The Gifting Phenomenon
With the pandemic unexpectedly gatecrashing 2021, our anticipated New Year freedom didn’t come to fruition. This continued the new trend for online sales and home deliveries, with experts anticipating this new trend will not change significantly now all the restrictions are lifting, as people have become accustomed to their new shopping habits.
Together with this new trend for home deliveries, there has also been a strong uplift in spend on gifting, self-gifting, gardening and home décor, with flowers falling into all of these groups, with purchases either being made for loved ones who we haven’t been able to visit, or indeed as a gift for yourself.
And with so many people now working from home, there has been a real shift in focus on improving our interiors, to create a more appealing environment to be spending so much time in.
With the temporary loss of our corporate business with non-essential shops and the hospitality industry being closed, and of course the long postponements of weddings, most of them having now moved back into 2022, this year we shifted our focus over to the gifting and self-gifting market. This new market is being driven by young and affluent people now working from home, and wanting to improve their environment, together with an older market wanting to send gifts to their families who they haven’t seen for so long.
We took this new trend onboard, and have included a Gifting section to our website, collaborating with local suppliers, City Bumpkin Cakes and local candle makers, Willow & Honey. We now supply freshly baked to order cupcakes from City Bumpkin, together with their Treat Boxes for special occasions, and they are a real treat!
We are also very excited to have launched our new Willow & Honey scented candles to our Gifting section. With two gorgeous options available, being Black Pomegranate, an intense & moody aroma, and English Rose, a light & summery aroma, reminiscent of an English country garden. Both these candles are available in 60g and 220g sizes, and are presented in a beautiful rigid presentation box, and of course gift wrapped.
We also stock Taittinger champagne, (my favourite brand!), together with decadent little half bottles of Pink Taittinger, as a luxury gift. Perfect when accompanied with one of our bouquets for that special occasion.
Our Gifting range includes our very popular and unusual Reclaimed Brick Box Planters. A beautiful reclaimed wooden brick box, planted with seasonal bulbs or a trio of houseplants, and dressed with moss. We also offer a refill service for these planters, so once your bulbs have flowered and are ready to be moved into your garden for flowering again next year, you can return your brick boxes to us, and we will replant them with fresh bulbs or plants, season dependent, so you can continue to enjoy your Brick Box Planter right through the year.
Our fabulously large white Phalaenopsis Orchids, planted in chunky recycled glass vases, and dressed in bark make a stunning alternative gift, and are also perfect for self-gifting. If like us, you like the plants in your home to have the wow factor, these are definitely for you!
And for the latest new product in our range, we are delighted to introduce our Trio of Dried Flower Botanical Vases. A very on trend alternative to our fresh flower Botanical Vases which are hugely popular, to create the perfect gift or indeed self gift. These dried flower vases are currently available in a Florists Choice selection of beautifully dried blooms and foliage, creating a pretty collection of texture, shape and colour, which will look good in your home for months. Our new Trio of Dried Flower Botanical Vases are presented in a beautiful gift box finished with our signature velvet ribbon.
All these gifts can be ordered individually, and we currently deliver within a radius of 15 miles of Stratford-upon-Avon & Banbury.
We are keen to extend our Gifting range further, and are always looking for new ideas, so do keep an eye on our website for new launches, and don’t forget to ‘KEEP GIFTING!’