How Alex Turns Personalisation Into a Holiday Sales Powerhouse

For Alex, the holiday season is different from the rest of the year. Customers are not just buying shirts. They are buying for partners, friends, siblings and families. They want to make people feel seen.

“During Christmas, the emotion is very you give it to a friend or someone you love,” he said. “If you buy a very generic meme t-shirt, it might not show that the person who’s gifting really cares. But if it’s an inside joke or the world’s best dad with a picture on it, that really speaks to the emotion of the holiday season.”

This realisation shaped Alex’s holiday strategy. Instead of pumping out more trend-based meme designs, he leaned into the emotional value of custom gifts. Black Friday became the perfect launchpad. People were already searching for unique presents. Alex simply gave them a way to make those presents personal.

A lot of creators assume that personalised products need to be highly designed or offer dozens of options. Alex learned the opposite.

“Our best-selling personalised product is just a blank t-shirt with upload your own photo and your own text,” he said. “We don’t wrap it in some sort of very complicated setup.”

He believes most people want the fastest path from idea to finished gift. They want to upload a photo, tap a few words and see the preview instantly. If anything slows them down, they bounce.

That is where Gelato made a difference. Using Personalisation Studio, Alex can offer live previews directly inside the product page.

“The in-page editor lets the customer write text on their own phone and the t-shirt updates automatically. It’s a really great experience,” he explained. “It would have taken me a lot of time to code this myself, so now I can focus on marketing.”

For sellers preparing for Q4, speed and simplicity matter more than anything.

Many sellers increase prices on personalised products, especially during the holidays. Alex chose not to.

“We don’t price our personalised products higher,” he said. “If we were to price them twenty percent more, then somebody would say I’ll just do a generic one instead.”

His reasoning is clever. He wants customers to choose personalised items because they create stronger loyalty.

“If somebody buys a personalised product versus a generic product, the customer loyalty will be a lot stronger,” he said. “When you niche down, the customer is going to be more loyal to you.”

In other words, personalised products do more than lift holiday sales. They turn seasonal buyers into repeat customers.

After seeing personalisation transform his holiday performance, Alex has simple advice for other creators preparing for Black Friday and Christmas.

“Keep it simple,” he said. “People want to snap impulse purchase. Don’t overcomplicate your personalised product trying to reach product-market fit. Just make it cool.”

He also emphasizes the importance of focusing on marketing rather than tech or complex product configurations. The easier you make the process, the more momentum you build during peak.

And finally, he highlights the value of listening to your customers. His entire personalised line began because his audience literally asked for it. When you give people what they want, Q4 becomes far less of a guessing game.

Alex’s story is a powerful example of what can happen when personalisation meets the emotional intensity of the holiday season. Print on demand removes the complexity. Live previews remove friction. Local production removes shipping anxiety. And a simple product with emotional meaning becomes the gift people cannot wait to give.