Genuine Connections and Delightful Experiences: How This Founder is Prepping for the Holiday Season
Small-business owner Maria Colalancia is dialing up her marketing plans to maximize sales and customer happiness during this busy time of year.
Asking questions. Listening. Learning something about someone new. Sharing similar anecdotes. Finding commonalities and forming new relationships.
For Maria Colalancia, connecting with new people is like second nature. It’s a skill she attributes to her childhood. She fondly recalls her Italian grandfather’s advice that the best way to get to know someone is around the dinner table with a bottle of wine.
The former retail professional says this concept of making genuine connections was her inspiration for founding The Aperitivo Society, a community she cultivated in Boston that provides curated dining experiences hosted in peoples’ homes, where members feel comfortable meeting new people. It quickly blossomed into a larger community across New England.
“Life is big and complicated and messy at times, and it’s easy to get bogged down,” Colalancia says. “The concept of aperitivo and of gathering around a dinner table is so simple and essential. It reminds us to slow down, even if just for a second. To savor.”
A natural extension of this growing community, Colalancia opened the doors to Aperitivo The Shop in Boston’s North End neighborhood in June 2024. From dinner plates to cocktail shakers to jarred appetizers, the store sells everything a person could need for hosting a successful dinner event, or a simple gathering amongst friends.
“Having a storefront in Boston’s North End is such a privilege, and I wanted The Shop to pay homage to the neighborhood’s history as well as my own family’s history and traditions,” she explains. “Our goal is to always bring something different to the table and encourage authentic connections between people—whether it’s family you’ve known your whole life or someone that you just met.”
At The Shop, Colalancia is “bringing something different” to this upcoming end-of-year holiday season. She has been working closely with small business print and design partner VistaPrint to create all-new marketing materials and merchandise to capture the holiday spirit and ramp up sales. Here are three ways she is preparing for the holiday rush.
1. Spreading the word
Like many other small businesses, Colalancia says Aperitivo The Shop depends on revenues generated during the holiday season to help bridge the gap during slower periods. So, it’s important for her to help spread the word about Aperitivo The Shop this time of year.
“We leverage marketing not only to get our name out there, but to tell our story, offer something different to our customers, and keep people coming back throughout the season,” she says.
Colalancia says that printed signage is essential during the holidays for grabbing customer attention—especially in a high tourist neighborhood like Boston’s North End. “The signage that we printed with VistaPrint has been a game changer for stopping people in their tracks,” she explains. “We’ve already replicated the design with holiday messaging so that we are ready the second the season starts.”
In-store printed signage is also an effective tool, Colalancia says. “Being such a high-traffic period, you don’t always have the opportunity to spend time with each customer that comes through, so you have to rely on signage to communicate price and value to customers, as well as alert them to any promotions you may be running during the holiday,” she says.
This year, Aperitivo The Shop is ramping up its use of table-top signage, hang tags, and labels, as well as flyers and posters during the holiday rush. “We also have cute stickers as customer giveaways,” Colalancia says. “And we are so excited that VistaPrint now offers matchboxes. Our customers go crazy over a collectible match.”
2. Creating delightful customer experiences
If you ask Colalancia, she’ll tell you that growing a small business relies on making strong connections between your brand and your customers. “It’s the little details that make the biggest impact,” she says. “Candles, a customized matchbox or name card, an unexpected piece of décor, even including a holiday card in our online orders—people notice those things. It gets them talking. That’s our goal when we’re brainstorming our marketing materials.”
At Aperitivo The Shop, Colalancia is working with VistaPrint to create several new experiences to delight her customers this holiday season. For example, making gifting easy by offering gift wrapping. It’s a busy time of year. Buying a gift and having it delightfully wrapped is a service that saves customers time.
Another way Colalancia is aiming to excite customers is with branded holiday gift boxes. In addition to offering pre-made boxes with assorted items, customers can curate their own mix of wares from The Shop—all packaged festively in a custom, Aperitivo-branded box.
“We created a delightful holiday packaging experience for our customers to gift with ease, and I think providing the flexibility to build your own gift box while also offering pre-made boxes will be a hit with customers,” she says. “I think we found the perfect mix of creating designs that all customers will love and resonate with while still feeling holiday appropriate and on brand.”
Aperitivo The Shop also created custom embossed business cards and loyalty cards that Colalancia hopes will put a smile on customers’ faces and keep them coming back. “We want to inspire our customers with these little details,” she says.
3. Merchandise that does the marketing
Printed marketing materials help drive business during the holidays. But what’s one simple way Colalancia can harness customer affinity and leverage brand awareness during the holidays and throughout the rest of the year? Her answer: Aperitivo-branded merchandise such as t-shirts, hats, and tumblers made just in time for holiday gifting.
“Any wearable products that we make essentially become walking advertisements for the store and the brand,” she explains. “It’s important that there’s a recognizable throughline for everything that we create to create brand recognition and get people to stop and ask ‘hey, what’s Aperitivo?‘”
From custom holiday signage to creative packaging solutions and branded merchandise, Colalancia says working with VistaPrint has helped her find new customers and continue to make connections the way her grandfather inspired her to years ago.
“Their design help and expertise made it easy for us to achieve exactly what we wanted with all our products. The quality is amazing, and you can’t beat how quickly everything ships,” she says. “The VistaPrint team makes it easy to make your marketing and holiday dreams come true.”
Click here to find out how VistaPrint can help your business prep for the holidays and beyond.