Birthday Gifts Ireland & Europe - How our Birthday Gifts are born

Smile & Laugh at the start.

Perhaps it was the lockdown, which really made us appreciate our freedom to travel?  Perhaps it was the restrictions on our ability to socialise?  Perhaps it was just our evolution and desire to improve as a business?  Whatever it was, the period of 2020-22 has had a profound impact upon our society and the way we view things.

Just before the pandemic around February 2020, we had been looking at our range of Birthday Gift Baskets and Birthday Hampers.  We wanted to be able to offer a fresh new range of Birthday Gifts.  Unfortunately all product development had to be suspended due to the emergency situation and it was not until the following Spring that we were in a position to resurrect the project.

During the initial panic, we were extremely busy and like most other small business owners we were working with, it appeared to be that all of the essential work was being carried out by the business owners themselves or a small cadre of core staff.  Whilst tiring, not helped by the phenomenal weather and the deserted feel about the industrial park, there were a raft of advantages.  One such advantage from our perspective was the ability to read customers messages and be directly responsible for the production.  For us personally, what we read inspired a different way of thinking about working and objectives.

These Birthday Hampers and Birthday Gift Baskets were designed in the middle of the Pandemic.  We believe this to be our finest ever work.  We wanted a solution to the problem of what to send people as  Birthday Gifts whether they be Friends, Family Members, Colleagues or Acquaintances. Yes we created more Gift Baskets and Hampers, but these aren’t just standard creations, there is a depth and complexity to them, which will delight.  They are designed to achieve the goals human’s like doing most; Laugh and Smile.

Our full range of Birthday Gifts has finally been launched this week with the addition of the largest creations.  They join our Birthday Gift Classic range of popular best sellers over the past 20 years.  

So what makes this range of Birthday Gifts something which we are so delighted to be associated with?  Well we have always had a kind of Family joke about sending Gifts to each other.  If we did Secret Santa, it couldn’t be Food or Drink.  We certainly weren’t permitted to send a gift basket or hamper because that would show no thought or imagination. So we had to search for something different to send as gifts to our family members and friends, so that we could not be accused of taking the easy option.

(When the staff are Furloughed and you need some help)

However during the lockdowns there really wasn’t much choice.  Going to the shops was an ordeal, shopping online was problematic with increased delivery times.  We weren’t allowed to meet up unless we were working in different zones of our work-place  We were spending 7 days a week working, assembling gift baskets and running the business but we still knew how important it was to stay connected.

The issue of Birthday Gifts reared its head time and time again.  A Spinster Auntie in her 60s, a Female Friend’s 35^th Birthday, a Male Friend’s 46^th Birthday,  a Brother in Law’s 50^th Birthday, a sister’s request for her Father in Law’s Birthday, a cousin’s 18^th Birthday.  Look around and the options tend to be kitschy stereotypical Birthday themed junk or Generic gift ideas such as Hampers, merely dressed up with Birthday paraphenalia.

I knew we as a company could do this well, but the conceptual thinking needed to be on a far grander scale to anything we had ever done before.   

How could we solve the problem of what constituted a ‘Good’ Birthday Gift to send somebody in Ireland.  Could we design a concept which could be extended to Europe economically? Most important could our Birthday Gift Design minimise age & gender, whilst emphasising personality and most importantly of all focusing in on the relationship between sender and receiver?

To Be Continued...