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BasketsGalore - 2014 in Review & Our Plans For 2015
What We Achieved & Are Looking Forward To Business Wise?Over the past 14 years BasketsGalore has taken major strides forward in business growth and development. We started off in our mums house, taking over her spare room for our office & her garage for our "warehouse". Since then we have moved another 3 times as we have gradually needed more space (hampers take up A LOT of room.) This blog takes a look back at some of the major improvements we made in 2014 and ideas for 2015.
Last year we didn't need to move, but installed extra mezzanine flooring in our existing warehouse and even borrowed an empty unit next door for November and December. 
We now have many of the internal processes working at maximum efficiency, so in 2015 we are going to concentrate on packaging efficiencies. We already updated the colour on our delivery cartons recently, but there are a few other areas we want to improve on or add to. 
In 2014 we got the ball rolling with the design of our bakery brand last year, and within the next couple of years we want to take the concept & roll the print and production of this out. 
Towards the end of 2014 we also introduced attractive lids to add to our smaller, open gift baskets and turn them into a hamper, instead of using lidded hampers. Our larger gifts go into lidded wicker hampers with leather straps, whereas the small to medium hampers were in lidded bamboo hampers. Bamboo isn't as attractive or strong and is becoming increasingly hard to source in the volumes and time frames we require so the reasons behind this change were twofold. We started rolling these new lids out on some of our Christmas hampers, and found the feedback to be positive. 
In 2015 we also intend to add a smaller branded box to our range so as our repeat customers or those working to a budget can select a pretty box as a container, rather than always a wicker tray, gift basket or lidded hamper.We are also looking forward to sourcing a new product. Well not so much a new product, but a new size & brand of product. We are keeping this secret at the moment though and all will become clear in the summer time. And What Are We Looking Forward To In our Personal Lives?Most of us are looking forward to going on holiday of course! Lynne is off to Amsterdam this weekend and Victoria is heading to Las Vegas in February. The rest of us are still to book our holidays, but are busy researching where we could go. Our colleague Sylwia has just welcomed baby Kubus a few days ago and so has an exciting year ahead. And our little brother James and his girlfriend Lauren (who currently live in Australia) got engaged a couple of weeks ago & so we have a family wedding to look forward to as well.What are you most looking forward to in 2015?
Last year we didn't need to move, but installed extra mezzanine flooring in our existing warehouse and even borrowed an empty unit next door for November and December.
We now have many of the internal processes working at maximum efficiency, so in 2015 we are going to concentrate on packaging efficiencies. We already updated the colour on our delivery cartons recently, but there are a few other areas we want to improve on or add to. 
In 2014 we got the ball rolling with the design of our bakery brand last year, and within the next couple of years we want to take the concept & roll the print and production of this out. 
Towards the end of 2014 we also introduced attractive lids to add to our smaller, open gift baskets and turn them into a hamper, instead of using lidded hampers. Our larger gifts go into lidded wicker hampers with leather straps, whereas the small to medium hampers were in lidded bamboo hampers. Bamboo isn't as attractive or strong and is becoming increasingly hard to source in the volumes and time frames we require so the reasons behind this change were twofold. We started rolling these new lids out on some of our Christmas hampers, and found the feedback to be positive. 
In 2015 we also intend to add a smaller branded box to our range so as our repeat customers or those working to a budget can select a pretty box as a container, rather than always a wicker tray, gift basket or lidded hamper.We are also looking forward to sourcing a new product. Well not so much a new product, but a new size & brand of product. We are keeping this secret at the moment though and all will become clear in the summer time. And What Are We Looking Forward To In our Personal Lives?Most of us are looking forward to going on holiday of course! Lynne is off to Amsterdam this weekend and Victoria is heading to Las Vegas in February. The rest of us are still to book our holidays, but are busy researching where we could go. Our colleague Sylwia has just welcomed baby Kubus a few days ago and so has an exciting year ahead. And our little brother James and his girlfriend Lauren (who currently live in Australia) got engaged a couple of weeks ago & so we have a family wedding to look forward to as well.What are you most looking forward to in 2015?