Etsy shop: season plan, Q4 2026 to Valentine's 2027¶
Status: approved by the owner 2026-09-27. The Monday run follows this table (being built: pod/plan.yml). Parent: etsy-shop · live calendar: etsy-shop/calendar.
The rules this plan follows¶
- Money is in Q4. Christmas and gifting from mid-October to mid-December is most of an Etsy shop's year, so Christmas gets the most slots, spread over gift niches: pets, professions, family, heritage. "Christmas for the nurse" and "Puerto Rican Christmas" sell better than generic Christmas.
- Listed 4–6 weeks before the day. Etsy needs time to rank new listings. Anything that can't be live 3 weeks before its date is skipped, not rushed. That's why Halloween gets only one more design.
- Christmas stops at Printify's holiday cut-off (published in November, usually around 10–14 December for US standard shipping). After that, no new Christmas designs and a banner saying "order by …".
- 5 designs a week (the Etsy-safety cap). If the October review is clean, it goes to 10 from week 44, and the extra slots go to Christmas and evergreen niches.
- Unfinished slots roll over. A design rejected by the reviewer, or skipped because the budget ran out, moves to the next week ahead of everything else, unless its date is too close (rule 2).
- US-first. Occasions mostly celebrated outside the US (e.g. Argentina's Mother's Day) stay in the calendar but get no slots in this plan.
Weeks (Monday design run)¶
| Week of | Designs (5) | Why now |
|---|---|---|
| 28 Sep | Halloween ×1 (humour) · Día de los Muertos ×2 · Christmas ×2 (pets, family) | last useful Halloween week; Muertos Nov 1; start Christmas early |
| 5 Oct | Thanksgiving ×2 · Veterans Day ×1 · Christmas ×2 (professions: nurse, teacher) | Thanksgiving Nov 26, Veterans Nov 11 |
| 12 Oct | Día de la Puertorriqueñidad ×1 · Hanukkah ×1 · Christmas ×3 (heritage: Puerto Rico/parranda, Mexico, Germany) | PR Nov 19, Hanukkah Dec 4 |
| 19 Oct | Christmas ×4 (pets ×2, family ×2) · Thanksgiving ×1 | peak Christmas listing window opens |
| 26 Oct | Christmas ×3 (professions ×3) · Kwanzaa ×1 · New Year ×1 | |
| 2 Nov | Christmas ×3 (heritage ×2, humour ×1) · Three Kings Day ×2 | Reyes Jan 6, big for PR/LatAm buyers |
| 9 Nov | Christmas ×3 (hobbies, pets, family) · New Year ×1 · Winter/cozy evergreen ×1 | |
| 16 Nov | Christmas ×2 (last-minute gift niches) · Valentine's ×2 · Galentine's ×1 | Valentine's lead window opens |
| 23 Nov | Valentine's ×2 · Lunar New Year ×1 · Engineers Week ×1 · evergreen ×1 | Black Friday week: sale event below |
| 30 Nov | Valentine's ×2 · Mardi Gras ×1 · evergreen ×2 | last Christmas designs were Nov 16 (rule 2) |
| 7 Dec | St Patrick's ×2 · Valentine's ×1 · evergreen ×2 | |
| 14 Dec → | back to the automatic picker (big occasions first) until a new plan |
Totals: Christmas 22, Valentine's 7 + Galentine's 1, Thanksgiving 3, Muertos 2, Reyes 2, New Year 2, and 1 each for Halloween, Veterans, PR, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Lunar New Year, Engineers Week, Mardi Gras. St Patrick's 2, evergreen 6.
Sales events on the same calendar (owner does these in Etsy, ~5 minutes each)¶
| When | What |
|---|---|
| ~11 Oct | Grand Opening sale ends: remove the sale slide |
| 27 Nov – 30 Nov | Black Friday / Cyber Monday: 25% off, new slide (Claude makes it) |
| ~10–14 Dec | Christmas shipping cut-off slide: "Order by … for Christmas" (date from Printify) |
| 26 Dec – 2 Jan | Quiet: no sale; the new-year designs carry it |
| 1–10 Feb | Valentine's slide |
What gets built so the automation sticks to this¶
pod/plan.ymlholds this table; the Monday run takes that week's slots first, applies rules 2 and 5, and only falls back to its own picker when a week isn't planned.- The notebook calendar page gains a plan vs done column, and the Monday ping says "week of 5 Oct: 5/5 planned designs built" or lists what rolled over.
- Christmas gets its own quota (22) instead of the default 2-per-occasion.