Christmas Gift Season is Upon Us

I know it’s only August, but the Christmas gift season is well and truly upon us basket packers.  We’re busy tweaking our last minute ideas for our range of christmas gift basket ideas just for you.  After 8 years we’d like to think we’ve got it down to a fine art!

One word of advice for our corporates looking around for ideas for your bulk corporate gift hampers, get in quick to secure your choice and your ideal delivery date.  Our production fills up quickly, especially for deliveries first week of December.  We’re organised and ready for your enquiries, so if you have the task of collating a large gift basket order, talk to us now.

Have a look through our christmas gift guide online for some inspiration.  It’s a great place to start for your ideas and then you can talk to us with your specific request.  https://www.basketvilleaustralia.com.au/store/christmas

Find a Florist

If you are looking for a florist directory to find yourself a florist in your area, we hope this helps:

e-cbd

So you want to go into Business

I often get asked ‘Where do I start if I want to go into business?’ Now that’s a loaded question!

There are many reasons why people want to own their own business. Most people like the idea of being their own boss, some want to turn their hobby or passion for something into a career and of course there’s the promise of making alot of money. It’s funny you know, most people I talk to in small business want to make the money but it’s usually about much more, eg: their lifestyle, change in circumstance etc.

I would ask the following questions:

– EXACTLY what business do you want to be in? (you’d be surprised at how many just want to be in business and don’t have any idea what)
– Why do you want to own your own business?
– What do you want out of it?
– What will the business look like once it’s established?

The first and last questions are my most important.
I once had a lady from our kids local school ring me up and ask me for help with her business idea. I didn’t know her very well (we only met in the carpark occasionally). She said she wanted to go into business but didn’t know where to start. I asked her my first magic question and her response was ‘Oh I don’t really know what I want to do yet. So I asked her what she was good at or if she had a passion for something and after being quite cagey about it she finally told me that she had recently volunteered at school to help make gift baskets for the school fete/fair. I couldn’t believe my ears . . . she was asking me how to set up exactly the same business as what I had! Anyhow, turns out that she really just wanted to get into business and didn’t know what to do. She didn’t have the money to set it up and also not the funds to keep her going while the business was growing . . . she had just assumed that the profit would start rolling in right away. I don’t know if she ever went into business after our conversation, but I sure hope I saved her some heartache.

With my last question, it’s very important because if you create a business that is successful and grow it will most likely change in it’s dynamics and the very reason you started it may not now suit.
What you think it will look like and how it turns out to be can be two completely different things. Say you start a business from home so you can be there for the kids. It grows rapidly, you need to hire staff, you need more space and rent some premises. You can’t afford to hire too many people yet to help you do everything. You’re busy during the day working in the business and at night you’re busy doing quotes, researching ideas and finishing off the never ending bookwork that seems to be growing. What happened to the kids? You now don’t have time for them.

My advice is to plan, be critical of the questions you ask of yourself and above all be a visionary, but be realistic!! Good luck if you’re about to enter the world of business.

Where to start Blogging

I’m not really one to keep a diary.  I haven’t written in a diary since my days at school and back then all I wrote was nonsense, well at least I think that now.  It probably wasn’t nonsense to me at the time.  When you think about it, who is this person ‘Dear Diary’ anyway?

Nowadays I don’t have the time for a diary and I have some fantastic friends to share my dear diary moments with.  So when I came across the world of blogging it was, at first, some strange new thing on the web that I thought I really didn’t need to know about.  I thought it was only for computer bound loners who needed an outlet to communicate.  I was wrong.

The more I looked around (or you’d probably say I was actually surfing) the more I realised that blogging is actually interesting and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve actually found the information I needed from a blog.  I was recently looking for some tech support for my MP3 player and I went to the manufacturers website first.  After not finding any answers there I decided to do the ever popular ‘google’ and there I found a bunch of blogs that specifically answered my question.

We decided at Basketville to start a blog page so our customers could have a place to gather information we’d like to post as well as have a place for them to post some comments.  If you’d like to visit our business go to http://www.basketville.com.au

I think I’ve managed to divert a bit here but my point of this blog is, where do you start blogging?  Well, I have to say, just open one up like I have done here and talk about your question online and you will be surprised at how quickly the creative juices start to flow!!  I didn’t really feel like I was talking to myself when writing this as I knew others would read it.  Perhaps you will come along this blog and just say hi in my comments box to show me that real people do read blogs or . . . perhaps it’s just Dear Diary after all!  See you on the blogs some time! Susanna

Press Release: Susanna Palmer wins Scholarship

Winner, 2006 Women in Manufacturing Network Scholarship

Susanna Palmer’s business assembling and selling gift baskets, Basketville, had been ticking along nicely since she started it in Castle Hill in western Sydney in 2001, but she realised that to go to the next level she needed to know more.

“We carry a lot of inventory and have a lot of suppliers,’’ Susanna said.

“It’s complex to manage at the level we are at. I wanted to learn about managing the process of ordering and forecasting – the whole supply chain in the gift industry.’’

So when she received an email inviting her to apply for the annual NSW Women in Manufacturing Scholarship, an initiative of the NSW Government’s Women in Business Program, Susanna quickly did so.

Her application was successful, and she’s now into her second semester of the certificate course in production and inventory control with the Australasian Production and Inventory Control Society NSW.

Susanna plans to complete the course over two years by attending classes one night a week.

Studying subjects such as the basics and components of the supply chain and master planning of resources will give her the knowledge and tools she needs for the next level of expansion in her business.

“This course will open more opportunities to add other arms to the business,” Susanna said. “Possibilities I’d previously looked at and shelved can now become a reality.”

A keen networker, she’s also enjoying making contacts among fellow students – she is already negotiating a subcontract with one of them.

For more information on entry requirements for the scholarship and the Women in Manufacturing Network go to http://www.smallbiz.nsw.gov.au/wib