Top sellers on Etsy reveal their best secrets on hiring, marketing, and turning a profit for the holiday season

• Holiday shopping is hitting its peak this week. The last Saturday before Christmas, also known as "Super Saturday," is the biggest shopping day of the year.
• It can be a hectic time for small businesses with limited staff, a challenge Etsy sellers know well, because the online marketplace is a common destination for gift givers.
• Etsy sellers reveal how they manage big spikes in sales around the holidays, from stocking up months before, to carefully-timed product releases.
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Holiday shopping is hitting its peak this week. The last Saturday before Christmas, which falls on December 21 this year, is also known as "Super Saturday." Informally, it's the weekend procrastinators buy their last-minute gifts and hope that two-day shipping will work out in their favor.

It's the biggest shopping day of the year - not Black Friday or Cyber Monday - and an estimated 147.8 million people in the US will participate, according to the The National Retail Foundation.

It can be a hectic time for small businesses with limited staff. Etsy sellers know the mayhem well, especially since the online marketplace is a common destination for unique and personalized gifts. Many Etsy shop owners make, customize, package, and ship their products themselves or with a small team, so there's a lot to juggle as orders come flooding in.

Business Insider asked top Etsy sellers what challenges they face during the holiday season. Here's how they prepare ahead and manage big spikes in sales.

Stocking up for the season

Jessica Morelli owns Palermo Body, a natural skincare line sold online, on Etsy, and in retailers like CB2. She said the holiday season is, without a doubt, her company's busiest time. "Since we're still manufacturing all of our products ourselves, it can be a struggle to keep up with demand," she said.

Her team uses a strategy she calls, "super stocking," to prepare well before orders come in. "For the weeks leading up to the holidays, we essentially are doing nothing but the production of products and sending orders out to our retailers," she said.

To know how much product they need to produce, Morelli's team projects holiday sales based on numbers from last year, and this year's sales trends.

Matthew Cummings is the owner of Pretentious Beer Co., a taproom and beer brewery in Knoxville, Tennessee, and Pretentious Glass Co., which makes hand-blown glasses sold on Etsy and at the brewery.

Cummings said around 30% of the company's annual sales happen in December. "Making sure we have the right glasses at the right time is one of our biggest challenges," he said.

His team plans out a detailed calendar months in advance, though he said glassblowing is incredibly difficult to schedule. "It is an old-world craft with a thousand variables: the temperature of the furnace, the amount of glass in the furnace, the glassware needed, how the teams are feeling," he said.

Boosting the workforce

Morelli said that finding the cashflow to hire has been one of the biggest challenges of bootstrapping. From January to September this year, she ran her business with three others, then hired two more team members in October, just in time for the holidays.

"[We] finally feel like we've got our head above water for the time being," she said.

Quick manufacturer turn-around

Angela Wator is the creator of Bash Party Goods, an online and Etsy shop that sells party supplies and stationary. The holiday season is extremely busy for her because gift wrap is one of her biggest product categories.

Although she determines the quantity of gift wrap needed in advance, sometimes a popular item will sell out as early as October, she said. "Fortunately, we've established a great relationship with our domestic manufacturer and that allows us to receive replenishment stock very quickly," she said.

Product releases and limited-edition items

Customers are bombarded with emails this time of year, so it takes a clever email-marketing strategy to stand out.

Wator said she keeps her emails concise and exciting with a call to action. "We can't compete with large retailers on discounts and free shipping, so we focus on special product release dates and limited edition items that drive website traffic," she said.

Cummings used a similar approach this year by timing the company's holiday email campaign with its biggest launch of new glassware since Pretentious Glass Co. started in 2012. "It is a chance to thank our following by giving them a sneak peak into the glassware before anyone else," he said.