What to Sell on Valentine's Day? (2024) (2024)

Love is spreading throughout the air as Valentine's Day approaches.

This day marks a memorable and meaningful occasion for lovers. There’s no denying they would spend lavishly for their special one on this affectionate occasion.

And you know what is also coming for us, eCommerce store owners? The very first retail shopping season of the year is waiting for you to conquer.

Sowhat to sell on Valentine’s Dayto satisfy your beloved customers, while still helping you soar your February revenue?Let’s check out the best-winning Valentine’s products that lovers have favored for the last few years!

What Makes a Winning Valentine’s Product?

A winning Valentine’s product is the item that boosts your sales exponentially during this love season.Some items will apparently receive more attention from your target customers before and during Valentine, so take a step ahead of your competitor to start preparing for these products beforehand.

There’re three product types that we believe will sell like crazy this Valentine’s:

• Love-related:Isn’t that obvious? After all, Valentine’s is all about love. Your customers will look for items that have love-related signals, such ashearts, roses, and red colors. Some ideal products arecandy and chocolate boxes, flower boutiques, bracelets, necklaces, rings, and lingerie.
• Personalized:Some popular personalized products you can consider arewater bottles, t-shirts, smartphone cases, mugs, notebooks, planners, bracelets, and photo calendars. There’re many ways items could be personalized, simply by adding text or photos. All you need is to be creative!
• Hobby Products:The number of hobby-related items is various,ranging from sports items, skincare and beauty products, apparel, to tech gadgets. You could totally utilize the current products at your Shopify store and remarket them for this Valentine’s sale.

Now you’ve got an idea of what a winning Valentine’s product looks like, let’s dive into the detailed list ofwhat to sell on Valentine’s Day.

What to Sell on Valentine’s Day?

Based on current market trends and customer insights, deciding on standout products to sell during the Valentine's season is a crucial decision. That's why we've conducted specific research to ensure that these products, including holiday gift sets, will help you triumph during this Valentine's season.

Best Products to Sell on Valentine’s Day for Everyone

1. Chocolates/Sweets

Nearly30%of US adults wished to receive chocolate and sweets on this occasion. For ages, heart-shaped boxes of chocolates and candies have represented the symbols of love for couples worldwide. Also, chocolate is widely believed to present deep love, passion, and affection, making it the perfect Valentine’s gift for everyone.

A nicely designed chocolate/candy box would be a go-to Valentine’s option for a lot of customers worldwide. The best part is, it’s easy to look for beautifully-designed chocolate and candy boxes of different brands and flavors with a wide pricing range that is affordable for all customer groups on wholesale channels like Alibaba.

If you have a knack for DIY stuff and a keen eye for art, wrap your own chocolate box and market them. Thanks to brilliant minds from Pinterest, we have some Valentine’s chocolate wrapping ideas to get you inspired.

Pro tip:Many eye-pleasing printable wrapper files on Pinterest are free to download and utilize.

2. Flowers

How can we celebrate Valentine’s Day without a luxurious bouquet of roses? Approximately16% of Americans would love to receive flowers and plants on Valentine’s Day, proving that it’s going to be a winning Valentine’s product, especially if your target market focuses on local residents.

There are many types of flowers, but roses seem to be the perfect choice. Let the data speak for itself: the term “rose” receive full attention worldwide around Valentine’s time:

Roses trend worldwide in the past 12 month.

Traditionally, people prefer to order fresh flowers and plants as a gift for Valentine’s, so it seems like the target market for this item would be restricted to specific resident areas. However, as soap and artificial flowers become increasingly popular thanks to their sophisticated looks and eternal usage, it’s definitely worth taking a look.

You don’t need to stick to traditional flower boutiques. Try mixing things up with a DIY flower kit that features a variety of delicate, soft-textured focal flowers for shoppers to wrap their own boutique or design their room on Valentine’s.

Or how about designing your own gift box of soap roses rather than relying on dropshipping providers? Chocolate and flowers are always a wonderful Valentine’s combination.

Learn more:How to Sell Soap: Best Strategies For A Profitable Business

Also, though your customers might not be able to smell the flowers, utilizing photos and videos on the landing page with apowerful page builderwill tempt them to pluck off your shelves naturally.

3. Gift Cards/Vouchers

Valentine’s gift cards and vouchers will be a lifesaver for last-minute shoppers. Purchasing gift cards costs zero time to ship, and these vouchers can be activated in minutes.

