Vancouver Christmas Market 2024: Three Weeks, 47 Batches, and Everything You Taught Us

Three weeks. Forty-seven batches. More conversations about whether rosehip oil is good for eczema than we'd had in the previous three years combined.

The Vancouver Christmas Market 2024 was the biggest market we'd done. And it taught us things that three years of Instagram analytics simply couldn't.

What people actually want to know

Selling online, you never really get to talk to your customers. The market changed that. Hundreds of conversations, in person, over three weeks. And people had specific questions.

Is this safe during pregnancy? Can my husband use this? I have sensitive skin — where do I start? My daughter has eczema, will this help?
None of those questions get answered on a product page. They need a conversation. And almost every conversation ended in a sale — not because we pushed, but because once someone understood what was in the product and why it was formulated that way, the decision made itself.

Education converts better than promotion. Obvious in retrospect. Still worth saying out loud.

## What surprised us
The candles. We brought twice as many face oils as candles, fully expecting face oils to outsell. By Day 3 we were reordering candle stock. Christmas Memories went fastest — people bought it as a gift, yes, but also for themselves. The cement vessel did something. People who were tired of the standard glass jar picked it up and didn't put it down.

The second surprise: the men. Probably a third of our customers were men buying for themselves. Not as gifts. For themselves. "I don't know what I'm doing with my skincare" was a sentence we heard over and over. Refreshingly honest. We now have a "start here" recommendation specifically for people who say that.

## What you told us you wanted
Gift sets — curated boxes where someone doesn't have to make decisions. A "for her" set, a "for tired skin" set, a "hotel bathroom vibe" set. We're working on these.
A smaller candle — something between a votive and our current size. People liked the format but wanted an option that burns up faster. Also in progress.
More shower steamers. We ran out on Day 11.

We heard you. Thank you for showing up.