Welcome to BMTV! This week, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas so we thought we’d show you a few of the most popular balloons and party supplies that we sell. A product that you may not be aware of is our paper chain banners; every pack comes in a mixture of red, green and white colours with a Santa and Rudolf design. Each paper strip has a sticky bit on one side, so you simply need to loop the paper through another chain and stick it to itself. Great for stocking fillers or Christmas (or BMTV) decorations!

The best-selling.

The most sought-after balloon this year was the most popular balloon of last year: the Sitting Elf. These are proving to be so popular that our supplier is struggling to get the product in fast enough! When they do come in, they usually sell straight away and are out of the door before we even have a chance to put them away! Here’s a link to the Sitting Elf Balloon, but we can’t guarantee that we’ll have any left, they go so fast! These elf balloons may be popular due to the ‘Elf on the Shelf’ craze that has been sweeping social media. If you aren’t aware, the Elf on the Shelf is a small elf toy that people put in different situations and locations for their kids to come down to in the morning. This makes it look like the elf has been up to mischief in the night! Here he is playing the piano and creating a snow angel in the kitchen:

Thanks to Rachel Swartley for providing these images http://www.rachelswartley.com/category/elf-on-the-shelf/.

The best-selling foil balloons this year are the Christmas Friends Balloon from Oaktree, the Cute Merry Christmas Penguin design by Qualatex and the most popular shape: the 36 inch Snowman shape. If you aren’t aware, Qualatex are changing the size of packaging for their larger shapes. Ones that used to be double-width will become single-width size, and the reason for this is that the double-width size obviously takes up two spaces on a spinner or shelving unit. If you sell these balloons in a shop, single-width packaging allows you to get two different designs next to each other, therefore making you more sales! As well as the above, we have loads of Christmas foils for you to choose from for the festive period. Simply click on the link to go to our Christmas section.

A big impact for big spaces.

What do you think of this? This is a Galaxy Ball made from 38 inch tapers, which is used for hanging in a big open space to create a big impact. These are really easy to make, and we will show you how to do this in next week’s BMTV. Make sure you’re subscribed to our YouTube channel so you don’t miss out!

Website updates.

We are making three changes to the checkout process on Balloon Market to make it a breeze for you guys. We hope these will be live by the time you read this, but if it’s not before Christmas then it will be early next year. The first change is the one-page checkout. We know it can be frustrating trawling through various steps and different pages of delivery addresses, billing addresses and payment details to order balloons, so now it will all be in one location! You add your products to the basket as normal but when you click checkout, you will be taken to a single checkout page. You can still edit your delivery information if you need to, but if not you can hit order from this page and you’re done! Your credit / debit card details will also be saved (which is the second change we’ve made), so if you’re using the same card as last time you can literally place your order in seconds!

Lastly we are introducing a re-order function. This will be where you can go through your previous orders and add products to your basket from there. This is great if you purchase the same items on a regular basis, so you don’t have to bother looking for them on the website every time. You will be able to add all the items from a previous order, or go through all your orders to select the items you need. These will just be added to your basket so you can still carry on shopping on the website if you need a few extra bits!

That’s it from me this week, we’ll see you next time!

Rob

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