What’s in Your Ultimate Spa Basket?
One of the wonderful reasons you began making gift baskets was to bring joy to the people who receive your gifts.
That’s true whether you bring comfort through your bereavement baskets or help an adult relieve stress through one of your luxurious spa baskets.
The first spa basket I made contained candles, oils, soaps, bath pillow and scrubbing gloves. You’ll see a sample spa basket in this video.
When orders became plentiful for this theme, I started offering more items, including plush towels, moisturizers, massage products, sparkling ciders and high-end snacks for two.
This basket has been delivered to customers in my city and shipped to dignitaries in foreign countries.
My spa baskets are often personalized for clients, and I bet the same is true about yours, too, so tell me, what products make your spa baskets special?
Why Don’t Cities Appreciate Our Home Businesses?
You start a business making gift baskets, and your enterprise does a lot more good than harm in your region. It:
With all of this goodness, and much more that I haven’t mentioned here, why don’t cities bring their home-based business rules up to speed with the way people make money today?
Everyone doesn’t work in a traditional office, and some of us would rather not. I can understand that there must be rules for people who work at home, but it seems that many cities don’t want to know you work there or, if they find out, they immediately want you to stop.
I’ve often said in my classes that we don’t hurt children or animals, and we’re not employing or exploiting minors or illegal residents. Our deliveries don’t clog up the roadways anymore than orders that arrive to people receiving items from home shopping shows.
So what’s the problem? Can we be allowed to make gift baskets that foster good business and goodwill between people without the threat of cease-and-desist letters?
I discuss this situation in depth in the book, How to Start a Home-Based Gift Basket Business, which includes methods to persuade city officials to let you conduct business from the comfort of your home.
What’s going on in your city? Is your business embraced, or do you have to keep your location under wraps?
What Themes are Customer Favorites?
When you first enter the gift basket industry, you have ideas as to which types of baskets you’ll make.
The most-popular themes continue to be birthday, thank you, congratulations, get well, and good luck, and these designs may be first on your list to market your business as broadly as possible.
Suddenly, customers begin asking you to create gift baskets for themes outside of the ones that started your enterprise.
According to my records, my clients requested themes for:
It wasn’t easy coming out of my five-theme comfort zone and start buying new products, but I moved forward because that was the only way to grow and prosper.
You’ve either experienced this situation or will soon face it. As you come out of your comfort zone, remember to thank your customers for expanding your business.
You won’t say it to them in that manner (although you will thank them for the order), but this vote of confidence guarantees that you’ll get new orders and referrals because of your terrific design work and great service.
Some products for new designs that you may not consider as your business expands are listed on this page at GiftBasketVideo.com.
Which gift basket theme was the one that moved you out of your comfort zone?
Why is Shrink Wrap Your Choice?
Shrink wrap was not my first choice of material when closing my gift basket designs. At the time, the cost for a shrink wrap machine seemed astronomical, a supply that only large, well-capitalized retailers could afford.
Shrink wrap bags weren’t widely distributed either, so I wasn’t able to try that product to see if it was an alternative to buying a large machine.
That’s why I stayed with cellophane for a long time, which you’ll learn more about on the CellophaneWrapTips.com site.
Then I learned that bags and shells were available through supply distributors, and that’s what introduced me to the world of shrink wrap.
Today, shrink wrap of all styles is much more affordable than the costs I remember back in the 1990s. Even if you work in a home-based space, there’s room for shrink wrap in your inventory in terms of cost and space.
I often attend trade shows and watch a shrink wrap supplier demonstrate the machine he’s selling, and I notice that gift basket retailers stand beside me watching, too.
What’s your experience with shrink wrap? What made you decide to bypass cellophane and basket bags and go straight for investing in a machine?
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