How to sell Christmas décor, candles and fairy lights online without a single broken bauble

TL;DR

• • Décor is bought early December; candles and lights sell all month; party décor until 31 December.
• • Fragile: wrap each piece, use dividers, box inside a box, and expect a few breakages in your price.
• • Candles: pack upright, label for safety, state a burn time you tested, make in small batches of one scent.
• • Lights: test every string, copy the spec exactly, check whether BIS registration applies, ask your courier about batteries.
• • Bundles lift the order and share the delivery cost; the build-your-own hamper page is free.
• • Last order date in the announcement bar, then pause ordering. Candles and lights sell all year; baubles wait a year.

The season, and when each thing sells

In India, Christmas shopping starts after Diwali, when the festive mood is still on and homes are already decorated. Décor goes first: the tree, the wreath and the baubles go up in the first half of December, so a bauble that arrives on the 23rd is too late. Candles and lights sell all month, as décor, as gifts and for the parties. New Year’s Eve keeps party décor, fairy lights and candles selling right up to 31 December. Be live with décor by the end of November; candles and lights can join a week later.

Who buys: families who put up a tree every year, young people decorating a first flat or hostel room, offices and cafés doing a corner for photos, and anyone buying a gift for a friend who celebrates.

Three products, three risks

Décor: fragile goods in plain words

Baubles, wreaths, stockings, tree toppers, garlands, table centrepieces. The question for each is simply: what happens when the box is dropped from waist height, because somewhere between you and the buyer it will be. A “Fragile” sticker does not change that. Packing does.

• Choose shatterproof where you can. Wooden, felt, fabric and paper ornaments survive a courier; glass baubles only with the packing below, and price in a few broken sets.
• Wrap each glass piece separately, put them in a box with cardboard dividers so they cannot touch, then put that box inside a slightly larger one with crumpled paper all round. Two boxes, no empty space.
• Sell décor as sets (a box of 12 baubles, a wreath with its hook) so one order is worth the delivery, and photograph the set on a tree, not on a table.
• Say the material and the size in centimetres on every product. “Set of 12, 6 cm, wood” prevents the return from a buyer who expected glass, or expected bigger.

Margin, as a worked example: a set of twelve wooden ornaments that costs you ₹180, ₹50 of packing, ₹80 delivery and a ₹12 payment fee (we use 2% in these examples; check your own gateway’s rate). Priced at ₹599, you keep ₹277. The same set in glass, with a double box at ₹90 and one set in twenty arriving broken, keeps about ₹200. The packing lessons from clay diyas carry over exactly; see how to sell diyas and Diwali décor online.

Candles: flammable goods, honest claims, small batches

A candle in a parcel is not going to catch fire. The transit risks are a broken jar and softened wax, which December mostly spares you. The selling risks are the claims: a copied burn time, a missing safety label.

• Ask your courier whether they carry candles; some have rules on wax, glass or anything they class as flammable, and it is better to know in November.
• Pack upright, with dividers, tape every lid, and fill the box so nothing can move.
• Put a safety label on every candle. The lines are standard: never leave a burning candle unattended; keep away from children, pets and anything that can catch fire; trim the wick before each use; burn on a heat-resistant surface; stop burning when a small amount of wax remains. Print them small on the base or the box.
• State a burn time you tested. Burn one of each size yourself, in a normal room, until it is done, and note the hours. Write “approximately 35 hours, tested by us”. Do not copy a supplier’s figure for a different wax or wick, and do not round up.
• Say what it is made of: soy, paraffin, beeswax or a blend; the weight in grams; the wick. Claim nothing about health, and no certification you do not hold.
• Make in small batches of one scent. Ten to twenty candles at a time, same wax, same oil, same dye, so every jar in a set matches. Many makers let soy candles cure, which means rest, for a week or more before selling so the scent settles; follow your wax supplier’s guidance and plan your making dates backwards from your last order date.

Margin, as a worked example: a 200 g soy candle with ₹120 of wax and fragrance, a ₹60 jar, ₹20 of wick and label, a ₹40 box with a divider, ₹80 delivery and a ₹14 fee. Priced at ₹699, you keep ₹365. Costing, labels and the gifting season in detail are in how to start a candle business online in India.

Fairy lights: electrical goods, honest wattage

Most small sellers buy fairy lights from a wholesaler, so your product page can only be as honest as your supplier’s specification.

• Test every string before it goes in a box. Plug it in or put the batteries in, run every mode, then coil it and tape the coil. A dead string is a refund plus two couriers; a minute of testing is cheaper.
• Copy the specification exactly: length in metres, number of bulbs, voltage, wattage, plug type or battery type, and whether it is for indoor use only. If the supplier gives no wattage, do not invent one; say “low-power LED” and leave the number out.
• Say “waterproof” only if the product carries a water-resistance rating you can show, and quote that rating. Otherwise write “indoor use” and sell it as such.
• Check whether BIS registration applies. Some electrical goods sold in India must carry a mark from the Bureau of Indian Standards under its compulsory registration scheme. Whether your lights fall under it depends on the product, so check on the BIS website, ask your supplier for the certificate, and if you cannot verify it, say nothing about certification rather than something you cannot back.
• Ask your courier about batteries. Lights shipped with batteries, especially lithium ones, may have restrictions, particularly by air. Shipping the string without batteries and saying so on the page is often the simpler route.

