Anyone who has ever wondered how much Christmas costs, look away now. Last year, according to the Office of National Statistics, retail takings in December exceeded £6.1 billion – and despite recent gloomy predictions, that figure is now expected to be even higher this year. Once you’ve bought the food, the drinks, the decorations and – let’s not forget – the toys and presents, the average adult in the UK spends £813 at Christmas.

So what do we spend it on? Much of it goes on food and drink, but about £450 will be spent on presents. For the young – and some of the not-so-young – Christmas is all about toys, and in this market especially, the UK comes into its own. According to a recent survey sponsored by Duracell, the UK spends more on toys than any other country in Europe – with the average child’s wish-list costing parents £100, compared with the European average of £72. British parents are also the least organised, and leave their toy shopping until the last two weeks before Christmas – which explains why Selfridges report twice the average number of visitors to their store at this time of year.

In the six weeks before Christmas, 40 million people visit the West End of London. It’s a fact that either makes you come over all Christmassy or brings you out in a cold sweat. Hardly surprising, then, that the popularity of mail order and online shopping is soaring: it’s estimated that half the UK population went shopping online last Christmas. According to Google, 40 per cent of all the money spent on the internet in 2004 was spent in the run-up to Christmas, with three quarters of all Christmas shoppers at the very least doing some research online, even if they went on to order via a call centre or visit a shop. It’s a trend fuelled largely by the advent of reliable, couriered next-day delivery. Gone are the days of the old catalogues with their low-rent photography and 28-day delivery. In their place are quirky, quality websites and catalogues offering individual products and tailored service. On these pages, we visit three of the most successful. The internet can’t give you the scent of roasting chestnuts and the atmosphere of a festive high street, but it can let you do your shopping in your pyjamas at 3am on December 21.

iwantoneofthose.com

Online gadget store iwantoneofthose.com survived their first Christmas with a staff of four, two phone lines and an office that was founder Tim Booth’s London flat. That was in 2000. This year, their call centre and warehouse will operate 24 hours a day and their staff swells from 35 to 110. In the corner of a Dulwich industrial estate from which they now operate, the dotcom bubble never burst.

Their offices are a dream for lovers of all things quirky and gadgety: a mannequin wearing a bikini made of Refresher sweets stands in one corner, an ironing board disguised as a cactus in the other and miniature motorbikes, go-karts and robot dinosaurs stand neatly in rows, charged-up and ready for action. Throw in a saxophone-playing reindeer or two for a bargain £15 and it’s little wonder that at Christmas, "everything goes bananas".

"In the beginning we were living hand to mouth and had no predictive ordering system," remembers Booth, 42, a former photographer. "None of us had sold anything in our lives. We had enough stock for about a week, but it was 100 per cent guess work. We never bought in advance because we couldn’t afford to. "

The site was a phenomenal word-of-mouth success. Turnover in their first year was £100,000, in their second £2 million and their third, £6 million. "We were waiting for it all to fall apart," says Booth, "but the whole feeling about the internet turned round."

For increasing numbers of people, that’s because it’s retail heaven: no queues, no parking, nobody else. From a planning point of view, it’s a nightmare: for Booth and his team, discussions about Christmas stock and staffing levels start in May. When their customers decide to start Christmas shopping is another matter.

"Usually it’s September," says Booth. "But the more competent we become with delivery, the later people leave it to order. At Christmas, you need to go suddenly from six people in the call

centre to 28, and the warehouse goes up to nearly 60 staff. But you don’t want those staff twiddling their thumbs for three weeks, and you can’t recruit them in three days, so judging when the floodgates will open is the biggest hurdle for a company."

The site is successful, he believes, because it can offer the smaller brands and quirkier objects that can struggle to make it into toyshops because they’re unlikely to sell in big enough numbers. Iwantoneofthose now stock 750 products, from fluorescent "hair balls" that let out cartoon screams when you throw them at the wall, to chocolate fountains and "spa lights" that float in the bath.

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