Gift Focus inc Attire Accessories - March/April 2021

SENSE AROMA T: +44 (0)1733 341 000 www.sensearoma-iep.co.uk What challenges have you overcome since the company’s launch? We’ve been through three big business cycles since we started, which have included the financial crisis in 2008/9 and the current pandemic. The biggest lesson we’ve learned is to never be complacent no matter how busy you are. It’s easy to neglect some smaller orders and new customers enquiries when you’re flat out busy but that is the lifeblood that maintains the business in the leaner periods. Tell us about your product offering. Currently, we’re specialising in home fragrance related products. Our strap line is “Wellness, Lifestyle, Relaxation,” which creates a story and theatre surrounding our product ranges. What are your most popular products? This changes all the time, but any wax warmer related product does well for us. Have any styles taken you by surprise with their popularity? We introduced our range of plug-in wax warmers at the beginning of 2020 and have massively expanded this range due to its success. How do you keep your designs fresh and current? Do you follow trends? We run a large retail operation throughout the UK and a number of locations in the EU, this gives us invaluable feedback on our existing product ranges and new trends. What sets you apart from your competitors? The fact that we are so heavily involved in retailing all of our product range. We will generally test our products in the retail environment before offering them to our wholesale/franchise customers. This allows us to really understand our products and to know how well they sell so we can set our customers expectations correctly at the time of order. We continue to design and source new items from worldwide suppliers and manufacturers. Our goal is to offer our partners key services such as finest quality and best-selling retail products and customer service, fully comprehensive retail and supply solution, opportunity for a franchise solution for customers seeking to establish the Sense Aroma brand in their locations. How are you finding the current climate in the UK? Is it affecting business? Last year was by far our record year on all levels. Our turnover increased by 30% on wholesale and 38% on retail. We set massive retail record figures in December and consistently improved them week by week until the latest lockdown. All of this was achieved after having our historic worst month in April at the start of the lockdown. We made some big decisions to place orders and bring in stock at the start of the lockdown, which really paid off during the summer months. Are you active on social media? How is this important for the business? Not as much as we would like. This is a focus for big improvement this year. Do you have any advice for new businesses starting out in the world of gifts? Advice to anyone starting a business of any kind would be to keep a close eye on your expenditure. In addition, stay dynamic and do not commit to just one idea, be ready to change course. When selecting products, you must consider who your customers will be and what they will like, and never mind what you really like. Although people think this is such a cliché, always remember, “turnover is vanity, profit is sanity and cash is king.” This was particularly important to us in 2020 as we were able to rely on our significant cash reserves to be able to take risks that you just wouldn’t have been able to if funds were tight. What can we expect in the future from the company? We will be expanding to over 50 retail locations this year and in 2022 plan to have in excess of 100 franchise locations in markets across the globe. 43 COMPANY PROFILE