Mud Pie Christmas Ornaments and Dishes FAQ: Picture Frames, Wholesale Orders, and Lessons From a Seven-Year Buyer

Since 2018, I've run Hill and Howe, a small gift shop in a college town, and I've handled every wholesale order myself—seven holiday seasons now. I've personally made and documented 11 significant buying mistakes, totaling roughly $4,800 in extra freight, January markdowns, and one very sad donation box. I keep a seasonal checklist now, and these are the questions I hear from other buyers, along with a few I had to learn expensively.

The fast version: order earlier than feels normal, open every carton when it arrives, don't buy 36 identical frames, and don't buy wholesale stock for a school project. The longer answers are below.

Wholesale timing, dishes, and the first holiday order

1. When do I need to order Mud Pie Christmas ornaments and dishes?

Earlier than you think. New buyers often tell me they plan to wait until October, because they want to see what's actually trending before they commit. I made the same mistake in 2018. By the time I placed my holiday order, the ornament assortment I wanted was already on backorder, and the split shipment that followed cost an extra $247 in freight. The second box landed in the second week of December—beautiful, and completely useless for Christmas selling.

Availability dates are deadlines, not suggestions.

Now I place my Mud Pie holiday order in late summer. It feels early every single year. It stops feeling early when the boxes show up before Halloween and I have time to build displays properly. Seasonal dishes and ornaments sell in waves, and the first wave is usually the one with the fullest selection. If you wait, the risk ends up on your shelf, not the vendor's.

2. Should I stock Mud Pie Christmas dishes or ornaments first?

Both, if the budget allows. If it doesn't, let your space decide rather than whichever product photo caught your eye. Ornaments work near the register as impulse gifts. Dishes need more room because they sell as a look—a stack of Christmas plates, a cake stand, mugs beside a candle—not as individual items.

At our shop, ornaments alone sold okay. Ornaments beside a styled Christmas table sold much better. Put another way: customers buy the scene, then buy pieces of the scene. The first year I cleared a small table for Mud Pie Christmas dishes, the ornaments on the shelf next to it moved faster.

That doesn't mean dishes are the right answer for everyone. If you have a tiny counter and nowhere to create a display, skip the large serving pieces and start with ornaments. If you have any kind of tabletop you can style, a compact run of dishes is a small bet that teaches you more than three catalogs will.

3. What if a Mud Pie Christmas dish or ornament arrives broken?

Breakage happens. You're shipping glass, ceramic, and fragile ornaments. Losing one or two pieces in a large carton is not rare. The real mistake isn't the breakage—it's discovering it two weeks later.

In September 2022, a 72-piece order sat in my back room for ten days because we were busy and the holiday display wasn't ready. When we finally opened it, three mugs and a platter were cracked. We sorted it out, but the delayed claim made the process slower and more awkward than it needed to be.

Now I open every carton the day it arrives. I keep the packaging, photograph any damage with the shipping label visible, and email the wholesale contact within a day or two. I don't have hard data on industry-wide damage rates, but I can say this: quick reporting fixes things faster than silence. This is one of those boring routines that saves real money over time.

Picture frames, budgets, and the school-project question

4. Which picture frame sizes should a small shop stock?

Not 36 identical 8x10s. That was my actual first frame order. The discounted per-unit price looked great, and the result was a row of identical frames that looked like an office lobby. They sat in our stockroom for over a year.

Picture frames sell when they look like they're holding something worth framing. An empty frame on a shelf gives a customer nothing to react to. We display frames with real photos in them, leaned against books or stacked near a candle, and that small styling change made a noticeable difference in how often people stopped to look.

Our mix now leans toward smaller tabletop frames in 4x6 and 5x7, with a few larger statement frames for gallery-wall displays. That mix fits our customers, though. If your shop is in a neighborhood with more new homeowners, the larger sizes might be your bread and butter. Start with a narrow assortment, track what sells, and expand from there. Efficient buying means buying what will sell through, not just what looks cheapest per unit.

5. How much holiday stock should I order in my first year?

Less than your gut says. In 2022, I over-ordered Christmas ornaments after a strong autumn. We still had about 28 percent of that holiday assortment left after Christmas. By January it was markdown, and by February it was a donation box. Wholesale ornaments left in February don't become next year's inventory—holiday product has a season, and that season ends.

My rule since then has been to start with my expected sell-through number and add a buffer of 20 to 25 percent, not to double the number because I'm worried about stockouts. New shops don't have prior-year sales to lean on, so I'd rather see them buy more styles and less depth. Styles create an interesting display. Depth creates leftover boxes.

I wish I had tracked sell-through by style from day one. What I can say anecdotally is that the years I trusted a spreadsheet over my excitement were the years I didn't end up with a sad January clearance shelf.

6. What does an ornament really cost after freight and breakage?

This is the question nobody asks before the first order. Buyers look at a wholesale price, double it for retail, and assume the margin is theirs. Then freight shows up, one or two pieces break, and the math quietly gets worse.

Run the all-in cost before you order. If freight on an 80-piece ornament order is $160, each ornament is really $2 more than the invoice says before you open a single box. Add occasional damage and the markdowns you'll take at the end of the season, and a margin that looked comfortable can become pretty thin.

I know spreadsheets aren't exciting. But this one habit removed most of the guesswork from my buying. The formula doesn't decide everything; it just catches margin leaks before the money leaves the account. There's real satisfaction in knowing what a product costs before you commit to it, and that certainty is worth more than the cheapest freight option.

7. How do I make a photo frame for a school project?

This is the dark horse question. Last fall, a mom stopped in to buy a baby gift and then asked me this out of nowhere. She didn't want to buy a frame from us. Her daughter's homework said to make one.

A school-project photo frame and a retail picture frame have different jobs. The retail frame has to make a shelf look finished. The school frame has to survive a backpack, a classroom, and a teacher's rubric. More importantly, the school frame is supposed to be made by the kid.

If you typed 'how to make a photo frame for a school project' into a search bar, here's the version I'd recommend:

• Cut one rectangle of sturdy cardboard for the back, and a second rectangle for the front with a window cut out slightly smaller than the photo.
• Decorate the front piece first. Popsicle sticks, buttons, fabric scraps, paint, washi tape—all of it works. The decoration is the actual project.
• Tape the photo to the back of the front piece, then glue or tape the front and back together along three sides so the photo can still slide out.
• Add a small loop of twine or tape a traditional hanger to the back.

Let the kid do all of it. The crooked popsicle sticks and smudged glue aren't flaws; they're the whole point. A store-bought frame might look neater, but it would also defeat the assignment. For school, the best frame is the one the student can honestly say they made.