Trade talk
Lockdown 3, Brexit and looking to the future – it’s all up for discussion this month
Kristina Ruffell
Marketing manager, Personalised Memento Company Feelings about the year ahead? Positively cautious. We feel the gift industry as a whole will come in a good position after non-essential shops can reopen, but maybe not quite to the same level of 2020. The past 12 months have been exceptional for personalisation and we anticipate 2021 to be strong, and it’ll be encouraging to see the focus of retail remaining online. Stock continues to be an issue with shipping and port delays that are likely to continue into well into 2021.
How are you keeping in touch with retail partners? We’re using every channel that remains open - conference calls, sharing new products digitally, phone and email. Our virtual showroom has provided a great outlet for our retailers.
Any positives you’ll be implementing into your future business model? Our new digital formats will likely remain, as it serves our retailers to see our showroom virtually. Also, some of our personalisation methods have become streamlined and improved meaning we are working even more efficiently.
Helen Cottrill
Marketing director, Enesco Impact Lockdown 3 is having on your business?
We’re having a really good start to the year, our bookings are strong, with many retailers planning for the end of lockdown. Our online business continues to dominate. I think the hardest thing from a company management perspective is maintaining the team feeling we have at Enesco. We have used Teams to keep in touch during the pandemic and that has worked so well.
How are you keeping in touch with retail partners? Early on we identified the need to service customers in a different way. Our sales team use Pixsell, an iPad based selling system that’s also compatible with Teams, so we can present as if we were physically meeting. Our website which is available 24/7 has seen a much higher level of traffic since the pandemic began.
Any positives you’ll implementing into your future business model? Where possible we are going to continue to have a homebased workforce, allowing us to be much more flexible with working hours. Our sales team will be offering customers more alternative ways to do business.
Jonny Greves
Director of Lesser & Pavey Ltd Feelings about the year ahead? We can see light at the end of the tunnel and we’re well prepared for it. We’ve had to adapt our buying but it hasn’t slowed us down. We’ve launched thousands of new products, including all our Christmas ranges, and we still have hundreds more on the way.
Impact Lockdown 3 is having on your business? We learnt and adapted in the first two lockdowns, so the impact’s been less this time round. The major impact of is no physical Spring Fair. Strictly following Government guidelines, we’ve kept our showroom open for socially distanced appointments so we have still seen lots of customers.
How are you keeping in touch with retail partners? We’ve made good use of the likes of Zoom and Teams video calls, meetings in the showroom, and directly from home with iPads. We invested more in product photography for customers to use and we’ll continue to do this.
Any positives you’ll be implementing into your future business model? Our Virtual Showroom, that’s allowed our sales team and customers to visit our showroom together.
‘We’ve increased our online communications. More resources are available digitally and we’re dramatically expanding our library of product videos that feature our best-selling brands’ Lawrence Savage Marketing Manager, ExaClair Ltd
Lawrence Savage
Marketing Manager, ExaClair Limited Impact is Lockdown 3 having on your business? Even though there has been an overall decline in the global stationery market during 2020, recent projections estimate it’ll recover to reach somewhere between US$186.9 - $217.9bn by 2027. Premium stationery continues to be an area of growth.
How are you keeping in touch with retail partners? We’ve increased our online communications. More resources are available digitally and we’re dramatically expanding our library of product videos that feature our best-selling brands.
Any positives you’ll be implementing into your future business model? We’ve definitely become more dynamic with order processing and have developed more flexible distribution logistics to accommodate the increasingly varied customer delivery requirements.
42 Gifts Today
Trade Talk Feb Gifts (RK edit).indd 1
19/02/2021 16:48