Effective gift cards should come with the right values. Offering $25, $50, and $100 options is a good place to start, but the actual gift card value can be higher or lower depending on the average prices of your products or services. Leverage social media for promoting gift cards, and you can consider boosted ads to remind those last-minute and busy shoppers.

While gift card is a special type of product, they are available to sell on all Shopify subscription plans. Try creating your custom gift card for free usingCanva’s gift certificate makerwithout any professional design support.

Canva’s gift certificate maker tool

4. Clothing

Being on the list of top gifts that consumers of all age group plan to buy for Valentine's Day 2022 in the United States, clothing’s definitely one of the best-seller items you shouldn’t look over.

Valentine's Day gifts US consumers plan to purchase by age group in 2022

As a daily item that seems easy to select for both genders, apparel comes as a handy gift for many occasions, including Valentine’s. The tricky question is, how could your Shopify store stand out from other key players in the online clothing industry, which was already fierce before this love season?

The answer is you don’t need to fully jump into the clothing sector, but launch with a few products that will resonate with your target customer.

During love season, some couple clothing items might gain more attention, for instance:

• Unisex t-shirts
• Oversized hoodies
• Couples handholding mittens
• Neutral-colored scarves
• Matching hats

Learn more:17 Best Shopify T-shirt Stores to Get You Inspired

5. Perfumes

Next winning Valentine’s item on the list is perfumes. Despite long being recognized as a girly item, perfumes are now gaining high popularity amongst American men, particularly when fresh non-conventional perfumes are gaining market share in the fragrance industry.

The Perfume Shop promotes a comprehensive gift guide for Valentine’s Day

Fragrance acts as a key to topping off your true self, especially with the right scent for Valentine’s occasion. The secret key to winning your customers is to develop a perfume gift guide along with a list of must-have scents.

For this love season, you can promote classically romantic notes, such as:

• Bright floral fragrances like rose, jasmine, lily of the valley, gardenia.
• Aromatic fragrances like fresh roses, lemons, honeycombs.
• Fresh fragrances like raspberries, green mandarin, citruses, orange blossoms.

Light their way through Valentine’s with fragrances that evoke intimate feelings of true love and affection.

6. Valentine’s Day Cards

Is that possible that all the previously mentioned Valentine’s gifts go without Valentine’s Day cards? In fact,30%of female consumers in the United States planned to buy their partners Valentine’s Day cards for this most romantic day of the year. Include Valentine’s cards option at your Shopify store as an upselling item will undoubtedlyboost your sales.

You can go one extra step to exceed customer’s expectation by offering e-cards available to send via email and Facebook as an additional option. Shoppers can customize their own e-cards with personalized photos and messages for their loved ones.

If requested, e-cards can be printed out and sent along with the main gift. Check out the digital card tools fromOpen Mefor some inspiration.

Best Valentine’s Day Gifts for Her

1. Jewelry

For many girls, there’s no better present to mark a memorable Valentine’s Day than a lovely, splendid piece of jewelry from her loved one. Besides, jewelry has long been associated with romance, as its natural long-lasting characteristics represent eternal love.

In 2021, The National Retail Federation (NRF) reported that shoppers plan to spend$5.8 billionon jewelry, accounting for 21% of the total Valentine’s spending this year.

Entering this booming jewelry market has never been easier, as sourcing products now can be done in minutes with a multitude of dropshipping providers worldwide. For B2B providers specializing in the jewelry industry, you can tryPieceBody,JGoodin,oNecklace, andTopearl.

Hundreds of jewelry items to dropship on AliExpress

Here are our suggestions for hot jewelry items you can try this Valentine's:

• Print-on-demand engraved jewelry
• Hoop earrings
• Chain bracelets
• Chokers
• Pendant and personalized necklaces
• Lucky charms

2. Lingerie

Lingerie is currently the “hottest” Valentine’s gift for women on our list.

GemPages’ customer, The Lingerist is a conscious lingerie brand for women.

Lingerie for women often includes undergarments, sleepwear, and lightweight robes. Some of the most trending lingerie items on Alibaba and Amazon that you can consider are:

• Sexy bandage/full body lace lingerie
• Lingerie corsets
• Transparent robes
• Pajama sets

The only daunting task left is the way you market lingerie to emphasize how it is utterly romantic for gifting lingerie: how it represents intimate and desired feelings for couples.

