Love and Retail

Love and Valentine’s Day, Valentine’s Day and Love—For the last few weeks I’ve been bombarded with a wide variety of thoughts on the upcoming holiday: Friends on Facebook feeling lonely or sad this season. Grade school age boys at home making 24 valentine’s cards to share at school, complete with traced hearts and barely legible names. My middle school aged son carefully making a duct tape rose for his first sweetheart. My Auntie’s emails organizing a family dinner of extended cousins, just a few of the descendants of my great-grandmother Goldie Valentine Huffington Hattenhauer, to remember Grandma on her birthday. And of course, red and pink hearts everywhere I turn.

Growing up with a great-grandmother who had Valentine’s Day as her birthday and a mother who taught grade school and loved all things holiday—Valentine’s Day for me is a sweet, family affair of a day. I enjoy continuing the traditions with my kids and seeing cousins I wish I kept in better contact with throughout the year.

Now as a retailer, I also have to see Valentine’s Day as a way to get the February bills paid. Yep, I need people to shop—and so you’ll find a Valentine’s Day display right in the entrance to Small Planet and red and pink strategically placed throughout the shop. We even have a chocolate sale going on this week. The constant pull in my psyche of wanting to help people live lighter and easier on the earth, and frankly needing them to spend money to be able to keep going can leave me feeling ambivalent about holidays all year round.

So what’s a reluctant retailer to do? Well, at Small Planet Trading we make it a practice not to buy things just because they are for a holiday—you won’t find things in the shop this week that we wouldn’t be willing to stock year round. The Good Clean Love oils make a sexy gift for that special day, but also can increase sexual health all year through. Kisii soapstone hearts from Kenya, Olivewood hearts from Bethlehem, heart earrings from Honduras are each lovingly handcrafted by an artist who benefits from you enjoying their work any day of the year.
 
Come in on Saturday and get creative on our DIY card table-- if you've never made yourself a Valentine's Day card, maybe it's a good year to start.  Not giving any gifts this particular holiday, don't worry, you can still pick up a new toothbrush or enjoy some Spicy Hot Cocoa on a cold February day.

--DeLona