Decisions, Decisions, Decisions!!

It might be hot as blazes outside, or in our case, no electricity at home.  However, ignore all that----this is the time of the year when we are up to our Elf Ears in decision making for Christmas holiday candy and gifts.
All year long we see holiday merchandise and candy.  All year long we debate about what we are going to do this year.  What should be the theme, the colors, the decorations, the most popular gift and candy items?  Do you think we are procrastinating?  Well, not really.  We are agonizing over what our customers are going to want for the holidays.
Trends come and go so quickly these days that bacon is popular today, but might not be in December.  So if we have over bought bacon flavored candy, we've bought a pig in a poke!!
Have I ever told you the story of the Billy Bass episode?  Some of you remember the Billy Bass singing fish plaque....or maybe you'd just rather not think about it.  Our friend Brad is probably in that category.  He had a gift shop and was a very experienced retailer and sales rep.  A number of stores were selling Billy Bass (shame on us!!) and Brad decided to order 100 Billy Basses for his shop....just when Billy fell out of favor and lots of cheap knock offs came on to the market.
We don't know what Brad did with all his Billy Bass plaques.  He did have a big basement in his store.  But we totally sympathize with him....we've had some real "dogs" too over the years.
Brings me back to shopping for the holidays.  Just today several of us were debating over Lollipals...a Kencraft lolly pop which we have sold for many years.  Which one of the designs and the flavors will be a hit this year?  Hot chocolate, cranberry or peppermint candy canes?  We pretty well know that most of our customers don't want pink, lime green, blue or white Christmas colors.  Most want the traditional red and emerald green.  How do we know this?  Let's just say that we've had some pink Christmases which ended up in our After Christmas Sale.
And yet.........this could be the year of the Pink and Lime Green Christmas!!  Holy cow!!  So you see what we are up against?  And some people think it is easy being a retailer.  Decisions, decisions, decisions!!