It’s the start of October. The shops are filled with fall décor and tubs of Christmas chocolates and decorations. But if you look in that corner of the shop at the back, you might find some Halloween bits and pieces stashed back there. This is the problem when it comes to Halloween: it gets squeezed between everything else that’s being promoted, and if Halloween’s your thing, you feel the squeeze too. Let’s talk about how to sell Halloween crochet when autumn décor and Christmas are stealing the show.
Why Halloween Gets Squeezed Out (It’s Not Just You)
Halloween wasn’t always treated this way. It used to be far more visible and you could more easily find Halloween on display in the shops, and even online. It’s not that Halloween is less popular; it’s just being given less space on the shelves and in advertising. I think one of the reasons for this was a change in how companies pay their employees – at least in the UK where I live – and that change changed how Christmas is promoted. This movement in the Christmas promotion period can be seen in the US too.
People used to get paid weekly, but then things started shifting and now most people get paid either monthly or every 2 weeks. Why does that affect Halloween? Because instead of 16 paydays between September 1st and Christmas Day, there are now 3 or 4 if you’re paid monthly, or 7 or 8 if you’re paid every 2 weeks – far fewer paydays than there were before.
That means businesses don’t have as many paydays to persuade you to buy their goods for Christmas. It’s also why it feels like Christmas is getting promoted earlier and earlier. Christmas marketing really did use to begin much later – after Halloween – because the weekly wage cycle meant there were plenty of paydays to get people to buy.
Now that promotion starts before Halloween, so it feels like this fun, spooky holiday has become the neglected little cousin of Christmas. All this applies to you too. If Christmas is your main sales target, you need to start promoting for Christmas in September too. But it leaves you with the awkward question of what to do about Halloween. If Halloween is your niche and you need to go all out for it, you’re competing with all of the Christmas promo. What do you do?
Should You Sell Halloween Crochet or Skip It?
You have 2 main options. Skip Halloween altogether and just concentrate on Christmas, or go all in on Halloween and accept a much shorter Christmas sales period.
Skipping Halloween makes sense if you don’t have anything for sale that fits the occasion. There’s no point creating a random custom item and half-heartedly marketing it. You’re not going to get many sales and it’s going to look out of place in the middle of the rest of your marketing. It’s better just to ignore Halloween and put all of your time and effort into your festive promotion.
But if Halloween is very much your niche and your audience are really into it, then it’s time to go all out and make your crochet as visible as possible and make Halloween your entire online personality for the whole of October. This does mean that once Halloween is over, you’re into November and will have only a few weeks to promote your Christmas products. Because you will start the Christmas promotion so much later than everyone else, you probably won’t make as many sales as other people who have been promoting the festive season for 2 months already.
Not Sure? Let Last Year Decide
And if your crochet business sits between these 2 options and you have a nice selection of items you could sell for Halloween but you also have things you can promote for Christmas – you have a choice to make about which option you’d rather choose. Do you feel your audience is enthusiastic enough about Halloween to buy lots of what you have to offer, or would you make more sales for your festive promotion in that time instead?
To answer this, take a look at what you sold last year. What sold best during September and October? Did you make more Halloween sales, or did other items fill your order books? Looking at what happened before will give you the information you need to make the decision. If you didn’t sell any Halloween crochet last year, then simply ask your audience. Putting up some engagement posts on your social media can tell you a lot about what your audience wants. Ask questions like “Will you be buying anything for Halloween this year?” or do an A or B social post with A being a Halloween product and B being a Christmas product and ask them which they prefer. You can put up several of these types of posts and they can help you make your choice.
4 Ways to Sell Halloween Crochet in a Short Season
There are 4 main ways to sell your crochet.
- In person at craft fairs
- On sales sites like Etsy
- Newsletters
- On social media
With Halloween being such a short selling season, it’s really going to help to know the pros and cons of each and how you can use each of them to your advantage as much as possible in such a short space of time.
