A 2-year anniversary show

Hello and welcome to a special 2-year anniversary show of BMTV! The first show that we ever did was a Valentine’s Day show in 2015 and we’ve been doing BMTV every week since. Thank you to all of you who have watched and commented over the years, you’ve really made the show a joy to make! Some interesting facts for you; we reached 1000 subscribers in the first year but are now nearly up to 4000, we have 750,000 views with 60% women and 40% men. Also, If you were to put the view time altogether and played it non-stop, it would be over 4 years of footage!

What’s new for Valentine’s Day 2017?

As Valentine’s Day is just around the corner we wanted to look at some stock and gift ideas, but also focus on how to maximise your profit while also increasing the value for your customers.

First up we have the new Cubez, Orbz and Diamondz Valentine’s balloons from Amscan. These are all great balloons and they look like they should cost more as they are so 3D. Bigger is better obviously and they definitely create a lot of impact. Next, we have this new funky Zebra Print/Honeycomb design from Northstar. Greg likes this so much he would wallpaper his house with the design! We mentioned the red love script balloon last week and we think this is going to be the hot product for Valentine’s Day this year. We also have this Gellibean balloon from APAC. As you may remember from previous shows, we really like the Gellibean balloons as the design is printed underneath a plastic film which gives them a unique shine and incredibly vibrant colours!

Valentine’s Day staple

This isn’t a new balloon but the best-selling balloon for Valentine’s Day is, of course, the 18 inch plain red heart foil balloon. What people are going to do a lot this year is personalise these with a vinyl cutter, like the Cameo Silhouette. You could sell the plain red heart for £3.99 or £4.99, whatever you choose, but if you add a bit of personalisation that is unique to the customer (and something they can’t get anywhere else) then you could easily sell that balloon for £9.99, even though it’s only cost you a few extra pence in materials. Arguably, the most important thing about doing something like this is that your customers are going to come back to you because you’re the shop that can give them something unique!

By the way, we’ve got a huge batch of 18 inch red hearts from Northstar, so much that they were able to give us a really good price so we can pass on to you! We have a discount structure with various packs that you can save money on! If you get 50 of these balloons you save 4% but it goes right up to 1000 where you save 26%! Take a look at our Valentine’s section here to find a price that’s right for you!

Gift ideas

Last year Emoji balloons were new to the market and did really well, and this Valentine’s Day Amscan have brought out a sitting Emoji heart balloon. This is the latest in their line of “sitting” balloons that goes along-side the sitting heart guy for their Valentine’s range. These balloons are made from three air-fill parts so they won’t cost a lot in helium inflation. Greg has the idea that this could be strapped into the passenger seat of a car for a nice surprise gift when the unsuspecting Valentine goes to work!

You may notice that the Emoji balloon is sitting on a box, a white box, for Valentine’s Day?! Shouldn’t it be red and covered in hearts? Well yes but it’s all about personalisation and there are ways of making an item special with the materials that you have at hand! For instance, you could decorate the box with a big bow and ribbon made from curling or floristry ribbon. Or, if like me you’re not very good at bows, you can get these pull bows that are ready made bows. You can get normal-sized pull-bows or smaller, organza bows that have extra frilly bits! We are talking about boxes because they make a nice addition to a balloon gift.

Greg tells the story of whenever he buys a gift and the cashier asks if he wants it gift-wrapped, he says yes because he doesn’t want to do it himself! Many people are going to be like that so think of it as offering your customers a solution by suggesting a special balloon in a box. You can put nice red tissue paper in the box, chocolate hearts, confetti, diamanté or even these fabric rose petals! You could call it the deluxe balloon box and really add that extra value.

Other Valentine’s foil ideas

A lot of people get engaged on Valentine’s Day so how about personalising this engagement ring balloon with “will you marry me?” or something similar, it’s just a little bit different. Rachel informed us that Sue Bowler did a blog article on how to “bling” balloons using this diamanté chain, you could glue it onto just about anything to create a really unique design! Have a look at Sue’s blog here.

Other balloons that tickled Greg were these Donut and Pizza balloons, why may you ask? Rachel made the joke of “I Donut what I’d do without you” and Martin made the joke “I’d be lost without a pizza you”… For any scrabble lovers, this scrabble themed balloon has a double kiss score and a double hug score, and there is this little dog balloon that is quite trendy at the moment.

Going back to Greg being upsold gift-wrapping, you could add small items at your till to suggest added gifts to customers as they are paying. We have these 9 inch hearts that we’ve put into a pack with sticks where you can save 10%. These have valves in as well so they don’t need heat-sealing, just display them at your till and offer as an extra gift!

Upselling Latex

Again this a great way to upsell, if someone comes in asking for a single latex balloon then offer them a bunch of balloons. You could get these packs of 6 latex balloons and open it for a bouquet of three. The extra balloons could allow if you accidentally burst one or you could go that little bit extra and offer them a free couple of balloons! Where are they going to come next time they need balloons? Back to you because you gave them a free one!

Head over to the Valentine’s section on balloonmarket.co.uk to see all of our range and the packages you can get. That’s it from us this week, all that remains is to ask the Question of the Week: What is the most romantic gift you have ever received?

See you next time!

Rob

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