Over the past six months, 10 to 15 new products have gone live each week, from a pool of 2,000 sourced from suppliers and trade fairs around the world. Among the usual kitsch Christmassy detritus, the surprise seller this year is an extremely classy £80 boardgame about pirates: packaged in a wooden chest, it has gems and pieces of heavy metal instead of plastic counters, and has sold like hot cakes. It also proves the company’s ethos, which is that the days of the über-present, like the Rubik’s Cube, are gone: now, the desired effect is not "just what I wanted" but "where on earth did you get that?"
iwantoneofthose.com
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Cox & Cox
It came as an unpleasant surprise to Londoners Fiona Cox and Lizzie Thornton-Allan that the shopping opportunities in rural Oxfordshire were not what they were used to. So Cox, 42, who had a background in design and publishing, came up with the idea of a catalogue "where people can get stuff if they don’t live in London", and began to source products from all over the world. New friend Thornton-Allan, 44, was recruited to deal with the financial and administrative side.
In 2001, they launched 70 products in a catalogue that stood out from the crowd: it was small, not the usual A4, and the paper was both matt and thicker than most catalogues. It looked wholesome, and all their products came beautifully boxed. The catalogue, they hoped, would be something that people might want to keep on their coffee tables. Split into sections and produced once a year, it’s a feminine read, full of whimsical, sometimes nostalgic products: there are sets of wooden alphabet stamps and paint-your-own tea-sets for children; wooden heart-shaped coat hooks, pink soap petals and scented firelighters in Decorative Home; and in A Festive Season, gift ribbon with "Noel" printed on it fights for space with crystal tree decorations and silver Christmas pudding charms. It’s all sourced by Cox, who trawls small shops and travels the world in search of inspiration and new products, both of which she recently found in India.
"You wouldn’t believe how many people order Christmas cookie cutters year-round," says Thornton-Allan. "Lots of people order something for a children’s party in June and think, ‘I’ll get a few of those Christmas tags, too’. And people see a gift in everything: a wasp trap is a better present than socks, and ours is more attractive than the one from Robert Dyas." This year’s bestseller is the musical crackers, which contain a whistle and tune-sheet for families of the "parlour games round the festive table" variety.
They also reckon that a well-placed Cox & Cox catalogue could be the way for women to avoid another disappointing Christmas. Men, they reason, want to buy something their woman will like, "but they want the path of least resistance. We give them that".
The pair are fortunate to be largely cushioned from the specific stresses of running a mail-order gift company at Christmas, because they employ a third party to deal with the call centre,
packing, and dispatching of catalogues and orders. As a result, the intricacies of staffing levels aren’t their concern. What does concern them is people who leave it too late.
"We find people panic in the run-up to Christmas," says Cox. "Throughout the year they’re happy to get their order in a week or two, but at Christmas you just have to get the stuff out before they have time to wonder where it is. You have to up the ante."
www.coxandcox.co.uk
0870 4424787
Hawkin’s Bazaar
Confusingly, there isn’t, and never has been, a Mr or Mrs Hawkin. The website, catalogue and shops, which at a stroke solve the problem of stocking-fillers, take their name from the disused Norfolk pub where the business began, 32 years ago – the Hawk Inn. It was current owner Toby Templer’s father who set up the business and, although he died three years ago, it is still the quintessential family, rural company – Toby walks to work across a field; the warehouse is next to the stable housing Toby’s horse, Bertie, while the epicentre of the Hawkin empire is a not-very-converted barn.
"People are trying to make the ultimate Christmas, one that probably no one ever had as a child, but would like to think they did," says Templer. "They want a cosy Christmas, with stockings and fires, and that’s what we’re trying to re-create within the catalogue. We’re selling the dream."
It’s a popular dream: in the nine weeks running up to Christmas, Hawkins will deal with 180,000 orders, accounting for 75 per cent of their annual turnover. The warehouse will employ 160 people to process 4,500 orders a day, compared with six staff in the quietest month of July. The busiest week is generally, for some reason, November 20. There are more than a million people on their database. Yet it is strangely low-tech: the army of young warehouse workers push brightly coloured plastic boxes round on trolleys, picking up items from orders clipped to the trolley, one order at a time, and adding them to the box.
"A lot of our stuff is nostalgic with a modern-day twist," says Templer. "We’re reinventing old ideas – we source them at fairs in countries all over the world, and repackage them in a way that can be presented to the UK market. We see things that nobody else would – like soaps in the shape of cats that grow hair." Or the Choking Chicken, this year’s big seller, guaranteed to generate a few laughs, and so loud and annoying that it was banned from the call centre. Or the bubbles that don’t burst when you touch them. Or the 99p little plastic reindeer that poos jelly beans.
Templer himself chooses nearly all of it, and has an unerring eye for what will sell. As a result, the business is growing at a phenomenal rate, and now boasts 25 shops in addition to the wholesale, website and catalogue business. For Hawkin’s, Christmas can’t start early enough: Templer dreads the day when delivery is expected to be so efficient that people leave ordering until December 22. Unbelievably, some of his customers start thinking about Christmas in August. Some order on the same day every year.
"I think we’re really good for hard-to-buy-for people. We don’t want to be like all the other catalogues, we want things that make you smile, and the feeling that you can rummage around and come up with a gem."
www.hawkin.com
0870 4294000
Additional reporting by Kristian Brodie
