whether I have my marketing ready to go, or an appropriate inventory of jewelry, or the right messaging, I have never been able to make it work for me.

And I have come up with lots of reasons why:

• The Bay Area doesn’t treat this holiday like a big deal, so local sales are often a bust.

• The more traditional consumers who MUST HAVE JEWELRY for Valentine’s Day want something more corporate and aren’t shopping for artisan gifts.

• I’m not into the holiday myself so I come across as insincere in my marketing.

Or maybe it is a combination of all of the above. 

Do you have to market your jewelry for Valentine’s Day?

Whatever the reason, I decided this year not to try to bang my head against the Valentine’s Day wall. I sent out one email without any sense of urgency. I mostly used it as a reason to reach out to my eCommerce customers to remind them that I still exist. I didn’t build it up and now I feel a sense of calm.

Why am I so calm? I looked over my historic numbers and I planned for this. 

If my customers are unconcerned, then I should focus my energy on the holidays that they DO care about. While it is true that some jewelry companies have incredible sales leading up to Valentine’s Day, not all do, and so much of your success for the holiday depends on your customer base.

Look over your sales history

I knew in advance that this wouldn’t be a slammed holiday season for me. I set aside some money so that I wouldn’t be panicking this time of the year, and I sent my email with zero angst and zero expectations. It feels great, to be honest.

Know your customers

My customers might not be into Valentines’ Day either, and that’s OK. They ARE into Mother’s Day. They are into the back-to-school season (I often have  better than average sales in August). They ARE into graduation. They ARE into celebrating anniversaries.

How do I know all of this? I look at the data.

Prior to this season, I looked up my sales history, I looked through some old emails that I had sent, I looked through my old show schedules and sales and I remembered talks that I’d had with individual clients. From all of this research, a pattern emerged – pushing a message on my customers that they didn’t care about wouldn’t help them, and it wouldn’t help me.

If they aren’t worried about Valentine’s Day, then I’m not either. I’ll turn my focus to the holidays that they do care about.

How about you – do you know when your customers like to shop? What patterns have you noticed? Drop a note in the comments!