Margin, as a worked example: a 10-metre LED string that costs you ₹180, a ₹30 box, ₹70 delivery and a ₹10 fee. Priced at ₹499, you keep ₹209. The margin is thin on its own, which is why lights sell best inside a bundle.

Bundles that sell, and the hamper page

A bundle solves two problems at once: the buyer does not have to choose, and three items share one delivery charge. The ones that fit this season are a tree kit (a set of ornaments, a string of lights and a topper), a cosy evening box (a candle, a string of battery lights and a mug), a table set (two candles, a small wreath and a runner) and a New Year party box (lights, candles, paper décor).

Worked example: sold separately, the ornaments (keep ₹277), the lights (₹209) and a candle (₹365) are three parcels and three delivery charges. Sold as a tree-and-candle kit at ₹1,699, with ₹480 of product, ₹120 of packing, ₹120 for one larger parcel and a ₹34 fee, you keep ₹945 from one box. Fix the bundle’s price so it is a little below the three prices added up, and say so.

On a SitesPlaced store you can list fixed bundles as products, and you can also switch on the build-your-own hamper page on the free plan: the buyer picks from the products you allow, you set how many go in a hamper and price it by the number of items (“3 for ₹1,299, 5 for ₹1,999”), and a packaging product (the box, ribbon and card) is added to every hamper. The full method, built for Diwali but the same in December, is in how to sell gift hampers online. On Growth, a Buy 2 Get 1 offer on ornaments or tealights empties the small-item bins; it is one of the sales boosters.

Last order dates, and what comes after

Christmas is on a Friday this year. Work backwards: ask your courier how many days to your main cities in the third week of December, when every courier is busy, and add one day of slack. As an example, a courier that quotes four to five days gives you a last order date of about Friday 18 December for delivery before Christmas. Décor should have its own, earlier date, because nobody wants a bauble on the 24th; New Year party décor can run to about 27 or 28 December.

• Put the date in the announcement bar (Settings → Branding), where it shows at the top of every page: “Order by 18 December for delivery before Christmas”. Add a second line for New Year and the bar rotates through them. Move the wording as the date nears.
• When the date passes, change the line to “Orders placed now arrive after 25 December” or pause ordering (Settings → Checkout) with your own message. Shoppers can still browse; nobody can order until you untick it.
• Add a coupon with an expiry date a few days before the last order date, so the deadline is also a reason: “TREE10, until 15 December”. The Expires field ends it by itself.
• Free delivery above a value (Settings → Shipping) set a little above the price of a single candle nudges the buyer towards the bundle, and the cart shows a progress bar towards it.

After the 25th: candles and fairy lights sell all year, for weddings, birthdays, home décor and next Diwali, so unsold stock is not wasted; just change the photos. Christmas-only décor waits until next December. Mark down what you will not keep with a sale price (set Original price above Price and the old price shows struck through) in the week between Christmas and New Year, when people are decorating for parties. Then write down what sold, what broke and what was left, for next year’s buy; the routine is in how to plan a year of sales for a small online store. Packaging on a budget is in packaging and gift-wrapping ideas for an online store.

Putting it online this Christmas

Fragile and electrical goods need a product page that says the material, the size, the spec and the delivery date before the buyer asks. Instagram DMs cannot carry that for thirty orders a week; your own store does it once. On SitesPlaced, the store is free to open, with 0% commission: unlimited products and orders, UPI and cards through your own Razorpay, PhonePe or Cashfree account, cash on delivery and WhatsApp checkout. The hamper page, coupons with an expiry date, free delivery above a value, the announcement bar and pause ordering are all on the free plan; the Home & Decor Store is one of 16 free templates, and the store lives at an address like yourbrand.sitesplaced.site.

From Starter (₹199/month, or ₹1,990 for a year) you get your own domain, no SitesPlaced badge, and store pages that answer about 4× faster than on the free plan: about 75 ms instead of about 330 ms, measured on live paid stores on 28 September 2026. “Answer” means how soon the page starts arriving on the phone, before the photos load. For one busy month, paying ₹199 once for 30 days with no autopay may be all you need; or use the code FREE7 for 7 days free when you set up autopay and cancel before the first charge. Growth (₹499/month) adds Buy X Get Y, product reviews and the other sales boosters. The week-by-week plan for the season is on the Christmas page, and the store starts at sitesplaced.com/start.

Frequently asked questions