The focus for us this week was getting organised for Sloans Market on 2nd May.
The day before I looked up the weather forecast for the 2nd, hoping it would be warm and sunny - unfortunately it was to be cold and miserable with a chance of rain.
We got the car loaded up and felt like criminals when we drove onto Buchanan Street precinct to unload - luckily it was early on a Sunday morning so not a lot of peeps about and you are allowed to do that to unload!!!
The stall was set up quite quickly and we got chatting to some of the other regulars - there was a really nice friendly atmosphere. We discovered there was another sweetie stall, the owner came over and checked us out as competition - ours was far superior!
6 hours on your feet in the cold was never going to be an easy task but we got through it - thank the lord we were right next to the loos and very handy for a coffee or three from Greggs the bakers. Need to mention my lovely nephew as well who helped us unload and brought us yum yums at lunchtime.
It started slow but soon picked up as we got into early afternoon - we sold out of our retro jars so that was really good feedback for us - other comments were very much centered on the lovely appearance of our stall and our sweeties. All in all I think we had lots of satisfied customers.
At 4 o'clock the rain started and it was miserable so about half past we decided to pack up for the day - thankfully our load was a lot lighter on the way home.
It was an experience to say the least but I dont think we are market trader material - maybe on a hot sunny day but not on a cold dreich Sunday in Glasgow.
Monday 3 May 2010
Sunday 25 April 2010
The coming week
All our efforts this week have turned to our first market attendence which is on the 2nd May at Sloans, Argyle Street.
We have spent the week finalising what we will be selling and more importantly how we are going to transport it from the car!
Thank heavens for trolley style suitcases - whoever invented these deserves a medal.
We will be selling our large jars full of retro sweets, traditional sweets in glass jars and the customary pink and white striped bags and more. We will also have some of our baskets on display.
It is going to be a long day, from 11 till 5 so if you are in the area please come along it would be great to see you.
Off to check the weather forecast now - we will be outside but undercover so a bit of sunshine woudn't go amiss.
We have spent the week finalising what we will be selling and more importantly how we are going to transport it from the car!
Thank heavens for trolley style suitcases - whoever invented these deserves a medal.
We will be selling our large jars full of retro sweets, traditional sweets in glass jars and the customary pink and white striped bags and more. We will also have some of our baskets on display.
It is going to be a long day, from 11 till 5 so if you are in the area please come along it would be great to see you.
Off to check the weather forecast now - we will be outside but undercover so a bit of sunshine woudn't go amiss.
Monday 19 April 2010
Sweet Charity
Is it that time already? The last week has flown by.
We spent the start of the week organising ourselves for the charity fair we were doing on Saturday - making up our retro sweetie jars and making our sweets look good is no easy task but we always get there in the end.
The fair was really busy and we very much enjoyed it. Its always nice to talk to customers face to face and we got lots of lovely comments.
So, what's happening this week? We have a meeting with our business advisor to discuss our business plan (the boring stuff) and, hopefully, get some helpful hints and tips.
Our wedding favour samples are also starting to take shape now that our stock has arrived - watch this space.
Attention is now turning to our first market which will be on 2nd May in Sloans (Argyle Street, Glasgow) - we are going to be busy in the lead up to this but it is all good and more importantly we are enjoying it.
Hope you all have a good week.
We spent the start of the week organising ourselves for the charity fair we were doing on Saturday - making up our retro sweetie jars and making our sweets look good is no easy task but we always get there in the end.
The fair was really busy and we very much enjoyed it. Its always nice to talk to customers face to face and we got lots of lovely comments.
So, what's happening this week? We have a meeting with our business advisor to discuss our business plan (the boring stuff) and, hopefully, get some helpful hints and tips.
Our wedding favour samples are also starting to take shape now that our stock has arrived - watch this space.
Attention is now turning to our first market which will be on 2nd May in Sloans (Argyle Street, Glasgow) - we are going to be busy in the lead up to this but it is all good and more importantly we are enjoying it.
Hope you all have a good week.
Sunday 11 April 2010
Time Travel
We've gone back in time this week and purchased a huge amount of retro sweeties. These will be for sale in sweet jars and baskets in the very near future - we have all the old favourites from back in the day when we were all at school. We have black jacks, fruit salads, wham bars, frosties, refresher bars, drumstick lollies, swizel lollies, lovehearts, parma violets, flying saucers and double dips. Yum, my mouth is watering just thinking about those Wham Bars.
Our line of sweetie themed wedding favours is coming together and we will have some samples available very soon - who wants sugared almonds when you could have jelly beans or cola cubes, mini love hearts, foil covered chocolate hearts or any type of sweet you want.
