Supply for gift basket business

Johnson Pools & Spas began making gift baskets a few years ago when we discovered that many of our customers needed help picking out special items for supervisors, parents or significant others. This was especially true when they shopped around holidays such as Christmas, Valentine's Day, Father's Day and Mother's Day.

We study customers from time to time to analyze their buying habits. Our staff also records what kinds of merchandise they request and why they want the item (for example, gifts, holiday shopping or special events).

After collecting the information, we noted it was rare that customers had an easy experience shopping for just the "right gifts." They often asked us to put together items for them to purchase.

At first, we offered customers a smorgasbord table of gifts, but some still struggled with what to purchase. At that point, we decided to make up a few gift baskets as models and found that those were the exact item customers preferred.

We made the gift baskets up ahead of time, attached price tags that reflected the value of the items and our time spent creating them, then placed our company name and address on an inside label. We were also able to easily change the contents of the gift baskets if customers wanted to tweak the items to better suit their needs.

For the gift baskets, we selected merchandise that corresponded with items we sell in our stores. For instance, the backyard entertainment gift basket is one of the most popular. We include items such as barbecue sauces, aprons, gloves, mitts and grill accessories.

For pool parties, we put together gift baskets filled with games, goggles and inflatables, which is especially nice for birthday parties with children. For hot tub parties, we include items such as bathrobes, bath shoes and aromatherapy scents.

To promote the arrangements, we studied our spa, pool, grill and furniture customer bases. This made it easy to begin building our gift basket database.

We then marketed our gift baskets via fax. We put together some creative promotional pieces and frequently sent them out over the fax lines prior to special holidays. Our main marketing approach was that we provided unique gifts for hard-to-buy-for people.

We make sure we market the gift baskets to professionals who purchase from our company, even if they don't purchase big-ticket items. In fact, we let their offices know well before special holidays that we offer these services. We also include our gift basket promotions in all our print advertising on a regular basis.

The gift baskets increased our business last year by 50 percent. We now use the Internet and our Web site, along with the fax machine, to market them. We've proven there's a market that's unique to our industry, where one can be creative in many areas to supply the demands of hard-to-buy-for people.

Penny Johnson is co-owner of Johnson Pools & Spas, based in Hunstville, Ala. She chairs NSPI's Retailers of Excellence Program and, as past chair of the NSPI Retailers Council, also is a member of that group.