Gift Focus inc Attire Accessories - September/October 2020

61 COMPANY PROFILE wedding favour, or just a little treat. How do you keep your designs fresh and current? How often do you launch new lines? 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 are 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 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 discovered and the various misadventures. So, you see we only buy from ethical small family business and sell to independent and hopefully ethical minded gift traders. The trade we give to small growing Asian businesses often makes a huge difference in lives of the owners and their workers. And our customers are becoming a part of this virtuous circle of trade. By stocking and selling and reordering artisan products from Ancient Wisdom our customers are actually changing lives. 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’, which includes tips on how to increase sales. Our customers can also follow us on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram and LinkedIn. Do you visit trade shows? Which ones, and how are these important for the business? No, we don’t. We find it distracts us from looking after our existing customers. Also, the cost of the trade show has to be passed on to the customer. We estimate that a gift wholesaler must budget 10% (at least) of turnover. Likewise, there is always a mad rush to present new products in time for the show and inevitably many products are untested and not ready for the market. It also means exposing all the latest ideas to the competition. We believe that by not exhibiting at trade shows (or employing salespeople) gives us a 20% cost advantage. Passing this saving on to our customers in the form of bonus stock, discounts and promotions has helped us be successful, and gives our customers better margins. Do you have any tips for new traders? Yes, we do. When a new visitor lands on our website AncientWisdom.biz they are given the option to subscribe to a short series “How to Double your Sales” in the gift trade. In a nutshell they will receive five emails over the course of the following five days full of helpful and fun tips and practical ways to skyrocket their business. Is there any other news you’d like to mention? Our company is currently facing a major challenge following a huge fire in our Sheffield warehouse in July. We are on the lookout for another warehouse and have shifted some parts of the business to Spain and Slovakia distribution centres. ANCIENT WISDOM +44 (0)114 272 9165 www.ancientwisdom.biz

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