Why Should You Shop Small This Christmas?

Saturday 5th December is Small Business Saturday in the UK (it is 28th November in the States). If you are not beleaguered enough by the bombardment of emails encouraging you to take advantage of Black Friday bargains this weekend, you will then be emotionally blackmailed into supporting small businesses to purchase the remainder of your Christmas gifts, in order to keep them trading into 2021 and not going out of business on Boxing Day.

With most of us now receiving marketing emails on our smartphones, which we carry everywhere, it is hard not to feel hounded by e-commerce at this time of year. It is therefore not really surprising, that many people doggedly ignore the marketing hubbub and opt to buy all their gifts on Amazon in mid December. It’s quick, it’s easy and it means you can ignore the promotional clamour of your inbox.  

BUT WE ARE ASKING YOU NOT TO DO THAT, ESPECIALLY THIS YEAR, AND HERE IS WHY...

This time last year we had a chalet at Blenheim Palace Christmas market. Big events like this are brilliant for small businesses. They not only give us a change of scenery and the chance to drink boozy hot chocolate and call it work, they also provide an easier shopping experience for consumers, who can browse a range of different products created by an array of different small businesses in a single market place.

By the end of our time there, we were full of plans to attend events in 2020 and develop our wholesale offering to shops around the world. Cue coronavirus and a year where the members of the Wild & Fine team have barely seen each other, let alone met other small business owners and members of the public. We know we are not alone in this and that thousands of other small businesses have been forced into relative isolation in 2020, operating almost exclusively online and missing out on all the face-to-face events that help to renew enthusiasm and generate new ideas, as well as income.

This is why it is more important than ever to shop small this year. We know it’s a pain navigating all those different websites and having to fill in your details over and over again, but it really will mean the world to the people who receive those orders. By shopping with a small business you aren’t just getting a present for a friend or relation, you are gifting your much needed support to that business too.

You may just be an order number to a big retailer, but to us you are the person we would have liked to chat to at a charity event or Christmas market, the person we would have shared a joke with while waiting for our card machine to find a signal in a field during a summer festival. This year your order is all the fun we haven’t had in 2020 and all the fun we hope to have in 2021!