Valentine’s Day trends and insights to help you increase your sales this year

A big part of being successful with ecommerce is looking ahead and planning accordingly.

You need to keep track of upcoming holidays and events for which you might want to create designs or run promotions. If not, you run the risk of planning too late and missing out. 

And while it may feel like we JUST finished with the holiday season, Valentine’s Day is already around the corner. So if you want to optimize your sales for this occasion, you need to start planning now. 

Valentine’s Day isn’t as big as Christmas, but it still offers a lot of selling opportunities. And if you want to do things right, there are a number of Valentine’s Day trends, in terms of timing and design ideas, that are worth paying attention to.  

Below, I talk about those trends in more depth so you can make this year your best Valentine’s Day yet. 

Let’s take a look…

Get the timing right

According to Etsy data from 2017, people start searching for things including the term “Valentine” as early as December 19th, with the weekly search volume really starting to accelerate at the beginning of January.

Searches peak after January 16th and before February 13th, as you can see in the graph below.

Image Source

So even though we just got through the holidays, people already have Valentine’s Day on their minds.

If you want to optimize your Valentine’s Day sales, you need to get your stores ready now.

Keep your inventory stocked with Valentine’s Day design trends

Valentine’s Day gift-giving has changed over the years. People now look for a broader range of gift ideas aside from those applying to only spouses and significant others. They look for gifts for their friends, themselves, and even gifts that show love for pets, which is great for you because it helps you tap into more niches and add even more designs to your inventory.

And a lot of people do NOT search “valentine’s day mug”. They search “gift for boyfriend”, “gift for wife”, or even just “accountant mug” or “lawyer gifts”.

In fact, many people specifically do NOT want Valentine’s Day-specific gifts because they won’t make sense for other times of the year.

Part of the way to win is just to add more designs overall, because more designs should help you make more sales.

With that in mind, here are a few of the more popular gift-gifting trends to emerge recently – they can sell for Valentine’s Day, but also throughout the year.

“Treat yo’ self”

If you were a fan of the TV show Parks and Recreation, this is where this phrase comes from. You obviously don’t need to have seen the show to understand the concept, though.

Indulging in self-care and self-celebration is important. And in addition to giving gifts to their loved ones, people also enjoy spoiling themselves.

Designs related to promoting relaxation and self-love and being your best self embody this mentality. Here are some examples: 

Give love to your friends

Romantic love isn’t the only kind of love worth celebrating around Valentine’s Day anymore.

Valentine’s Day has evolved to include expressions of love and appreciation toward friendships, family members, and even co-workers in some cases.

Celebrating female friendships has become especially popular, in part thanks to the inception of “Galentine’s Day,” another idea popularized by the show Parks and Recreation.

Celebrated on February 13th, Galentine’s Day is aimed at girls and women as a way to show their love for the important female figures in their lives.

Here is some Galentine’s Day specific design inspiration:

You could also just sell general year-round designs that celebrate friendship. Here’s some inspiration for that:

So, again, don’t limit your design ideas to just spouses and significant others. Include designs that celebrate friendships and other types of relationships as well.

Empower girls and women

And speaking of female relationships, another trend is to celebrate women’s empowerment.

Being in a relationship and celebrating that is amazing. But people, especially women, also want to celebrate feeling comfortable in their own skin and standing on their own feet.

So other design ideas you might want to try include inspirational messages related to strong women and feminism. Here are some examples:

Celebrate singles

The day after Valentine’s Day is Singles Awareness or Singles Appreciation Day. And since Valentine’s Day itself is no longer about celebrating just romantic love, it’s a great idea to incorporate designs related to being single as well. 

Some people may have recently gotten out of a relationship so they’re looking for items that promote self-love and being enough on your own. While other people enjoy their single status so they want to find items that celebrate that. 

Here are some examples to give you inspiration: 

Don’t forget pet lovers

There are so many people who have pets they adore or who just love animals in general and so, pet-related gifts are really popular. 

Giving a gift that relates to someone’s pet adds a personal touch, especially if the gift includes a customized photo of that person’s pet or their pet’s name.

So when you’re thinking up Valentine’s Day designs, don’t forget to include some that relate to animals and are customizable. 

Be alternative 

Not everyone is interested in giving Valentine’s Day gifts with sweet or romantic designs. Some people prefer expressing their love in a quirkier or more humorous way. 

This has given rise to two offbeat design trends in Valentine’s Day gift-giving: the anti-valentine and what’s been coined as “valentude.” 

Going anti-valentine 

Anti-valentine designs still express love but they do so in a more ironic, sarcastic, or tongue-in-cheek way. Check out the two examples I found below: