Christmas starts in summer when you run a small business
For most people, September means the beginning of autumn.
The evenings are getting a little shorter, the first leaves are starting to change and Christmas still feels comfortably far away.
For me?
Christmas started weeks ago. 😄
While most people were enjoying the last weeks of summer, I was already thinking about Christmas hampers, biscuits, jam, mugs, ribbons, boxes and whether everything would actually fit together the way I imagined it.
Because when you run a small business, Christmas doesn't start in December.
It doesn't even start in November.
It starts when it still feels slightly ridiculous to be thinking about Christmas at all.
It starts with an empty box
Creating a Christmas hamper sounds quite simple.
Find some lovely products, put them in a box, add a ribbon and you're done. At least, that's what the finished hamper makes it look like. The reality starts much earlier. For me, it begins with an idea.
What do I want this year's Christmas collection to feel like?
Which products belong together?
What can I make myself?
What should be sweet? What should be savoury?
What feels Christmassy without simply putting cinnamon into absolutely everything? 😄
And, most importantly, does it still feel like Surprise Hamper?
That last question has become increasingly important to me. Over the past year, I've realised that I'm not simply creating individual products anymore. I'm building a brand around little moments of joy. So when I create something new, I don't only think about whether I can sell it. I think about whether it belongs.
Then comes the experimenting
Once the ideas are there, the kitchen takes over. Recipes that sound wonderful in my head don't necessarily work the first time.
Sometimes they need adjusting.
Sometimes an idea I was convinced would be perfect turns out to be... considerably less perfect in real life.
And sometimes something comes out of the oven and I immediately know:
Yes. That's staying.
This year, I wanted my Christmas hampers to contain more products made by me and to feel unmistakably like Surprise Hamper. That meant developing and testing everything from my Christmas bakes to savoury treats, as well as making another seasonal Joy in a Jar.
And then, of course, somebody has to eat all those test batches. It's a tough job. 😉
A hamper has to work as a whole
Once the individual products are decided, there's another challenge. They have to work together. A hamper isn't simply a box filled with as many things as possible.
For me, it should feel like one complete gift.
There needs to be a balance between flavours, colours, shapes and sizes. The products need to fit physically into the packaging, but they also need to make sense next to each other.
This year, I've also added things beyond food, including my own Surprise Hamper mug.
I love that because it means the gift doesn't completely disappear once all the treats have been eaten. There's something left behind.
Maybe someone makes their morning coffee in that mug weeks later and remembers who gave it to them.
And that's exactly the kind of small moment I want Surprise Hamper to create.
And then ther's the less glamorous part...
The spreadsheet. 😄
Every product has ingredients.
Every ingredient has a cost.
Then there are jars, labels, bags, boxes, tissue paper, wood wool, ribbons and all the other little things you barely notice when you look at a finished hamper. But they're there. And they all cost something. So after creating everything comes calculating everything.
How much does one biscuit cost?
How much does one jar cost to produce?
How much packaging do I need?
How many pieces go into each hamper?
How much does the entire hamper cost me before I've earned a single cent?
And then comes perhaps the hardest question for many small businesses:
What should I actually charge for it?
You want your products to be affordable enough that people want to buy them, but your price also has to reflect the ingredients, packaging, time and work that went into creating them.
Handmade doesn't mean free labour.
That's something I'm still learning to remind myself of.
The moment when the idea becomes real
This might be one of my favourite parts.
Eventually, all the experimenting, calculating and planning turns into an actual product sitting in front of me.
The box gets filled.
The tissue paper goes in.
Everything gets moved around approximately seventeen times because the arrangement that looked perfect in my head doesn't look perfect in the box. 😄
The ribbon gets tied.
And suddenly...
there it is.
The thing that existed only as an idea a few weeks earlier is real.
I love that moment.
But we're still not finished.
Because now people have to see it.
Photographing a Christmas hamper / box in summer
There is something slightly strange about creating cosy Christmas photographs when the rest of the world hasn't remotely entered Christmas mode yet. But that's part of preparing early. The hampers need photographs before they can go onto my website.
So the products come back out.
Things get rearranged again.
Photographs are taken.
Then another photograph.
And another.
Move the mug slightly.
Turn the jar.
Fix the tissue paper.
Try again.
At some point, what looks like a lovely effortless product photograph on a website has probably involved far more moving, adjusting and staring at a box than anyone would ever guess.
And yes, I will absolutely notice that one ribbon sitting two centimetres in the wrong direction even if nobody else does. 😄
Then everything has to leave my kitchen and enter the real world
Once the products are finished and photographed, there's still the website.
Descriptions need writing.
Prices need adding.
Stock needs planning.
Packaging needs ordering.
Labels need preparing.
Social media posts need creating.
And somewhere in between all of that, I need to figure out how much I can realistically make.
That's another part of running a small business that I've learned over the past year. There are always more ideas than there are hours. I could probably create twenty different Christmas products if I let myself. But producing them is another story. Especially when everything is handmade. So part of creating a collection is also knowing when to stop adding things.
I'm getting better at that.
Mostly. 😄
Why I love doing it
Reading all of this back, preparing one Christmas hamper suddenly sounds like a ridiculous amount of work.
And in some ways, it is. But it's also one of my favourite parts of having my own business. I get to start with absolutely nothing but an idea. Then I get to bake, experiment, design, calculate, photograph, package and slowly turn that idea into something another person can hold in their hands.
And eventually, one of those boxes will leave Surprise Hamper. Someone will give it to a colleague, a friend, a neighbour, a family member or somebody they simply want to say thank you to.
The ribbon will be opened.
The tissue paper will come off.
And hopefully the person on the other side will smile.
Christmas Hamper Christmas Box
They won't know how many spreadsheets, test batches, photographs, changed ideas and cups of coffee came before that moment.
They don't need to.
Because all of that work is for one very simple result: A little moment of joy. 💛
And perhaps that's why I don't really mind Christmas beginning while it's technically still summer. By the time December arrives, I'll have been living in Christmas mode for months. But hopefully, somewhere along the way, all those little ideas I started with will have turned into quite a few smiles.
Send a Smile. Share a Moment. 💛
Marie
Comments