Our next event is on 17th April @ Bearsden Baptist church (from 10 - 12) - if you happen to be in the area it would be great to see you and you can sample some of our lovely sweets. We will be selling our retro line at this event as well as our baskets and also bags of sweets and marshmallows.
Until next week.......
Our line of sweetie themed wedding favours is coming together and we will have some samples available very soon - who wants sugared almonds when you could have jelly beans or cola cubes, mini love hearts, foil covered chocolate hearts or any type of sweet you want.
Our next event is on 17th April @ Bearsden Baptist church (from 10 - 12) - if you happen to be in the area it would be great to see you and you can sample some of our lovely sweets. We will be selling our retro line at this event as well as our baskets and also bags of sweets and marshmallows.
Until next week.......
Sunday 4 April 2010
Another busy week for The Sweetbasket...............
We now have 2 events on the go where we will be selling our products.
1. Sat 17th April 10 -12 Bearsden Baptist Church charity spring fayre
2. Sun 2nd May 11 - 5 - Sloans Market, Argyle Street, Glasgow
We are looking forward to doing these and would be great to see you there.
We had a last minute rush of orders on our Easter baskets and got these dispatched on time - would be great to get some feedback from those that purchased these.
If you are a fan of retro sweets then we will be selling sweet jars crammed with all the old favourites, refreshers, fruit salad, black jacks, flying saucers etc. - as soon as these are ready we will get them onto our Facebook shop. If you have any particular favourites you would like to see please leave a message on our Facebook wall.
With the Easter holidays now here we are going full throttle into completing the website.
1. Sat 17th April 10 -12 Bearsden Baptist Church charity spring fayre
2. Sun 2nd May 11 - 5 - Sloans Market, Argyle Street, Glasgow
We are looking forward to doing these and would be great to see you there.
We had a last minute rush of orders on our Easter baskets and got these dispatched on time - would be great to get some feedback from those that purchased these.
If you are a fan of retro sweets then we will be selling sweet jars crammed with all the old favourites, refreshers, fruit salad, black jacks, flying saucers etc. - as soon as these are ready we will get them onto our Facebook shop. If you have any particular favourites you would like to see please leave a message on our Facebook wall.
With the Easter holidays now here we are going full throttle into completing the website.
Sunday 28 March 2010
Yet another busy week, interesting too.
We have reserved a stall at a local charity fair in aid of the Haiti disaster. This will be happening on 11th April and we will be selling our sweets and baskets at this event - I will post all the details in next week's blog.
We are also in discussion with the organisers of a craft fair which is held weekly in Glasgow - again I will post more details next week when I have them.
We are delighted to have set up a facebook storefront which will enable customers to buy some of our range online, whilst the website is under construction. I think that this must be a fairly new facebook application, however, it is perfect for us to use to sell our items.
So, it is all beginning to come together, though all we can talk about is baskets and sweets and more baskets and more sweets. Its amazing that something can be on your mind 24/7.
We have reserved a stall at a local charity fair in aid of the Haiti disaster. This will be happening on 11th April and we will be selling our sweets and baskets at this event - I will post all the details in next week's blog.
We are also in discussion with the organisers of a craft fair which is held weekly in Glasgow - again I will post more details next week when I have them.
We are delighted to have set up a facebook storefront which will enable customers to buy some of our range online, whilst the website is under construction. I think that this must be a fairly new facebook application, however, it is perfect for us to use to sell our items.
So, it is all beginning to come together, though all we can talk about is baskets and sweets and more baskets and more sweets. Its amazing that something can be on your mind 24/7.
Sunday 21 March 2010
This week has been busy for us again.
The website is coming along nicely and we hope to have it live soon, so please bear with us. Setting up a website is quite a task in itself, more than I think we realised. When you see it starting to take shape though you do get a nice sense of satisfaction.
We have set up a Facebook group and our numbers are growing daily - all our latest news will be posted here.
We carried out a poll on favourite sweets and old favourites like cola cubes and cherry lips were mentioned - these will definitely be included in our range. We would love any suggestions you have, please let us know.
We recently contemplated showcasing at our first wedding fair, however we decided to wait a bit before doing this as our priority now is to get the website up and running. 
Sunday 14 March 2010
The Sweet Basket
I got married in 2000. At the time the internet was only just starting to take off and I was one of the lucky ones to have a pc at home. This allowed me to plan some of my wedding online. To be honest many of the services I needed did not even have websites so I was forced to traipse round the shops looking for what I needed or spend hours going through telephone directories looking for wedding suppliers.
One of the things which was particularly laborious was wedding favours. At the time my sister and I started talking about setting up a company to make wedding favours as it was really hard to find what I was looking for. Over the next 10 years we continued to discuss this; all talk and no action though.