Halloween Craft Fairs
Let’s start with in-person craft fairs. These offer the fewest opportunities as you’re likely to only find 1 or 2 Halloween themed craft fairs in the promotional window. However, they do mean that your target customers are all concentrated in one place, so you have the potential to make the majority of your Halloween sales at these events. Of course, you need to make all of your stock in advance, but what you don’t sell you can offer online as ready to ship, which also has the advantage of giving your customers confidence that they’ll receive their item in time.
Grab these 9 tips for selling your crochet at craft fairs here – it’s free to download!
Selling Halloween Crochet on Etsy
Sales sites like Etsy are built to match customers with what they’re searching for. So if you make sure Halloween is mentioned in your titles, tags and descriptions of your crochet listings, you’re going to have the best chance of appearing in search results. You have the option of offering premade stock only or crocheting to order. When deciding which to go for, you need to keep in mind how long each item takes to make and when the last postage dates are to guarantee delivery before Halloween.
You don’t want to get complaints and demands for refunds because items didn’t arrive in time for the big night. The postage times are the biggest downside to selling on these sites, especially if you’re making to order, as you may have to stop taking orders a whole 2 weeks before Halloween.
Your Email Newsletter
Newsletters work well because your existing audience are the easiest people to sell to. You know they are interested in your crochet because they signed up to your email list, so it makes sense to use it. Of course, you need an email list to start with to make this method work.
Include photos of your entire Halloween crochet range and let them know it’s available now. Send an email each week reminding them of last postage dates and the amount of stock left. It’s OK to send more emails than usual when there is such a limited time span for them to buy. After all, you don’t want them to miss out and they may not open every email you send.
Social Media and Online Craft Fairs
Lastly we have social media, and with such a short selling season this offers the best range of options to make your Halloween sales. You don’t just have your own page or group to post on; you can find online craft fairs to take part in as well.
Online craft fairs work much like an in-person event in that a variety of small businesses come together to offer a range of products that suit the theme of the event. I took part in several of these back when I sold my crochet and they can be really fun to do, and you get to discover new business owners to network with.
The advantage of these events is that everyone pitches in to advertise the event. This means that everyone’s audience gets to discover all of the other sellers, so even if someone doesn’t buy from you, they may decide to follow you until they are ready to buy. But everyone who does take an interest in the event will be there for Halloween, so just like in-person craft fairs, the right audience is showing up en masse, so you get a much better chance of making sales than by someone coming across one of your social media posts in their feed.
I always did online craft fairs on Facebook, and they worked by an organiser creating an event and then albums of pictures were created within that event which could be browsed through and people could comment to buy.
You can find these events by searching for “online craft fair” or “online market event”. Then it’s just a case of contacting the organiser and asking if you can join the event with your crochet. You could also organise one yourself if you know of other small businesses that you could invite to join you.
Make Your Posts Unmistakably Halloween
Selling on social media also means putting the effort into standing out in people’s feeds. At this time of year you’re battling to get noticed in between autumn / fall décor and Christmas promo posts. So you need to go all out with the very obviously Halloween themed graphics for your posts. Using templates from Canva can help, or using Canva to add elements to your photos like cobwebs, ghosts and witches. Adding coloured frames around your crochet pictures in Halloween colours like orange, black, purple, green and white, can also make your posts unmistakably Halloween themed.
For help in learning to use Canva, download my Canva Crash Course For Free And Pro Users here for just $7
The idea is to catch the eye with just a brief glance, so even with just a quick look, the person knows that they’re looking at a Halloween post.
Get visible and get eye-catching. It might feel like you’re going over the top, but when you’re competing with so much else, over the top is what is going to get the attention, and only once you have attention can you make any sales. This difficulty in standing out in the feed is the biggest issue with using social media.
Keep Selling Locally Right Up to Halloween
The other opportunity social media offers is to keep your sales open right up until Halloween itself using local selling groups. If you can offer pickup or local delivery, you could keep making sales right up until the last minute if you have ready-made stock.
