Gift Basket Business Blog

Put Your Gift Basket Business on a Diet!

February 29th, 2008 at 12:47pm Lorie Obernauer

I just read an interesting article in Florists’ Review Magazine, January, 2008, that I think has great relevance for our gourmet gift basket businesses. With thanks to author Teresa Lanker, I’d like to paraphrase and summarize her ideas and suggest how these might work wonders for gift basket business owners!

Lanker explains her “diet” for business owners with the following analogies:

• “Eat Less! Control your resources by reducing “consumption” of supplies, time and energy.”
• Clean out your old inventory. Get rid of those products that are out of date or in poor condition. Broken baskets and frayed packaging and will do nothing to enhance your image.
• Make sure your employees are using their time effectively. Sometimes, during a slow season, employees slow down on production. To avoid this, use “down time” to take on extra projects when the regular work is done. For example, ask employees to place a “satisfaction call” to all customers who received a basket from you over the Winter holidays. This will show your customers that you care and perhaps lead to another order!
• “Excercise More! Be proactive, not reactive.”
• Choose one area of your business that you want to change, create a plan and set measurable goals. For example, you may want to create a new line of gourmet designs for the upcoming Summer months. Decide how many new designs you want, decide on price points for these designs, and ask each employee to create 3 new baskets. Make this a team effort: pick and choose between all their designs to come up the best result with some comparison shopping?
• Or, how about a campaign to control some of your fixed expenses? Call all your local phone companies to find out which has a plan that would be most cost effective for your needs. Likewise, get in touch with local utility companies and find out about different plans or contact local banks to find out about their credit card programs.

Entry Filed under: Business Tips, Gourmet Gift Foods