Gift Basket Businesses Can Survive and Thrive
The January/February issue of Specialty News Magazine includes an article entitled “Striving and Thriving in Tough Economic Times”. Based on interviews with top retailers and gourmet food suppliers, the author describes 10 strategies for “recession-proofing” your business during tough economic times. Full Story.
While I suggest that you read the full article, there are a few points that I think are worth careful consideration. First, the author suggests that we “adapt to new shopping patterns”. As our customers become more careful about their choices, this is a good time to look carefully at some numbers and facts. While you may think that a certain gourmet cookie is the best you’ve ever tasted, it is important that you analyze what is actually selling.
For example, at Apex Gift Foods, we try to add new items to our line every year in order to introduce our customers to what we consider are the best offerings in the marketplace. I’m sure this is something that you also try to do. But at the end of each holiday season, we take a careful look at what items sold best. One of the items that we’ve carried for years is Walker Shortbread cookies, a delicious, premium cookie. Although I get tired of seeing them in our catalog year after year, our sales figures indicate that this is still one of our top selling items. So when the time comes to decide what we keep in our line, Walker cookies will definitely stay. On the other hand, we’ve seen that sales of single serve Walkers cookies far out sell Walker boxed items, so while these are the same delicious cookies, the boxed cookies may be dropped from our line.
The experts also suggest that it will be important to “package and prepare creatively”. For gift basket designers, this may mean a shift from designs that have always sold well in the past. You may need to lower your price points by using fewer gourmet products but you can still enhance the value of your design with creative containers, ribbons, and other inexpensive enhancements.While you never want to compromise the quality of the products that you use, you can still offer basket designs at prices that your customers are comfortable with.
Stay in tune with your customers. Analyze what they buy (and don’t buy). Ask your best customers for suggestions about products and service. By continuing to cultivate our customer relationships, we can learn a lot about what will help our businesses survive and thrive.
Add comment January 7th, 2009
