Custom Gift Basket - "Global Traveler"

We just finished up a special project for Tracy Cifra, who is an account executive for Haylor, Freyer & Coon. HF & C is a Syracuse based insurance company, and Tracy needed a give-away for a trade show. HF &C is going global, and she wanted the gift to reflect that. We collaborated on the concept, and Tracy picked up a large decorative box that looks like a suitcase, some imported gift ware (including a fun carved elephant from Africa) and a world music CD. We added chocolate from Italy, Germany and Holland, French mustard, Scottish shortbread and a set of chopsticks and bamboo placements.

The same....but different

Mont Blanc Pen or Bic?

Godiva chocolate or Hershey's?

Mercedes or Neon?

Coach leather bag or vinyl knock-off?

Manolo Blahnik or Payless BOGO?

800 thread-count sheets or $29.95 "bed in a bag"?

Dom Perignon or J. Roget?

These items are in the same catagories, right? Well, sort of. The pens will both write, and the cars will get you from Point A to Point B. Either purse will hold your wallet and keys and both sets of sheets will cover your bed. But that's where the similarities end.

The Godiva and the Dom are made from finer ingredients than their counterparts. They taste better. Have you ever driven a Mercedes? It FEELS better. Very much like the 800-thread count sheets.

Is it worth the premium price? It's a matter of debate; everyone has different priorities. Some women would rather spend $50 on a bag every year rather than $200 for a Coach bag once every 4 years - even though the price is the same in the end. One pound of Hershey's chocolate is about $4. One pound of Godiva chocolate is $30 to $45. So, for the same amount of money I can get 10 pounds of Hershey's or just one pound of Godiva. Quality or quantity? (personally if I'm going to blow my diet I want the best I can find - it had better be worth it!)

It's a question we run into often at SGB from new customers - "How many items go into a $30 basket? How about a $50 basket?" - and it's tough to answer. When we first opened we only carried "gourmet" brands - Lindt, Ghirardelli, etc. We honestly didn't think anyone would want gifts with grocery store brands like Snickers, Reese's and Hershey's. We eventually realized that there are situations where they are MORE appropriate - kids and teenager's gifts in particular, so we developed a line of fun, less expensive "junk food" gifts. And guess what? We now sell TONS of them.

Back to our question - how many items does a $30 gift basket have in it? Well, it might have 15-18 assorted boxes of candy and candy bars, or it might have one box of Lindt truffles, some delectable cookies, gourmet nuts, and premium coffee. 15 things vs. 4 things. Which is better? It depends on your audience. Is your client's 8 year old daughter going to appreciate the Lindt truffles? Probably not. But she'll be thrilled with some peanut butter cups, gummy bears and chocolate chip cookies.

What if the gift is a "thank you for your business" for your biggest client? Are you going to send Lindt or Snickers? Neither is right or wrong and both have their place. Giving a gift to a client or business associate sends a message and demonstates your appreciation for the relationship. What kind of message are YOU trying to send?

Invisible Woman Blues

A customer holds the basket (I) made for her earlier in the day and says, "The gift is beautiful... she's so talented, isn't she?" The phone rings and a voice says, "Can you have Julie call me when she gets in...I'd like to order a gift". Julie's out of the store, another day is unfolding at The Syracuse Gift Basket Company... and I am The Invisible Woman.

Why are you The Invisible Woman, you may ask? My daughter has always has been the face of our company...and that is as it should be. Even though we've been partners for some time now, Julie founded the business before I ever entertained the thought of jumping into this crazy hamster cage. And while I'm pretty comfortable in my skin, I'd really rather poke myself in the eye with a fork than stand in front of a camera of ANY kind. (Just a very weird hang-up I have.) I was actually dragged kicking and screaming to Laura Brazak's studio for the head shots you see on this blog, and on our website....just so that everyone would know I exist.

Anyway.....for some reason that we can't fathom, most of our customers seem to think that Julie does everything! While I know she's a bit of a Wonder Woman ( we both are), there is no way that one person could singlehandedly manage everything involved in our little 1/4 million dollar operation. I'm pretty sure that almost no one knows who I am, or what I really do here.

So what is it, you may ask, that I do do??? The very first duty I took on when I started was what we now classify as Hunting and Gathering. Hunting and Gathering consists of shopping locally for items we need in a hurry, can't find in a catalog, or prefer to see before we buy...mostly ribbon, foliage and floral enhancements, but also alot of other odds and ends and bits and pieces. It's one of the things I do best, and Julie enjoys the least. She has little patience or time to be bothered with it, and over the years we've located wholesalers for most of our stock and supplies. So while she does the catalog ordering, I do most of the outside ( local) buying. I like to call myself The Trim Fairy. The Trim Fairy keeps an eye on what enhancements we have, what's missing and what's needed, and makes sure that we always have great "stuff" to work with.

I've always considered myself a creative and fairly artistic person. After all, there was that fabulous dental health poster I won a prize for in 6th grade, the yellow chiffon dress with the crooked stitching I made and wore for my junior prom, and that charming Chewbacca costume with no fly that I fashioned for my son in elementary school. Making gift baskets? Easy. Wrong!!! Believe it or not, Julie's mentors in Wisconsin waited months before they allowed her to design a basket on her own (Julie, the gift basket queen!) When she tried to teach me, I understood why. A beautiful basket is a combination of balance, color, and content. This is all challenging enough, then throw in the layered hand-tied bows we use, and a cellophane wrap. I had 10 thumbs and it took a long time.

Now fast-forward to the present. Besides Julie, I am the only other designer in our company. When we're super busy, we hire a lot of people to copy our designs, which we then QC. Yes, we are very fussy! There are days when I actually make most everything that goes out the door, and you would be hard-pressed to guess who made which gifts either in the store, or on our website. I am also usually the designated Mutant Gift Maker. A Mutant Gift is one that is next to impossible to design, due to unusual content, color, or theme. Think pastel pink baby gift, with Dinosaur BBQ sauce or S.U. orange products included. The key is CAMOUFLAGE!

Julie and I have also evolved into a well-oiled web team. She handles the technical parts...uploading the photos from disks, creating spreadsheets to cost-out each gift, and creating links. I tweak the names of the gifts, write the descriptions, and manage most of the text on the site.

So, there you have it...The Invisible Woman's jobs at The Syracuse Gift Basket Company; Hunter and Gatherer, Trim Fairy, Other Designer and Head Mutant Gift Maker...Website Tweaker. Pretty impressive. eh?

Leisure Suit + Play Money + Disco music = Customer service!

I spent this morning at Franklin Square Orthodontics - my son got his braces on. Dr. Mike Meharg (that's his picture to the left) came highly recommended, but I was still a little surprised when we had our first consultation a few weeks ago.

The office is bright, open and cheery and there also appeared to be a party going on. The friendly staff explained that at the end of the summer a lot of their young patients get their braces off before school starts. They like to make a big deal about it, so they have a table set up in the waiting room with goodies and treats, balloons and streamers everywhere, and disco music playing. Each time someone got their braces off the staff would sing and clap, and Dr. Meharg was dressed in a powder blue leisure suit with a ruffled shirt and shiny white bucks. I can't be sure, but there may have been dancing.

As we toured the office, we saw lots of pictures of patients, fun contests and "Meharg Money". It's play money (with Dr. Meharg's picture on it, of course) that the kids are given at each appointment and they can redeem it for items from the "Meharg Store". They can earn more by not breaking their braces and getting good grades. The have a terrific website with all kinds of useful information on it. The office located in the same building with Boulangerie, which is a totally fabulous little sandwich shop. While the parents are waiting, they are given coupons for a free cup of coffee or a sweet at the sandwich shop. They even have good magazines in the waiting room.

I couldn't help but compare this to my own orthodontic experience, circa 1984. The office was dark and cavelike, and the dentist was recently divorced and liked to talk about how much he hated women while he was working on my teeth. He also decided to pull 3 teeth with no warning one day, and I almost lost my job because of it.

It's clear from one visit to Dr. Meharg's office that it's all about the patient. He clearly understands that getting braces on isn't anyone's favorite thing to do, so he makes it as pleasant and fun as possible. It doesn't sound difficult but after you leave are really struck by how rarely you enounter a business of any kind that puts the customer (or patient) first. As a business owner, I think it's brilliant.

Last one!

Here is the last one, using the "Whimsical Flower" series and "Merry Go Round".

More neat stuff from Jackie...

Here is one we did in a brown faux leather CD box to go with her "Hot Chocolate" design....

Jacqueline Savage-McFee

I had a chance recently to reconnect with an amazing woman I met at the WISE conference earlier this year, Jackie Savage-McFee. Jackie is a Liverpool native (currently living in Charlotte, NC) who produces a line of stationary and school supplies that are as exuberant, fun and colorful as Jackie herself. She graciously agreed to donate some of her products for a cystic fibrosis fundraiser here in Syracuse and she wondered if we would be willing to package them up so that they weren't just laying on a table. Of course I jumped at the chance to work with her - Jackie is a pretty cool chick! This is a picture of one of the gifts we designed with her "Perfectly Plaid" and "Flutterbys" collections.

For those of you who attended WISE, you might remember that Jackie was part of the panel discussion with Amy Tormey of Ray's New York Bagels, moderated by Julie Abbott of Bridge Street on Channel 9. Her story was fascinating - she had an opportunity to work for Hallmark right out of college, which had been her dream job. But then she got an offer from a much smaller company called Notebound. It was a critical turning point, but Jackie took the risk because it would give her more creative freedom. Her JSM Design Studio produces a fun line of products that are sold all over the country - you can find them at Target, Wal-Mart, Rite-Aid, and locally at Wegman's. When I spoke to her last week, she was jetting off to Hong Kong to work on some new business ideas. How cool is that?

