Christmas, retail and giſt


The company adds that research indicates the value of the gift market to be worth around £20bn, with consumers wanting to buy unusual and unique gifts that reflect the recipient’s hobbies and interests. Kent & Stowe adds that its gift range is ‘perfect for gardening outlets’ and its eye-catching packaging and POS is ideal for the Christmas gift market. It is important to remember that gifts can come with a range of budgets.


While a shed might not be the traditional go- to present to discover under the Christmas tree, for some, it’s the dream gift, according to The Posh Shed Company.


Products include a range of Back Door Stores, such as the compact Boot Store designed to fit comfortably near the back door so everything is within reach of the house. Alternatively, the Pent Store is available as either a single or double unit, with additional room and secure, hardwearing doors to keep everything inside safe and dry.


Christmas is also a time for giving and for thinking of others, the company notes. The Forget Me Not Southwold shed enables customers to do just that while giving Christmas gifts this year. For every purchase of this shed, The Posh Shed Company will donate 5% to the Alzheimer’s Society – funding valuable research into Alzheimer’s and other diseases causing dementia.


On a smaller scale, The Posh Shed Company also provides products for garden wildlife, including birds, bats and hedgehogs. With hedgehogs sadly becoming rarer, they can be helped by giving them a new home this Christmas. The hand-crafted Hedgehog House


has a handy pull-out tunnel and cedar roof and fits subtly into any corner of the garden. Gifts do not necessarily need to be of the gardening variety, with garden centres branching out into broader categories, often including quality offerings in food and drink. The winter months are perfect for a warming tipple in front of a roaring log fire, and one supplier believes nothing makes a more thoughtful gift than a personalised Stacker collection of favourite gins, ports and vodkas. New from Raisthorpe Manor, Stackers enable you to choose one top 20cl bottle and as many 20cl bottoms in your choice of flavours as you like to create an interlocking stack of your loved one’s favourite botanical flavours.


Customers can choose from a wide choice of award-winning fruity gins, vodkas and ports. Perfect winter warmers include damson port liqueur, sloe gin and sloe port liqueur. Other flavours include distilled dry gin, sweet violet gin, 9ct gold toffee and green apple vodka (tops) and gooseberry, rhubarb and elderflower gin and strawberry, raspberry and apple and 9ct blood orange vodka (bottoms). Alternatively, there is a Stackers Port Combo of


Sloe Port Liqueur and Damson Port Liqueur or a Stackers Fruit Gin Combo comprising Raspberry Gin Liqueur, Damson Gin Liqueur and Sloe Gin (which retail at £25 and £36 respectively). The brainchild of entrepreneur Julia Medforth, the tipples are all handmade by Raisthorpe Manor on the farm at Wharram, near Malton, Yorkshire.


Julia Medforth says: “The stackers are a new and innovative way for spirit lovers to gift their favourite flavours. They are a great way of


creating a thoughtful bespoke gift of some of our most popular products. Customers can mix and match their favourite gins, vodkas and ports with others they may not have tried before in handy 20cl bottles.” While being a strong period for business,


Christmas also provides an opportunity to inject some fun into proceedings. The warehouse team at Smart Garden have


been busy wrapping over 1,500 very large ‘Christmas presents’ with tens of thousands of cartons of Three Kings stock arriving at customers’ premises in time for Christmas displays. Operations director Gary Ackers commented: “We thought it would be fun to announce our first deliveries of the new Three Kings range in a seasonal way. We’ve already started to receive emails from customers saying it’s made their day.”


First launched at the Harrogate Christmas and Gift Fair in January 2018, swiftly followed by the Spring Fair, Three Kings is a new brand from Smart covering a range of Christmas categories including Lighting, Décor and Festive Figurines. The response has been extremely positive and early indications are that Three Kings is going to be a runaway success, the company says.


The Three Kings range will be expanded significantly for 2019, with many new additions making their debut when Smart returns to Harrogate in January. With a broad range of products available


and customers in the mood to buy, there are plenty of opportunities in the Christmas and gift market for garden centres to take advantage of.


Christmas gifts come in a range of sizes, with The Posh Shed Company’s Pent Store designed for those in need of additional storage space 14 | www.gardencentreupdate.com GCU October 2018


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