Business idea to create gift baskets
The gift basket can surely be called the perfect gift.
Its contents can vary depending on the gender, age and tastes of the recipient; the events about which it is presented, and the financial possibilities of the donor. The basket can be both a bright individual gift, and universal, in case the addressee’s preferences are unknown.
Everything else, a gift basket is just a magic wand in situations where you find out about the upcoming event at the last moment and there is no time to prepare for it.
The idea of filling and decorating baskets is simple, and from the outside this activity may seem childish and not serious. You buy a bunch of some souvenirs, put them in a wicker basket, catch a bow – what kind of business is this?
But with a responsible and competent approach, the creation of such gifts can bring quite tangible income.
One of the advantages of the idea is that it practically does not require initial investment.
At the initial stage, such a business can be conducted from home. But over time, if you plan to grow, you will need an office. Well, or as a last resort, a separate room should be allocated for your work at home.
The service for filling and decorating gift baskets is not only telephone conversations and a site with beautiful photos of your creativity, these are baskets of various sizes, packaging and decorative materials, a desktop and a well-lit place for photographing your masterpieces. In addition, filling for standard sets, having a long shelf life, you probably will buy in bulk – for them you also need space.
The standard filling for baskets are usually delicacies, fruits, berries, desserts, cosmetics for the shower; men’s, women’s and children’s cosmetics, coffee – tea, chocolate.
In general, at the start of such a business in your arsenal there should be from 6 to 20 standard baskets to choose from, of different prices and sizes.
For example, it is quite possible to offer a chocolate or cosmetic basket in several variants: it is bigger and more expensive, smaller and cheaper.
In addition, the basket can be made from scratch, with an absolutely individual content for the customer’s order, or the standard set can be adjusted by adding items to the customer’s request. Such elements can be jewelry, photos, expensive perfume.
Over time, the growth of your business can expand the list of standard fillings: include hand-made products, jewelry, bedding and kitchen linen, cosmetics for the home.
Both an individual donor and an organization can become a client of such a business. Service and those and others can be interesting and profitable.
Individual clients more often offer some non-standard business ideas for content and design that may be of interest to you as an artist.
Corporate clients are more profitable financially – in groups they celebrate not only calendar holidays, but also professional ones, retirements, entry into office. There are more frequent and greater birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, and the birth of children.
Organizations are less limited in money and, unlike private clients, they do not have the time and special people who can go shopping. Therefore, for them it is possible to organize an additional service for going to the store and choosing to fill the basket.
The cost of your creations will depend on many factors – the cost of the contents of the basket, packaging, the cost of delivering the basket to the client (if necessary), office rent, taxes – in a word, it will be necessary to proceed from the actual figures.
In addition, if the cost of a standard basket is known in advance, then the individual content will depend on the budget of the customer. As a rule, the filling for individual orders is bought at retail and such a basket will be more expensive than the standard one.
This information is better to convey to the customer at the very beginning. In Europe, the owners of such a business, when evaluating their services, proceed from the following figures: the value of the basket items multiplied by 100%.
This type of service can be developed through an Internet site, TV advertising, paper booklets and catalogs distributed to offices and mailboxes.
