Gift Focus - May/Jun 2018 (Issue 107)

We offer integrity of supply. Firstly, we manufacture most of the aromatherapy and bathroom products in the UK (you can visit our factory in Sheffield) – so you’re buying direct from the manufacturer. Secondly, we have carefully selected artisan suppliers in India, China and Indonesia. We actually have our own buying offices and warehouses on the ground in China and Indonesia and long-established trading links in India. This is my job, I travel most of the time, and I do my best to ensure that we deal with ethical family businesses that treat their workers well with respect and good pay and working conditions. You can read about my adventurers and give me feedback in my weekly newsletter. Every Friday I tell you about where I am, what I’m doing what new products I have discovered, and the various misadventures. The trade we give to small Asian businesses often makes a huge difference in the lives of the owners and their workers. Our customers are becoming a part of this virtuous circle of trade. By stocking and selling and reordering artisan products from AW our customers are actually changing lives. What have been the key milestones in the business? We celebrated our 21 st birthday in 2016. To celebrate, we ran a one-off 21 per cent discount for 21 hours. We figured if we could be up 60 per cent on the day it would just about pay for itself and the extra stress would be managed. My team treated the staff with a birthday breakfast and some goody bags of birthday goodies. I tried to make a little speech from China, but the Skype reception was too poor. It was the busiest day at Ancient Wisdom ever, we just never planned for the 600 per cent boost in trade. It was an amazing day! How are you finding the current economic climate in the UK? Is it affecting business? We sell lots of stuff in Europe and there’s a big worry that if we have to charge VAT or have paperwork to do, that sales will dry up, so it was essential for us to get on with it. Our ‘Brexit plan’ was to open a distribution centre in Europe and directly supply our customers from there. Slovakia was the perfect solution. One of my managers is Slovakian and was keen to get on with this project. It took more than six months of careful planning and also finding the right warehouse and people. In July 2017, Ancient Wisdom Gifts was open in Trnava, Slovakia. The stock started arriving from our UK warehouse and also from China and Indonesia during the summer. Shortly before that we hired staff and trained them here in Sheffield, the website was up and running by August. Now, six months on, our Slovakian venture is processing a very healthy number of orders. Are you active on social media? How is this important for the business? We have a YouTube channel AWGiftsTv where we introduce new product lines and our customers can find out how our products are made or subscribe to popular series ‘How to sell this’ – tips on how to increase sales. Our customers can also follow us on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, You Tube and Instagram and LinkedIn. Do you visit trade shows? No, we don’t. These are the five reasons why you wouldn’t find us at any trade show: 1) It distracts us from looking after our existing customers. 2) The cost of the trade show has to be passed on to the customer. We estimate that gift wholesaler must budget 10 per cent (at least) of turnover. 3) There’s always a mad rush to present new products in time for the show, inevitably many products are untested and not ready for the market. 4) It means exposing all the latest ideas to the competition. 5) We believe that by not exhibiting at trade shows (or employing salespeople) gives us a 20 per cent cost advantage. Passing this saving on to our customers in the form of bonus stock, discounts and promotions has helped us become successful, and gives our customers better margins. What can we expect in the future from Ancient Wisdom? More and more gifts of course! More seriously, we have a major design development project in progress. It’s kind of a secret but I can reveal one or two details. There’s a mystery designer from Cumbria working closely with us to develop an exclusive range of aromatic products. Proudly British, slightly eccentric and beautifully designed, they’ll be launching in spring 2018. T: +44 (0)114 2729 165 E: care@ancientwisdom.biz W: ancientwisdom.biz giftfocus 31 company profile

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