6 minute read
Jean Grant, head of product management for online retailer Find Me a Gift
Jean Grant, head of product management for Find Me a Gift, talks to Clare Turner about the online retailer’s ever-evolving range, from personalised presents to experience days
What’s your background?
My background is mainly in retail and wholesale sales, direct-to-consumer selling, area management and training. Find Me a Gift was my first role with the shoe on the other foot, so to speak.
Why did you decide to move into gift retailing?
I’ve always been excited by retailing, starting my career working for Royal Doulton, then moving into framed prints and then licensed gifting.
Throughout though, I’ve always wanted to be interested and passionate about the products I sell and latterly buy. It’s hard to get passionate about toilet rolls, for example (forgive me all toilet roll sellers/buyers!).
Tell us about your business.
Now we are part of a group [see box], the Find Me
What’s your 2023 retail resolution?
To take more time to understand changes in customer purchasing behaviour. The past few years have seen such mammoth external factors influencing customer buying that moving with these changes will be crucial
a Gift staff are spread across multiple offices, in multiple locations but remain sub-50 people now that we outsource our customer order fulfilment.
What do you offer that other online gift retailers don’t?
Quirky and unusual products (sometimes cheeky and a bit naughty); unexpected and once-ina-lifetime experiences; plus our own in-house designed personalised products, which gives us a range that amuses, excites and is truly heartfelt.
How would you describe your range?
Essentially, we cater for all types of emotional gift giving, from the sentimental to bringing joy and fun plus providing lifelong memories.
How many suppliers do you deal with?
Around 130, including Activity Superstore, Cellardine, Diabolical Gift People, Funtime Gifts, Personalised Memento Company, Signature Gifts, Gift Republic, Boxer Gifts and many more.
How do you find products?
At trade shows (predominantly Spring Fair, Autumn Fair, and Top Drawer), followed by market research and social media.
What’s your selection criteria?
Value, margin, online search demand, and crucially: does it fit one of the three gift pillars we have - a gift experience, something quirky/funny/novel, or heartfelt and sentimental?
What’s proving popular?
At the moment, there’s definitely an upward trend with escape room games and puzzles. Once-in-alifetime, bucket list experiences are on the rise, as people are searching for that truly special gift.
What are your latest new arrivals?
Air Fryer cookbook, Mindfulness Cards for Kids. Colourin Posters/Tablecloths, Cartoonise Me Personalised Prints, Michelin Pod Dining, Glamping at Stonehenge, Japanese Afternoon Tea for Two, Watercolour Style Pet Portraits, beauty sets, and hampers.
How is trading for you?
It’s challenging from a paid advertising perspective, coupled with increased competition. However, organically we’ve seen good growth. Improvements to the customer journey on the site with conversion rates increasing has been very pleasing for us.
What strategies have you used to tackle the challenges?
For paid advertising, we are switching up the management of these areas to try new strategies, which are showing early signs of improvement.
For most other challenges, we’ve been utilising our own product knowledge and experience to better serve the customer as opposed to relying heavily on more automated, clinical solutions.
How do you attract new customers and maintain the interest of existing ones?
In terms of new customers, it’s about responding to their changing search behaviour. For example: what are they searching for this month that they weren’t searching for last month?
For existing customers, it’s about keeping it fresh when communicating via newsletters and emails - offering a different spin on gift giving, different incentives and new products.
What’s next for your gift offering?
We follow what the customer is looking for. This is more straightforward for online retailing as the customer indicates to Google and other search engines what they are looking for. It’s much harder for high street retailing where a customer enters the shop - or doesn’t.
What’s next for your business?
A new loyalty programme is launching - details to follow soon!
How we can innovate our offering to suit the 2023 gift buyer.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of your job?
It’s when a product we purchase sells well. The time taken to select the product, write about it, take brilliant images of it - and then Google seeing this product and it being a top seller is always the biggest win for me.
And the most challenging?
Time. There’s never feels enough time. Also, trying to make sure that we get the product in front of the right purchasers - not a new challenge, but an everlasting one.
What’s your proudest business moment?
When we brought a product to market that we had designed and manufactured that went on to win the Judges’ Choice category of The Giftware Association’s Gift of the Year Awards 2017. That was a huge surprise but was very exciting - and solidified my belief that we are great at innovating great gifts.
About Find Me a Gift
Find Me a Gift was founded by three friends in a bedroom at the start of the Millennium. Two decades, three moves, thousands of products, and many customers later, the online retailer describes itself as ‘a pretty well-oiled machine with new products being added to our site every week’. Family was at the heart of the business with Adam and Lena Gore leading the company every day, and joining in the busy warehouse at Christmas time.
In early 2019 Find Me a Gift joined up with Activity Superstore Ltd: a gift experience company. Activity Superstore was founded in 1997. From small beginnings over a shop at Saffron Walden in Essex, it grew at a phenomenal pace to become a leading gift experience supplier to many high street stores. The enlarged business is still owned by its three key managers: Shaun, Vicki and Stuart.
As a team, Find Me a Gift and Activity Superstore aim to give customers unforgettable memories in gift and experience, as well as provide retail clients with unique products their shoppers will love.
They say: ‘Together we are inventing the idea of ‘Personalised Experiences’ as wonderful new gift ideas with our brand at its core. We want customers and clients to experience our three gifting ingredients - experience, sentimentality, and fun - to create memories, to have a connection through relationships and individual flair, and to have a laugh. After all, isn’t that what gifting is all about?
‘The team is based in Leamington Spa and is proud of the many thousand fivestar reviews from happy customers over the years. While price and fantastic value is super-important at Find Me a Gift, the heart of the business is in creating the best quality gifts for Christmas, birthdays, anniversaries and all the other myriad of gifting occasions in this country.
What are you most excited about for the Spring/Summer 2023 season?
Visit: www.findmeagift.co.uk
