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Christmas 2019
Christmas Cheer According to the retail analysts, the all-important weekend before Christmas was a bit of a disappointment for both the high street and online retailers, with ‘Super Saturday’ on December 21 not living up to expectations. However, happily, for many independent gift retailers, it was a rather different story, with the tills jingling merrily on high.
A Sell-Out Christmas “Despite the General Election on December 12, which was predicted to affect Christmas trade, the Christmas shop was surprisingly earlier compared to last year,” highlighted Adam de Wolff, coowner of The Indigo Tree in South West London’s Streatham and Crystal Palace. “We started to get busy from December 7, the first Saturday of the month, and it didn’t really stop for us. We timed the opening of our new Crystal Palace shop so as not to miss out on the Christmas season, but we had to buy somewhat blind as we were not 100% sure of what our prospective customers would be looking for. Thankfully for us, the demographic proved to be very similar to Streatham.” He said that customers were looking for something funny, useful and, most importantly, below £20. “Within this budget, we therefore offered a wide range of items to suit all ages, and we had at least four customers tell us, or our staff, that they had done all of their Christmas shopping at The Indigo Tree this year!” Continued Adam: “There was a re-run of a local campaign, organised by retailers in 2018, called SE19 Lates, where two late shopping nights were heavily promoted on social networks and flyers. This year there was more advertising and additional street banners, and we more than doubled the day’s take on both nights.” Among The Indigo Tree’s best sellers were eco-friendly gifts to include re-useable metal straws from Legami, Uberstar and Valerie Graham, and Swig insulated metal drinks holders. “They did very well despite being widely available from supermarkets and garage forecourts etc. We also did really well with the usual suspects - hand creams and soaps, scarves and gloves and jewellery - but a significant contribution were the huge range of Christmas decorations and baubles where we always do well with Gisela Graham, especially the ’dog and cat in clothes’ ranges. This year Transomnia provided some great additions too, with a small grey resin hanging angel decoration doing amazingly well. We also loved The Shoeless Joe cut out metal decorations. In fact, I was very concerned by the end of the weekend before Christmas that we had nothing much left to sell! Monday and Tuesday were the two best days of December with our stock room virtually empty, apart from photo frames.”
Our Busiest Day Ever At Alligator Pear in Tadworth, buyer/manager Jenni Taylor revealed that Christmas was more of a slow build up this year. “It was 100% due to the General Election, making everyone more cautious, but once people started coming into the shop it was really good and pretty steady, with the shop’s best day ever on Monday December 23,” Jenni confirmed. “Our strongest product sector was fashion accessories where we did exceptionally well with fur, to include fur trimmed gloves and scarves. Christmas decorations were big
sellers too, and we also did particularly well with our silver and white sparkly story across a wide range of products. Other winners were gin related giftware - a hit with customers for a second consecutive year - and anything featuring animal print, with cushions and throws, sourced at Autumn Fair, also very popular. With the average spend at £20 and under, for 2020 we will be taking a look at our pricing to ensure that we stay competitive.” Above: Fur products and animal print were huge Christmas ‘hits’ at Alligator Pear.
Top: Among the Gisela Graham Christmas decorations at The Indigo Tree. Above: The new The Indigo Tree store in Streatham.
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