3. Beauty & Skincare Products

Chocolates and flowers are, of course, lovely gifts for Valentine’s, but beauty and makeup are something that no girl can give up on.

Kylie Cosmetics launched a limited-edition collection for Valentine’s.

We all know that choosing beauty products is never easy, especially for those men who use one skincare product for their whole body.

But here is the thing: if you can act as a clever companion to guide men through the rough journey to find an ideal beauty and skincare product for their girlfriends, surely you will win their hearts this V-day (and maybe many Valentine’s to come).

Rather than a wide variety of product ranges, there are a few items that are easy to use for almost any girl:

• Body care items: body wash, body scrub, body moisturizers
• Coconut oil
• Hand wash & gel
• Body mist
• Shampoo & Conditioner
• Hair mask

We suggest you categorize products based on their usage to avoid complexity. For instance, you can have a collection of the best body mist for the festive season.

Learn more:How To Use Product Recommendation On Your Shopify Store to Boost Sales?

Best Valentine’s Day Gifts for Him

1. Tech Devices

Tech devices came as a perfect Valentine’s gift for men with14%of US female planning to purchase electronics for their boyfriends on V-day 2021. While traditional options with clothing and perfumes are great, since we’re living in a high-tech era, there’s a variety of tech options that mark up this love season in a more useful and memorable way.

However, generating massive sales on Valentine’s selling electronics requires you to figure out the range of product prices carefully. Not a lot of people can afford the latest high-end tech devices priced at hundreds of dollars, so research your target customer’s budget carefully.

Some reasonable tech items for every customer group are: Bluetooth and smart speakers, USB-C power adapters, watch accessories, laptop batteries, computer mice, phone mounts, selfie sticks, wireless charging stations, headphones and earbuds, and gaming devices.

2. Personalized Gifts

Personalized gifts work better for guys, as they leave a sense of uniqueness and personal belongings to receivers. On Valentine’s 2020, approximately20%of female consumers in the US planned to gift their loved ones personalized items.

Also, the market for personalized items has evolved rapidly that even options like a wireless charger or new water bottles are made better with a simple addition of a monogram. The only limit is your creativity! Still, there’re some personalized products that are more suitable for this love season, including:

• Custom portrait and couple print
• Customized calendar with photos
• Man bobbleheads
• Valentine’s night light
• Personalized song plaque stand
• Engraved watch/keychain/wallet

There’re many ways gifts can be personalized for Valentine’s.

You could dive into a niche market with lower competition by adding an additional layer of uniqueness for items at your Shopify store.

3. Sports Items

Remember our three key factors contributing to a winning Valentine’s Day gift? Sports items are undoubtedly the hobby products many boys wish to receive, besides chocolate and Valentine’s card.

As millennials and gen Z now care more about health and fitness, the willingness to spend on sports goods has been growing also. Solid sports equipment becomes accessible to the general public rather than to pro athletes only like in the old days.

While the competition is getting fierce in the Sporting Goods category, you still have room for growth by exploring sports supplements. It could be whey protein, shakers, or any essential sports nutrition that needs substituting regularly. Sports equipment is also a high-profit niche you could explore. For instance, cycling water bottles, bike locks, gloves, helmets, gym bags, balance boards, and running pouches require quite low initial capital.

5 Tips to Leverage Your Valentine’s Sales This Year

1. Decorate Love-Themed Store

Many shoppers don’t recognize V-Day is coming until you give them a sign!Deliver Valentine’s Day-themed designs in all your sale channels, from your Shopify store to social network sites to evoke a sense of love season coming up.

This could be done by a little tweak on your eCommerce site. Make it more appealing by adding a red-based color to the landing page, surrounded by adorable hearts, flowers, and stickers. There’re hundred of stock photos onUnsplashandFreepikyou can browse to find a suitable one.

Olivia Rose's site uses sweet seasonal designs for Valentine’s

You can also trydesigning your landing page with GemPages, a powerful page builder that empowers you to create your landing pages (or any page type, for that matter) however you want them to be. You can start with a blank canvas or choose from its extensive of ready-made templates to get selling easier and faster.

For this Valentine’s season, GemPages has two love-themed templates:Valentine’s Day ChocolateandValentine’s Day - Artificial Flower. All you neeed to do is to choose your preferred option and make it yours by tweaking some details. It’s quick, easy and requires zero design skills!

GemPages’ Valentine-themed template.

