Okay I realize we say this every year, and every year somebody rolls their eyes, but summer goes by faster than you think it does. Suddenly it’s September and you’re scrambling for pumpkin spice everything; holiday colors are not in stock, and I watch franchisors panic in real time.

I wrote a message recently for all the retailers out there, the coffee shops, the cafes, the franchise operators running everything from Dutch Bros to Starbucks to Dunkin, etc. and the message was pretty simple: it’s time to pre-order your holiday colors. But I want to actually talk about why that matters, and what we are seeing out there. I think there is a bigger story here than just getting your markers early.

So Anyway, Here is the Thing About Holiday Timing

I’ve been in this business long enough to know the retailers who win the holidays are the ones who planned for it back when everyone else was still thinking about summer. And I mean that literally. The franchises that have their holiday window signage ready to go the first week of October, the ones with Clown Nose Red already loaded up and ready for their baristas to write Peppermint Mocha Season across the drive-thru window in a way that actually stops people mid-scroll on their phones. Those are the locations that move products. Color is not decoration. Color is a signal. That signals the holiday’s are here, you should come inside and spend money; it is one of the most powerful ones in retail.

My brain works visually before it works any other way, so I feel this stuff probably more intensely than most people. I genuinely believe that every single franchise operator reading this has walked into a location that had zero holiday signage in early November and felt that low-level disappointment, even if they could not quite name it. The color cues are what tell us the season has changed. They are what make us want the gingerbread latte instead of the iced coffee we had yesterday. And if you do not have the markers to make that happen in your stores, well, that is a problem we can solve right now, in June, before the crunch.

The Colors That Actually Move the Needle

We get asked all the time which colors franchise operators need to stock up on for the holidays, and honestly the answer has been pretty consistent for years. Clown Nose Red is non-negotiable. It is that deep, saturated, classic holiday red that reads from across a parking lot and photographs beautifully on social media, and it is the one your staff will reach for first when they want to write something that screams December.

Astroturf Green is its perfect partner, and the two of them together on a dark chalkboard surface are about as instantly holiday as it gets without literally hanging ornaments.

Then there is White, which is quietly the hardest-working color in the whole Chalk Ink® lineup, not just at holiday but all year long. On any dark surface, White makes your lettering pop in a way that no other color can replicate. For the holidays specifically, it is the color of snowflakes, frost, that clean crisp winter aesthetic that works whether your location leans cozy or modern.

Solid Gold Dancer is the one that adds the feeling of something celebratory and elevated, that little bit of sparkle that makes a gift card display or a New Years promotion feel genuinely special rather than just seasonal.

Sheet Metal rounds it out with that cool, slightly industrial silver that plays beautifully alongside both the reds and the golds.

And here is the thing I always come back to: these are not random colors we threw together. We have been making markers here in Austin, Texas for a long time now, and the holiday palette we carry exists because we watched what actually worked in real retail environments across thousands of locations, from independent coffee shops to massive national chains. These colors perform.

Pumpkin Everything and Rolling Into the Gift Card Season

I want to be real with you about something: the holidays don’t just mean Christmas and Hanukkah and New Years. It starts with pumpkin season, which in retail terms basically begins the moment August ends, and it does not stop until after Valentines Day when we all collectively exhale and remember that there are other seasons. So when I talk about stocking up for the holidays, I am talking about a run of maybe five or six months where your signage needs to be doing a lot of heavy lifting across a whole series of different moments.

The gift card push alone is worth thinking about seriously. Gift cards are one of the highest-margin items in any retail or food service location, and the stores that promote them aggressively with great-looking signage consistently outsell the ones that stick a little pre-printed card holder on the counter and call it a day. Solid Gold Dancer on a dark board with clean lettering about your gift card options is the kind of thing that catches someone's eye when they are standing in line trying to figure out what to get their coworker for the office party. It costs a fraction of what a printed display would run you, and you can change it whenever you want!

Stocking stuffers, too. I love that we get to be part of that conversation, because honestly a set of Chalk Ink® markers is a fantastic gift and I will defend that position forever. But more importantly for franchise operators, if you carry any kind of retail merchandise at your locations, the way you display it during the holiday season matters enormously, and our markers are how your staff creates that display.

Why Pre-Ordering Now Actually Matters

We are Chalk Ink®: the original, the best, the premium, the OG of chalk markers, right here in Austin, Texas. I say that not to be obnoxious about it but because it matters for this particular conversation. We have been doing this a long time, and one of the things we know is that the franchises with the largest footprints, the ones running hundreds or thousands of locations, cannot wait until October to figure out their marker situation. The supply chain reality for a big operation means you need to be thinking about this now, in the summer, so when September rolls around and your marketing team is pushing out the pumpkin spice campaign, your stores already have exactly what they need.

Pre-ordering also lets us work with you on quantities in a way that is genuinely useful for large operations. We can talk cases, we can talk about what each of your locations is likely to need based on size and traffic, and we can make sure nothing is scrambled or rushed. That is a much better experience than calling us in early November when everyone is calling us and the holiday colors are flying out the door.

So to every coffee shop owner, every cafe manager, every franchise operator reading this: we have got your number, and we are ready to celebrate the holidays with you. The time to act is genuinely right now, not because I am trying to create urgency for the sake of it, but because I have watched enough holiday seasons come and go to know the retailers who prepare in June are the ones who are calmly crushing it in December.

Get your orders in. We are ready to go.

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Til Next Time.