The UK's Greatest Ever Birthday Hampers

How we ensure our Birthday Hampers in the UK are perfect for sending a message of Fun, Laughter & Joy wherever in the World you may be located.

Birthday Hampers - Creating Something Imaginative

We’re not really a hamper company, so we have a massive advantage when it comes to designing Birthday Hampers.  Maybe people see us as being a Hamper company, but our mission was to create the greatest gifts in the world for your friends and family back home.  This apparent contradiction in terms  of what can be seen as being advantageous manifests itself through our imaginative approach to Birthday Hamper design.  Our objective is not to find things to put in Birthday Hampers, it is how do we create Better Birthday Hampers?  Yes we want them to be imaginative, but we still have to ensure that they are what people want.

Birthday Hamper shoppers wanted their hampers to be brighter, bolder, contemporary and better without being different simply  for the sake of it or because a particular type of product became fashionable. They wanted no specific gender bias thus avoiding stereotyping, but wanted light hints, ideas and suggestions.   Whilst the dominant focus was on Imagination, Quality and Value,  these Birthday Hampers needed to be differentiated, modern and brand distinguishable from the mass hamper market. Such a brief required a comprehensive overhaul of how products were designed.  And who better to do it than a non-hamper company because it was only a company like us, which was prepared to completely over-ride conventional standards and be prepared to sacrifice them on the grand altar of providing individual human customisation.

The Birthday Hampers Challenge

Analysis of our past data across a number of 6 year control periods from our student start-up days in the early 2000s to the modern day 2020s  meant that we were not distorting what people wanted according to what was popular in more recent times. It also meant that we were not constricted or limiting ourselves to conventional and established views.  Of most importance of all was the ability for us to bring a sense of perspective to the problem.  All too often our inboxes are bombarded with things other people think we want to buy. We wanted to build something, which would be timeless.  To this end our Birthday Hampers in the UK market had to be the following

• Distinctive Brand Feel
• Superior premium product with no sign of cutting corners and appearing cheap
• No home-made amateurishness vibe, just a completely professional finish

The Key Challenges

Becoming the extremely competitive value proposition, which is an essential component with all successful innovations required risk taking.  

The traditional wicker container was not sustainable for the United Kingdom going forward. Rattan doesn’t grow here in commercial quantities.  Since they are low value, but highly volumetric, they can no longer be shipped here economically. On top of that, their arrival presents storage issues in terms of space and degradation.  No other issue consumed our attention as much as this single challenge; the need to come up with something that served as a hamper container, captured it’s raw beauty and retained its future usability in terms of applications around the household for storage.  There was no substitute on the market, we had to think outside the box.   

New Style Hampers Packed v Old Style Hampers

Reaching out to wider International appeal focused on delivering a Better Hamper for Birthdays was essential.  This level of product development and investment in terms of our time and resources could not be justified on a local, regional or even a national bias.  In the same way that the British Diaspora would entrust us with their Birthday Hamper requirements, so too did we hope that our Birthday Hampers would appeal to shoppers in Great Britain itself.  However the British market has unique characteristics all of its own.  Such is the high tax load on its citizens that there is a relentless drive towards the elimination of any unneccessary costs.  This is possibly a reason why some products keep getting smaller in the UK to the point whereby you have to ask yourself what is the point if there is just more packaging than contents.

What we knew our customers sought from their Birthday Hampers

Co-ordination of colour and a clear definition of the Birthday message whether that be through symbolism, by product messaging or through personal product choice.

The ideal Hamper for a Birthday is the perfect message.  It is steeped in symbolism.  It’s a “Solve a Problem” product, which has languished in terms of true innovation because the message was more important than the Hamper or it’s contents themself.  

When you send a Birthday Hamper you want to send an important message.  You’re important to me, so I’m sending you a Birthday Hamper filled with things I think you will like. I want you to celebrate your Birthday, I’m commemorating it symbolically and I’m picking the most imaginative Birthday Hamper I’ve been able to find, whether it be thoughtfully, playfully, interestingly or enjoyably.  I want you to be Happy and there is happiness oozing from this Birthday hamper.  

If we could apply this sentiment, such energy and combine certain key design characteristics learned from building Birthday Gift Baskets over the past 2 decades, then we could stand out in the big wide world of global hamper providers. And if we could get the delivery aspect correct, then we would have the capacity for the little fish of Basketsgalore to swim with great confidence in that great big British Hampers Lake.

The Birthday Hampers Solution for the UK

We retained all the elements that made a wicker hamper the conventional vehicle for sending a Happy Birthday Hamper in terms of their volume, size, tactility, naturalness, future utility value. However, we modified the restrictive material, eliminated it’s disadvantages, defined clearly its primary purpose and extended its practicality in terms of future use.

This resulted in perfectly sized collapsible cases ideal for transportation augmented by magnetism and velcro fasteners for future practical domestic applications in a range of tasteful earthy colours. Distinctive in terms of quality of matt satin finish.  They are just classy looking gifts, but they are also substantially better value than the old wicker based hampers.

(City Hampers Feel)

We produced a number of Birthday Hampers with 4 completely distinctive themes appropriate for a number of overlapping primary target markets.  

There is a Birthday Hamper for just about every age of Birthday, every type of person, there is a real absence of basic customer profiling, but there is what we hope is a highly sophisticated form of thoughfulness, which we hope our customers can test for themselves.  We tried to imagine the characters and personalities of our friends and family members.  Which of the hampers would we select for them and how would we personalise it with the symbolic differentiating element.

We easily stand out in terms of the tangible product , not just in terms of value, quality and appearance.  We also rank highly in terms of key purchasing factors associated with delivering a brilliant Birthday Hamper and to top it all off there are a number of other intangible elements regarding key features and personal benefits, which punctuate our Birthday Hamper offers.

We’ve created great Birthday Hamper Ideas and we’ve truly innovated Birthday Hampers within the industry by taking a step back and applying a sense of perspective. We created something Imaginative, but most importantly we have centred in on creating Birthday Gifts, which make the shopper smile and the recipient laugh.  It's so easy to lose sight of prime objectives when you have to factor in pricing, logistics, taxes etc  At the beginning of our Business Odyssey we had lots of little BG Bears, which we used to promote ourselves as different to other hamper companies. He still pops out from time to time for ceremonial occasions like pushing the button on our Christmas Email.

Pic of Original Birthday BG Bear

In the 2020's he is more of a digital abstraction, but he is the Birthday Product guardian.  Only things which will create Smiles and Laughter get past him and make it into our UK Birthday Hampers.

(Symbolism played a big part in the Experience and ensured that Happiness and Fun were created)

Birthday Hampers of the Future

Going ahead, we are excited by the potential to develop our Original Birthday Hampers intelligently with drop down options centred around a societal ethos rather than a direct concept whether that be the soft toys, the literature, the degree of personalisation of the mug message or the wine type.   It allows us to potentially introduce new elements if customers demanded it.  Personally we feel we have probably way over-engineered a solution to a simple problem, but since when have humans ever made things simple? 

Whatever is decided, our benchmark for future Birthday Hampers has now been set and in future innovation will be on the evolution of customers individuality and preference rather than dull and simplistic product line extensions.

We hope that in undertaking this work over the course of the pandemic, we are emerging with a range of Birthday Hampers, which will delight the UK market place.  Our Birthday Hampers arent just hampers, they are skilfully conceived Birthday Gifts, where our customers can have fun thinking up entertaining and fun gift messages, whilst the recipients get a hamper for their Birthday, which is not like any other hamper they may have had.  So as you can see, as we stated at the outset we're not exactly the typical hamper company in the UK.