Many people out there probably think of hampers as a seasonal business, and I suppose hampers maybe are. But we specialise in gift baskets and that means we are busy all year round with birthday gift baskets, get well fruit baskets and baby gift baskets to name but a few.Christmas time is by far our busiest time of year however, as this is when we do high volumes of hampers AND gift baskets. Trying to turn around such a large number of Christmas hampers in 3 weeks in December means we need more help than usual and work longer hours. Our full time staff work so hard for us in November & December that we like to give them an additional award as well as their pay for all the extra time they devote to BasketsGalore. As an bonus reward they accrue extra days holidays based on the amount of overtime they do, and so that means extra days off in the quieter summer months. This has allowed Victoria to book 2 holidays this year to Las Vegas & Spain, Kate is going to Hong Kong for a 3 week trip and Roma has been using her extra holidays to work a 4 day week during the summer, taking Fridays off.We actually can't believe that Father's Day has now been and gone, as this means it's time to begin our Christmas photography. I know, I know we can hear you shouting "No!" and "We haven't even had summer yet" but unfortunately this is how organised we have to be. Neil has begun ordering in new products that we have taste tested over the last few weeks and then will get to work on designing our Christmas 2015 range. We offer an extensive range of Christmas hampers from Gourmet Food ones, to Traditional Christmas Fayre and Family Hampers so a lot of work goes into designing them, photographing them, pricing them, creating contents lists, uploading the information to our website and creating a corporate catalogue. Then we just have to hope we get lots of lovely orders for them.Are you an early bird shopper when it comes to gifts? When is the furthest in advance you've purchased a Christmas gift?