About 6 weeks ago we discussed this again. Now, I don't know what changed but we both said let's do this NOW.
And so we established http://www.thesweetbasket.co.uk/.
There has been much discussion about what to sell. The main theme of our company is selling sweets/chocolates for all occasions, including weddings and also gift baskets. We have spent hours trawling through the net, attending wedding fairs to see what was already out there, visiting wholesalers and refining our products.
What next? The website was under construction but we needed to test our products on the market.
An opportunity presented itself in the form of my niece's school fair in early March. Could we get a table? Were we ready?
We were apprehensive but excited too. On the Monday we found out we had a table reserved, so that was positive. What we needed now was to decide what we were going to showcase and go buy the stock - over Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday we did this. We had already found our baskets/bows/shred etc so that was already sorted.
Friday was D Day - we had to get everything packaged and ready for Saturday morning.
We started with the gift baskets, placing and replacing the goodies to find what worked best. When we were happy we then wrapped them in cellophane shrink wrap and put on our bows. They looked fabulous.
Next we had to package the less expensive gifts - those cute little Lindt bunnies. We placed them in Easter themed cello bags and finished off with yellow pull bows - wow they also looked amazing. We placed all 16 of them in a round basket which resembled a basket of daffodils when full - very eye catching.
We mocked up our presentation for the next day, took some photos and that was that.
The big day. Saturday morning arrived (don't think either of us slept much Friday night).
We arrived in plenty of time - our pitch wasn't bad, though it was right next to the cheap and cheerful sweet stall. We set up, placed and replaced items until it was time to start - I was apprehensive!!!
Customers started to arrive in their droves - I was worried we wouldn't sell anything. Then we had our first sale - phew, I felt a bit relieved. After that first sale we sold quite a few items. Our beautifully wrapped Lindt bunnies were a hit and we were complimented on how pretty they looked. We also sold a gift basket.
We had samples of cola cubes for our customers to try and for many of them they commented on how it took them back to their school days.
All in all it was a success - we took lots of positives away from this and also some learning points. It was an invaluable experience for us - we may well have spent the next few months planning, however this has moved things forward and we are now are looking forward to our next event (and getting our website finished, soon).
One of the things which was particularly laborious was wedding favours. At the time my sister and I started talking about setting up a company to make wedding favours as it was really hard to find what I was looking for. Over the next 10 years we continued to discuss this; all talk and no action though.
About 6 weeks ago we discussed this again. Now, I don't know what changed but we both said let's do this NOW.
And so we established http://www.thesweetbasket.co.uk/.
There has been much discussion about what to sell. The main theme of our company is selling sweets/chocolates for all occasions, including weddings and also gift baskets. We have spent hours trawling through the net, attending wedding fairs to see what was already out there, visiting wholesalers and refining our products.
What next? The website was under construction but we needed to test our products on the market.
An opportunity presented itself in the form of my niece's school fair in early March. Could we get a table? Were we ready?
We were apprehensive but excited too. On the Monday we found out we had a table reserved, so that was positive. What we needed now was to decide what we were going to showcase and go buy the stock - over Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday we did this. We had already found our baskets/bows/shred etc so that was already sorted.
Friday was D Day - we had to get everything packaged and ready for Saturday morning.
We started with the gift baskets, placing and replacing the goodies to find what worked best. When we were happy we then wrapped them in cellophane shrink wrap and put on our bows. They looked fabulous.
Next we had to package the less expensive gifts - those cute little Lindt bunnies. We placed them in Easter themed cello bags and finished off with yellow pull bows - wow they also looked amazing. We placed all 16 of them in a round basket which resembled a basket of daffodils when full - very eye catching.
We mocked up our presentation for the next day, took some photos and that was that.
The big day. Saturday morning arrived (don't think either of us slept much Friday night).
We arrived in plenty of time - our pitch wasn't bad, though it was right next to the cheap and cheerful sweet stall. We set up, placed and replaced items until it was time to start - I was apprehensive!!!
Customers started to arrive in their droves - I was worried we wouldn't sell anything. Then we had our first sale - phew, I felt a bit relieved. After that first sale we sold quite a few items. Our beautifully wrapped Lindt bunnies were a hit and we were complimented on how pretty they looked. We also sold a gift basket.
We had samples of cola cubes for our customers to try and for many of them they commented on how it took them back to their school days.
All in all it was a success - we took lots of positives away from this and also some learning points. It was an invaluable experience for us - we may well have spent the next few months planning, however this has moved things forward and we are now are looking forward to our next event (and getting our website finished, soon).
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