Evolution

As my mother mentioned in her last post, we've been very busy EVOLVING.

evolution - ev-uh-loo-shuhn - noun
1. any process of formation or growth; development
2. a product of such development; something evolved
3. a process of gradual, peaceful, progressive change or development

I should give some background. Before I started this business, I worked for a gift basket company in Madison, WI. I thought it sounded fun, and I had the idea that I could learn the business and maybe start my own someday. Jan and Catherine were the two women who owned it, and they were a dream to work for. Catherine was a very talented trained artist. She handled the creative part of things while Jan took care of the books and the business end.

If you've never been to Madison, it's a phenomonal place to live and work. Aside from being the capital of the state, it's also home to several company's national headquarters. The crime rate is low and so is unemployment. It's very clean, there are bicycle lanes on most of the roads, and an ordinance stating that no building can be taller than the capital building (which is a smaller version of the capital building in Washington, DC). The city sits on an isthmus between 2 lakes and someone had the forthought to allow for a lot of green space (urban planning - what concept!) It's beautiful. More importantly, the economy is thriving, which makes it a perfect city to have a corporate gift basket service in.

Anyway, I digress......I learned a lot about the business while I was there, and a few years later I made the decision to move back home to Syracuse. Jan and Catherine encouraged me to start my own gift basket business. They pointed out that I had at least dabbled in most aspects of running the business during my time with them, and we wouldn't be competing geographically. They even offered to mentor me when I got started.

It took a couple of years before I launched my own business. I had actually started with a tiny part-time venture in 1998 and called it Gift Basket Express. When I began thinking about putting up a website, I quickly discovered that there were at least 4 or 5 other companies with that name, both gift basket services and wholesale suppliers. I certainly didn't want to be confused with them, so Syracuse Gift Basket Company was born in July of 2000.

I was so grateful to have the skills and the knowledge I learned from Jan and Catherine, that for a long time I didn't even consider doing anything differently. After being in business for a few years I became more comfortable with my own abilities, and every once in a while I would stumble across a better way to do something. An "Aha moment", if you will. "Aha moments" serve an important purpose - they smack you out of your complacency about the way you run your business. I also find it useful to remind myself that Jan and Catherine's business has certainly evolved too - I'm sure they aren't doing things exactly as they did when I worked there 10 years ago.

I was talking to my friend, Dr. Mike Morris recently about my business. Dr. Morris is one of the most brilliant people I know, and he runs the Entrepreneurship department at the Whitman School of Management up at SU. I value his insight immensely. I mentioned that I was thinking about what my next business venture might be. He expressed disappointment that I seemed to be giving up on Syracuse Gift Basket. Why are you giving up? When was the last time you took a risk?, he asked.

It dawned on me that losing your passion isn't just something that happens to couples. It's also what happens to entrepreneurs who have fought their way through a business start-up, battled cash flow problems and unethical competitors, made inventory and advertising mistakes, and ended up exhausted and burned out.

Mike brought up Cordia Harrington, who was a keynote speaker at WISE last year. She owns the Tennesee Bun Company, which supplies the hamburger buns to Chili's, KFC, Ruby Tuesdays and McDonalds. Cordia started from nothing, and has built her business into a multi-million dollar empire. She was also warm and funny and very down to earth, and she calls herself "The Bun Lady". She had our audience of 500 absolutely enthralled. One of the things she said stuck with me:

“Without the disappointments in our lives, we can’t appreciate the good times. Instead of spending energy being disappointed, use that energy to take yourself to the next level. There is not an easy path for an entrepreneur. You will have huge problems. Persist. Have PASSION."

Mike said, "You could be the next "Bun Lady". You could be THAT successful. You have already laid the groundwork, and your movie opportunity could change everything - so don't give up!" And he's right - we've invested too much into this to give up now.

So, instead of giving up we're EVOLVING. Reinventing ourselves, or maybe just refining what we're already doing. We're looking at the things that aren't working well in our business and looking for ways to make them better. Our design changes will be obvious, but we're also revamping a lot of our internal systems.

Our biggest competitor is Wine Country Gift Baskets. They are a national company based in California, they have a huge presence on the web and they also mail out slick color catalogs - to EVERYONE. Most of the bigger corporate accounts we have are companies who have been using either them or Harry & David. These are the companies we keep an eye on. Not to copy what they are doing, but to do what they can't do - or do what they are doing and do it better. On my trip to the west coast this summer I happened to meet a gentleman at the Buffalo aiport who is a consultant for - you guessed it, Wine Country Gift Baskets. He helps them do more with less at their call centers. I hadn't really thought about the fact that they are big enough to need call centers, but I guess it isn't surprising. It did make me pause, though. One key to competing with them is to keep the personal touch as you grow. There is nothing personal about a call center! So how do you connect with your customers on a personal level as you get bigger? It's something we're pondering as we continue to EVOLVE......