Print checklist for Christmas market traders in Glasgow (St Enoch and Glasgow Green)

A Christmas market stall in Glasgow is six weeks of trading in the coldest, wettest, busiest part of the year, and the print on it works harder than any shop window. Glasgow's markets at St Enoch Square and Glasgow Green typically run from mid-November through to Christmas Eve, with the exact dates confirmed by the organisers each autumn. This checklist is what we would print for a stall, in the order to order it, with prices inclusive of VAT and the date each item has to be in by. The seasonal products are all on the Christmas printing hub.

First, the banner, because it is the one you cannot rush

Banners are outsourced to our trade partner, which means 4 to 5 working days at the quietest time of year and a hard cut-off of Friday 11 December at 12 noon for anything you want before Christmas. Do not wait for the pitch confirmation to order it. A banner with your name and what you sell is useful on any stall, at any market, next year too.

There are two sensible options. A PVC banner at 2m x 1m is £63, with hems and eyelets, and it is the right choice for an open pitch: cable-tie it to the stall frame and it takes wind, rain and being packed wet at 9pm. A roller banner is £69 basic or £155 premium, and it is the right choice for a chalet or a covered stall where it stands on the floor beside you and packs into a bag at night. A roller banner on an open pitch on a windy day at Glasgow Green will be lying on the ground by lunchtime.

Keep the design to your name, one line about what you make and your Instagram handle, big. People read a banner from ten metres in a crowd; a paragraph of copy is invisible.

Price signs and product cards

These are in-house, printed on the Xerox press at Washington Street, so they are quick and you can reprint when a price changes or a line sells out. For the big price board at the back of the stall, an A3 poster is £3.99, or £2.50 each from ten, and A2 is £30 if you want it readable from the queue. Ten A3 sheets for £25 gives you a full set of product signs with spares. Full sizes and prices are on the posters and prints page.

For smaller counter signs, we print A4 and A5 on the same 250gsm silk as our menus, and we laminate them for you. An A4 sheet is stiff enough to stand in a clip; laminated, it wipes clean and survives the rain that blows in under the canopy. Lamination is matt or gloss; matt reads better under the market lights. One rule: we laminate what we print, and never customer-supplied prints, so send the file rather than the sheet.

Stickers, labels and gift tags

A branded sticker on the bag or the box is the cheapest bit of marketing a stall does, because it goes home with the customer and sits on their kitchen table. Round or square cut stickers at 50mm are £25 per 100 or £45 per 250. They are outsourced, so order them with the banner and before 11 December. Custom-size product labels are from £35 per 100, also outsourced.

Gift tags are the opposite: in-house, quick, and something people will pay for or expect free with a purchase. Printed on 350gsm with a hole, they are £20 per 50 or £35 per 100. A tag with your logo on one side and "To" and "From" on the other turns a candle or a jar into a present, and it costs you 35p.

Business cards and a flyer for the people who do not buy today

Most people who stop at a stall do not buy on the spot. They photograph the banner, or they take a card. 250 double-sided business cards on 450gsm are £30, delivered in 5 working days, so order them with the banner. Put the website and the Instagram on one side and a line about custom orders or Christmas delivery on the other. If you sell something that needs explaining, a flyer does it: 200 are £25, and they double as an insert in every bag.

The A-board

An A-board at the front of the pitch pulls people off the main path, and the organisers at both markets usually allow one within your footprint; check your pitch terms. We print the insert posters for a standard A-board frame you already own or buy: A1 is £40 and A2 is £30, with £5 off each from two, so a pair of A2 inserts for both faces is £50. Ask for lamination on them or they will not last the first wet weekend.

What to order when

Order the outsourced items first and together, ideally in the first week of November: the banner, the stickers and any labels. The hard cut-off is Friday 11 December at 12 noon, but the markets open in mid-November and a banner that arrives for week three has missed a third of the season. Then the in-house items a week before your first trading day: price signs, gift tags and flyers. In-house work we post has a last order of Friday 18 December at 1pm; collection orders run to Wednesday 23 December at 12 noon, subject to press time, phone first.

Mid-market top-ups are the reason to use a local printer. When the gift tags run out on the second Saturday, or a price changes, or you add a line, the in-house items are 2 to 3 working days and can be collected from Washington Street, ten minutes from St Enoch Square, or sent over by same-day courier, £5 in the city centre and £15 elsewhere in Glasgow. If you need it faster, phone 0141 345 5841 for same-day or next-day and we confirm the timeline and the price on the call. That applies to in-house items only; banners and stickers cannot be rushed.

A few things from stalls we have printed for

Print two of everything that lives on the counter, because one will be soaked or blown away. Bring a roll of clear tape and some bulldog clips. Keep the business cards in a closed tin, not a fan on the counter, or the rain gets them. Put a QR code to your website on the banner and the price board, because half your sales come after the market, from people who saw the stall and ordered online. And laminate the price signs. It is the cheapest thing on this list and the one people regret skipping.