Here's another twist to this idea. Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas are all coming up within the next few months. I'm sure most local retailers are gearing up their inventory, but probably aren't thinking about showing up in the SERPS for their products. What they might end up doing is spending a fortune in adwords because they don't rank for the holidays.
If you are targeting a local town or city, start building some good generic pages using keywords for the town/city and the product. For example, write a few articles on holiday catering in 'local town', then get a bunch of backlinks to it. You should be able to rank well in a month or so, and once the holidays are in full swing, you'll have a bunch of pages/sites ranking for all the popular products in your city.
Then start hitting up the local businesses and sell/rent them your page. If you can start ranking for "holiday banquet hall in La Jolla", go hit up the marketing departments at the Sea Lodge Hotel, or your local Sheraton Inn, or Marriott. Show them what you're ranking for, and how the page could look with their Christmas party package, or New Years Eve Package on it.
Write up a page on picking out the best Christmas tree in your town, what kind of tree, how to maintain it, safety, etc. Then when the Christmas Tree lots open up, (or pumpkin patch for Halloween), offer to promote their lot for a fee (and a free Christmas tree for yourself, people love to barter).