The C-word
Now that the nights are drawing in and any hope of an Indian summer has long since departed, I thought I’d share with you a tale from our early years. So gather round, but bear in mind that in order to do this I cannot avoid using the C-word. Brace yourselves.
Here we go… I’m sorry to bring this up, but did you know there are only 110 days to go until Christmas?
There, I said it! But unlike a lot of self-employed business folk, to me Christmas means some time to ease off the throttle a bit. And after the year we’ve had I can’t wait!
It wasn’t always like this. During my first year of self-employed garden designer status, Christmas came as a bit of a surprise. It dawned upon me one day in October that if I didn’t act, and act sharpish, there would be nothing to put on the festive dinner table, let alone under the tree.
Thinking laterally has always been one of our strong points, so it was not long before one of us hit upon the merry idea of branching out into the Christmas Wreath business. But not the cheap plastic tat you see in the shops – ours were to be a much better class of wreath altogether. We broke open a new spreadsheet, rang around for prices, and before long we had ordered vast quantities of wholesale ribbon, tinsel, dried fruit and assorted glittery bric a brac, as well as an equally vast selection of fake and fresh wreaths. We even went to the lengths of purchasing festive paper bags to pack them in, and to sell our creations we booked a last minute slot at the prestigious Shugborough Christmas Candlelit Evenings, at Shugborough Hall in Staffordshire.
October turned into November, and the office of Lush Landscape and Garden Design were transformed into a wreath-making sweat shop. In a flurry of hot glue guns and wire we created a multitude of wreaths, swags and holiday garlands. We gave the produce a trial run at a local village Christmas Fayre, and after three long hours took about £50. Not a great return on our investment. But we knew that with Shugborough just around the corner it was only a matter of time before we made some real money.
I don’t know if you have ever been to the Shugborough Christmas Candlelit Evenings. We certainly hadn’t, having only moved into this area in the August. According to the brochure, “the estate is transformed into a magical winter wonderland as the Mansion House and Servants quarters are candlelit and decorated with real flowers, holly and traditional trimmings. Costumed characters will tell the story of Christmases past, plus there will be brass bands, carol singers, snow showers, entertainers and a large gift and food marquee.” Just the kind of place to sell our better class of decoration.
When we arrived, late due to some dodgy directions, we were pointed towards the marquee in the gardens alongside the Hall itself. The ground was sodden underfoot, and parking near the marquee was non-existent due to our late arrival. But we weren’t going to let that stop us – between us we have many years experience ranging from setting up international trade exhibitions stands to running dozens of craft fairs, so we had our pitch built and stocked in half an hour flat. To say that the genteel ladies selling doilies and crochet toilet-roll covers were taken aback would be understating it a great deal. With a few minutes to spare we paused for breath and waited for the masses to pour in.
And in they duly poured, gawping with glazed eyes at the products on offer, before shuffling off in the direction of the hot food stands outside. There were plenty of people, but no-one was buying. It wasn’t just us who felt like we’d wasted our time – a lot of the other stall holders complained that the troupes of coach parties from as far afield as Manchester and Milton Keynes were treating the whole thing as if we were part of the candlelit stately home – look, but don’t touch, let alone buy.
The worst part of the evening was the realisation what we had to do the same thing all over again the following day.
I’ll spare you the gory details – thankfully we did take some money, just enough to pay for the pitch, and we sold a whole heap more on Ebay afterwards, but the whole episode put an end to our festive entrepreneurial tendencies. We’re very happy to leave that madness to proper shop owners.
And if you know of anyone looking for a better class of Christmas wreath, we might be able to lay our hands on one or two…
Reminders me of a similar experience we had trying to sell bespoke wreaths for Christmas. We had some luck at a market in Dublin city centre but actually sold more by having them featured in an interiors magazine. However at the end of the day its hard to make some decent money from your efforts
Dibs on one for my office; we could use a touch of class there. Now for mentioning the c-word, wash your mouth out with soap and water… it’s pre-winter watershed you know!