Quick Halloween Crochet Ideas to Sell
If you’re short on time or are looking to quickly increase your existing Halloween stock, what can you crochet? Quick and easy makes are your best friend here.
- Spiders for décor – quick to make and you can make different sizes just by using different weights of yarn.
- Cobwebs – quick to make just using chains arranged and knotted together.
- Mini cauldrons – just round-bottomed baskets with a handle over the top. You could make them more cauldron-like by adding bright green yarn inside to look like boiling potions.
- Hanging ghosts – very quick and easy; use stick-on eyes to make them even easier to make.
- Hair clips with mini ghosts, witches’ hats, pumpkins or spiders on them. These are quick to make and kids will want to wear them all through October and not just for Halloween itself.
- Bunting of mini ghosts, pumpkins, spiders or witches’ hats. This turns cheap motifs into a much higher value item.
All of these can be quick to make and can mean you have more to offer your customers than if you used your time to make a couple of much bigger items.
One of the best things about crocheting for Halloween is that you can make a lot with just a few colours of yarn – black, white, orange and green are all you need to make a really good range of Halloween makes, which makes buying your yarn really simple.
Or, add an extra dimension by using glow-in-the-dark yarn. It’s not widely available, but if you can get hold of it, it’s really going to make your crochet stand out amongst all the other products being offered. Come to think of it, I really should make some glow-in-the-dark ghosts for my own Halloween display!
When Should You Start Planning Your Halloween Crochet Sales?
July: When it comes to planning your Halloween sales, you ideally want to start planning in July – 3 months before you need to start publicly promoting. This gives you time to plan what you want to offer, make samples so you can take photos, decide your prices and plan how you’re going to be promoting everything.
3 months might sound like a long time, but time flies once you get started with this process. The more you can plan in advance, the more time you will have during October to plough into promoting your crochet everywhere.
If you’re planning on doing craft fairs or selling ready-made stock only, then July is the latest you want to get started to make sure you have enough time to choose new designs and have enough time to crochet everything you need.
Over the summer: Through the summer is when you want to start looking for Halloween themed market events – both in person and online ones. It takes time to put these events together and advertise them to customers, so the sooner you can sign up to events, the better for yourself so you can finalise plans and stock needs, and better for your audience who will know what they can expect from you and where you’ll be showing up.
September: September is when you also want to get your listings on Etsy live. It takes time for search results to do their thing, so the earlier you can get your Halloween products listed the better.
1 October: Then once the 1st of October arrives, it’s time to go all in on promoting your Halloween crochet and be as visible as you can possibly be. This is going to be your focus for at least the next 2 weeks. By the time October rolls around you also need to know what your last order date is for posting out orders and making and delivering custom orders. You need to know this and stick to it so you don’t end up with disappointed customers who didn’t get their Halloween goodies in time.
Mid-October onwards: After that cut-off date for postal orders, you can still do in-person market events and local delivery or pickup. Those become your focus for the last 2 weeks of October.
Halloween Crochet Selling FAQs
What Halloween crochet sells best?
That is going to depend on your audience and what type of things they are interested in. Decor, costumes, hair accessories, something else? What types of items do they buy from you outside of Halloween? If you’re not selling much yet, then take a look at what is trending on Pinterest for Halloween. That can give you some ideas too.
Is it too late to sell Halloween crochet in October?
Not at all. What restricts you is how much time orders take to make and postage times. But you can sell locally right up until Halloween itself.
Should I sell for Halloween or focus on Christmas?
Only you can make that decision. If you’ve read through this article and you’re still undecided, I would suggest that it’s easier to focus on a single selling season – Christmas – than try and split your time and marketing between 2 different seasons.
Is Halloween Your Season?
Halloween is a fun season to sell for, but it gets squeezed into the corner of the shop surrounded by tubs of Christmas chocolates. If Halloween is your season, then get busy showing everyone that Halloween has the right to be celebrated in the style it deserves with your crochet being shown off front and centre.
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