2. Understand Your Customers

We’ve given you a long list of what to sell on Valentine’s Day, proven by data, numbers, and reasonings. But which exactly is the winning product your eCommerce store can serve customers to make them happy, and leverage your sale, after all?

The answer is you need to understand what your customers really want. Each consumer group develops certain spending and buying habits that drive your sale strategy in a different direction.

For instance,Offers.comrevealed that male consumers will spend an estimated $63, while females will spend around $46 for Valentine’s gifts. This information could help you price your Valentine’s items to win your target customer group at ease.

Or, roses, chocolate-covered strawberries, and a box of chocolates still remain the most popular gifts for Valentine’s Day. So how about adding a free box of chocolate, or a free bouquet of red roses to every purchase over $100?

Pro tip: Always look for number and data that speaks for your shoppers, and develop a selling strategy closely associated with your buyer persona.

3. Prepare Valentine’s Gift Guides

We couldn’t emphasize enough how essential it is to prepare detailed Valentine’s gift guidelines for your audience. Gift-giving can be tough, especially with so many items and options available for Valentine’s.

Amazon promoted Valentine’s gift guide on their homepage

Reducing the stress of the holiday for your buyers by crafting themed gift guides. There’re many ways to approach your gift guides, either by gender, by age, or by relationship types - such as Valentine’s Day gifts for her, him, or kids, or Valentine’s gifts based on zodiac signs - a thing that gen Z and millennials actually believe.

Create a gift guide for your single customers also. Approximately30%of consumers between 18 and 24 years old celebrate Valentine’s in their own way, rather than with a significant other. Thus, you can target gift guides toward individuals and pets also. In fact, “Love yourself” is a familiar marketing theme that many brands utilize during Valentine’s.

Lisa Lehmann Designs encourages customers to love themselves to be loved during Valentine’s

4. Make It Simple and Convenient

Do you know that most Valentine’s Day shoppers are procrastinators? In fact,32%of purchases are made during the week of Valentine’s holiday. That means one-third of your potential customers are in a hurry when it comes to V-Day, and they would prefer a seamless gift shopping experience than ever.

Forever 21 offers free shipping on V-day

Take this golden opportunity this Valentine’s season to alleviate the pain points that many last-minute shoppers face. Here are some ideas to try:

• Offer gift wrapping with a personalized message
• Highlight on digital gift cards
• Include fast delivery options
• Pre-packaged gift baskets ready to be gifted

Also, the “Keep it Simple, Stupid!”, or KISS principle is never getting old. For Valentine’s Day, your marketing approaches could be straightforward but still effective, such as simple discounts, free gift-wrapping, or free shipping for a certain spending amount.

5. Create a Sense of Urgency

FOMO (fear of missing out) is a highly motivating factor for many indecisive shoppers during the holiday. Highlighting a couple of urgent elements at your eCommerce store during Valentine’s time can encourage consumers to make faster decisions. We suggest two simple ways to help you do that.

The first method is to mark delivery deadlines on your website, or on your email marketing. Simply let the shoppers acknowledge when is the last day they can order for guaranteed delivery before V-day. A little reminder says the last date customers can place orders for Valentine’s Day or when they can expect to get their items delivered will work.

Calvin Klein reminds customers of the delivery time for Valentine’s in its emails

Another simple tactic to create a sense of urgency is to highlight stock levels. When customers see their favorite items are running low on stock, it’s a high chance that they would purchase immediately without putting a second thought.

It’s Time to Prepare for Valentine’s Day!

It’s Time to Prepare for Valentine’s Day!

It's never too soon to start preparing for Valentine's Day. Right now, change the look of your online store to deliver the atmosphere of Valentine's Day.

To save time and design effort, GemPages wants to introduce an extremely outstanding new feature: AI-powered: Image-to-Layout. With its cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology, Image-to-Layout helps users convert a URL or image into editable layouts.

If you’re new to GemPages, just install the app from the Shopify app store. Once installed, you'll automatically use GemPages v7 and the AI feature.

Don't hesitate any longer and prepare for Valentine's Day right now.

While some items on our list are devoted to this love holiday only, some can be your winning products for other big occasions as well.

Exploiting consumer rush to buy Valentine's Day gifts requires insights and experience to make a striking difference. We hope you can choose what to sell on Valentine's Day to accomplish this first retail holiday of the year.

Learn more:Try These 12 Mother's Day Marketing Ideas and Watch Your Sales Grow