Can throw pillows be seasonal and should you build your strategy around that?
Throw pillows on Amazon Merch on Demand are a creative category that attracts shoppers interested in home decor.
Although not as popular as other markets, like t-shirts and hoodies, throw pillows can be a rewarding way to diversify your portfolio as a seller.
But do these items experience seasonal popularity, especially during festive events like Christmas? Or maybe it’s best to approach them with a year-round strategy?
In the following sections, we analyze the niche and answer these questions.
A broad overview of the throw pillow category on Amazon Merch on Demand
If you’re a seller with vast experience across categories, you’ve probably noticed that throw pillows are far less popular than other merch types.
Using Merch Informer, we can confirm this with numbers.
A look into the bestsellers on the platform reveals that the average BSR of the top 500 listings is 705,970. In contrast, that of t-shirts is 7,976.
The substantial difference in BSR represents a huge gap in sales potential.
However, this doesn’t mean that throw pillows should be completely deleted from your list of profit-generating ideas. According to keyword research, there are more than 80,000 searches performed for “throw pillow” every month.
With a bullet-proof strategy, you can merge niches, target specific audiences, and enjoy fruitful gains in this domain.
To understand how profitable sellers can be in the throw pillow category, it’s key to look at the average selling price of successful listings. This will help us uncover the royalties per sale, given that you price around the average (a technique that we strongly recommend, especially for new market entrants).
The average price of chart-topping throw pillows is $25.83. Using Amazon’s royalty calculator, we detected that the royalties per sale at this price are more than $5.32. This number is much higher than in many other categories, meaning that you can expect to earn a satisfactory revenue with fewer sales.
Analyzing the bestsellers’ performance
To get a realistic idea of how much you can gain from royalties in this niche, we examined the number one listing in the general throw pillow market.
“MagicMoon Three Possum Moon | 3 Opossum Funny Weird Cursed Meme Throw Pillow, 16×16, Multicolor” sells for $24.99 and has a BSR of 67,977, which translates into roughly 38 sales.
Working out the maths, we can conclude that this seller lands around $202 from this listing alone. While this revenue is not something that can be solely relied on, it can be a sweet contribution to other earnings from Amazon.
What are the most popular throw pillow themes?
Before we dive deeper into the topic of throw pillow seasonally, it’s worth revealing the top themes in the broader segment.
A look into the most frequently used keywords in bestselling listing titles shows the following:
- Funny (485)
- Disney (396)
- Christmas 328)
- Love (323)
- Gifts (272)
- Dog (253)
- Birthday (206)
- Cat (169)
- Mom (164)
These are the top-used words related to themes and sub-niches. The number next to each keyword represents the number of times it has been used in 500 product titles.
Right off the bat, it becomes clear that Christmas takes a leading position, with nearly 400 word uses. This is a strong indication that seasonal throw pillows promise attractive financial results.
Let’s see if this is what reality looks like.
Exploring seasonal throw pillows
Seasonal themes aren’t limited to Christmas.
There are plenty of other options to embrace, like Halloween, Thanksgiving, summer vacations, back to school, and more.
However, Christmas takes center stage on Amazon Merch on Demand as one of the most celebrated and shopping-triggering holidays of all. Because of this, we’ve focused our research on this seasonal theme alone.
A quick browse on Merch Informer unearths 208 bestselling listings ranking for “Christmas’ ‘, with an average BSR of 482,681. Compared to all throw pillows, Christmas-inspired items seem to have a much lower average BSR.
They’re also much more popular among shoppers, given the monthly search volume of 95, 305 for “throw pillow Christmas”.
The earnings potential of this specific niche is very similar to all throw pillows, with an average selling price of $24.78.
All of these insights signal that seasonality in the throw pillow market is a golden mine to embrace.
But let’s see if that’s true by dissecting the most successful listing in the space.
A deep dive into the number one Christmas throw pillow listing
The bestseller in this niche is “Funny Best Mommom Ever Tshirt Best Mommom Ever Shirt Funny Mother’s Day Gift Christmas Throw Pillow, 18×18, Multicolor”. It sells at $21.96 (below the market average) and has a BSR of 368,365. Surprisingly, this means one sale.
In other words, despite the high search volume, Christmas throw pillows aren’t faring very well on Amazon Merch on Demand.
From a royalties perspective, this seller is bringing home $3.71 from this product.
A discrepancy between search and sales
This is one of the rare occasions where research data shows unmissable discrepancies.
On one hand, we discovered that Amazon shoppers are actively browsing for Christmas throw pillows. At the same time, even the best-sellers are only landing a single sale for their Xmas designs.
This could mean several things.
First, it may be a case of researching the wrong keywords. For example, some merchants could use “Xmas”, “festive”, “Santa”, or other Christmas-inspired words instead of the most popular “Christmas”.
To check, we performed additional research using these variations.
As it turns out, top sellers are again generating only one sale in this space, regardless of the used keyword.
A second reason for the discrepancy between sales and search volume could be the limited market. As noted above, throw pillows, in general, are not as frequently bought as other merch types. This means that there are not as many buyers to target and interest in your designs.
Third, a lot of the listings ranking for “Christmas” also rank for other special events or occasions, like birthdays or gifts in general. Although this merging of niches is often an effective strategy, in the throw pillow category it doesn’t seem to be triggering positive results.
Our recommendations for the throw pillow category
Based on the information extracted from Merch Informer, we highly advise focusing on evergreen niches rather than seasonal trends in the throw pillow category.
According to our Christmas findings, even with extensive design and listing optimization, the best you can perform is with one sale per listing.
Instead, we suggest selecting several top-performing evergreen themes and creating designs for the long run.
Some of the niches we identified earlier include funny, cute, and love-inspired throw pillow designs. Don’t forget to target a specific audience with your illustrations and listing titles. For instance, market insights show that moms are a trending buyer group.
By choosing evergreen over seasonal segments, you can enjoy sales throughout the whole year and quickly grow your popularity.
Conclusion
No matter how experienced you are as a seller, one of the hardest decisions when it comes to sales strategy is niche selection.
In this article, we shared the process of determining the most profitable avenue by making informed, data-backed choices.
Using Merch Informer, you can apply the same approach to any Amazon Merch on Demand category. Enjoy real-time insights and a myriad of features and capabilities.
