Here we all are, still waiting for summer to arrive, and then guess what? You wake up one morning and there it is – nearly Christmas. Well, ok, not quite nearly, but getting close. When planning your Christmas remember to consider your local retailers for those gifts for your nearest and dearest. Every year we hear that high street sales have dropped a little more, and that internet sales have risen a little more. Good thing? Maybe, maybe not. Every year we also hear about people who’s presents didn’t arrive on time, or arrived damaged, or got left in the rain on the doorstep. Convenient in some ways, but in all. Anyone ever bought clothes off the internet which looked great on the page but fitted like a bag? Or bought shoes which pinched in all the wrong places? Or bought tools which turned out not to be the size, quality, value they first appeared to be? Or bought something assuming it would be cheap, but then found they could have bought it cheaper locally by the time the postage charge was added on? And then there is the hassle about returning it…..!
You can’t beat picking something up, looking at it, feeling it, smelling it even for making a decision about the quality, which really is something you’ll never be able to do in the virtual world. I always think about the process of buying christmas trees with my parents when I was a kid. The decision absolutely couldn’t be made until we’d stood every tree in the place on it’s stump, stepped back a few paces and critically reviewed it from every angle. That’s what I’ll be expecting my customers to do when they come to look at our trees in a week or three (available from the 28th actually), and I’ll make it easy for them to do it too. Try doing that on t’internet!