With the end of first quarter of the year fast approaching, and one Spring Season event under the belt, and another on the way, PGBuzz checks in with Sarah Henderson, co-owner of 3 Wishes with five shops in Dorset and Hampshire to find out how 2020 is shaping up and what new ranges have really caught their eye.
How has the year started?:“Thankfully 2020 has started well for us. We certainly have no real concerns about the year ahead and are currently trading at about 4% up on last year. So far we have seen the expected pattern of trade. Our Valentine’s card sales, by volume, were almost exactly the same as the previous year.”
Notable trends?:“Towards the end of last year we saw an increasing number of people making choices based on the environmental impact of a product. This will be the main focus for us this year. We have started by retaining as much of our left over Christmas stock as possible. Normally we would return it all and reorder next year but this year we have held back all the stock we think we can sell for this coming Christmas, only returning designs that really didn’t sell for us. The alternative seems so wasteful.
We need to be ahead of our customers’ expectations, especially when we are ordering so far in advance for Christmas, so, in anticipation of even greater consumer awareness on this front, by the end of the year we will be focusing on suppliers using biodegradable flitter and of course continuing to choose products with little or no plastic packaging wherever possible. We are planning to replace all ribbon and bows with raffia and cotton alternatives. We have started to offer a recycling service for cellophane and hopefully we will soon be able to extend this to foil balloons. We hope that by making a few small changes we will increase awareness and inspire some of our customers to make a little more effort to reduce their waste too.”
What newness has caught your eye?:“With our environmental focus in mind, our approach at Spring Fair was very different this year. We were very excited to find 1 Tree Cards which offers a great range of designs. And I love that the company plants a tree for every card sold, plus you also receive a little flower seed token inside the card. It’s such an inspired alternative to the traditional card. We can’t wait to start selling them, I am certain they will have one of the biggest impacts on buying habits we have ever seen in store.
Our other exciting find was Dream Capture Cards offering a beautiful and eye-catching range of cards and gifts. They are all dream/fantasy-inspired including fairies, unicorns, a dragon and lots of rainbows. As an added bonus to her talents as an artist, Michelle Foster, owner of the business, is such a lovely person but also very brave, as the Spring Fair was her first trade fair, eek!! We have placed an order for blank cards, cards with quotes, magnets, keyrings, keepsake card plaques and a few of her giclee prints.”
Plans for the year?:“PG Live is a priority for us this year. We are adding in a bigger percentage of smaller publishers to keep our ranges more diverse and interesting so we will be planning to source lots of new at the show in June. I’m really looking forward to it.”
Top: 3 Wishes store in Broadstairs
