Our stores are bursting with wonderful Christmas displays to bring festive cheer to all our customers, young and old.
You might be surprised to learn that planning for these displays starts in December. So while you’re busy buying and wrapping gifts and ordering your Christmas turkey, our team is already planning for next year!
We caught up with Otter’s busy Group Visual Manager Jo, to find out what goes on behind the scenes.
We research all year round – we take inspiration from all sorts of places, popular television shows, adverts, fashion and colour trends. We think about the people who enjoy visiting our garden centres and how they might like to dress their home, what ages are they, what they will typically do on Christmas day. Even which scents they’d like, from traditional candy cane scent to a Scandi cinnamon scent. You’ll smell these in the air when you visit the displays.
We also take direction from our suppliers. Each December a few of the team visit Holland and Germany and in January, the Christmas & Gift fair in Harrogate. The buying has to be completed by the end of February, so we need to decide on everything from the colours of the baubles to the quantity we need.
We have a huge selection of Christmas products which you will see in all our 7 garden centres. We stock a fuller range of trees and decorations at our Ottery St Mary store because of the space we have.
The trends are used to give our visitors inspiration for their own homes, and to get a real sense of excitement going – Christmas is coming!
There are lots of ideas to choose from, but these days we are looking more and more at innovative products, such as Christmas lights that are more energy efficient and have timers so they can be set to go on and off for whatever duration is required. This helps reduces energy costs – which is of course more important than ever at the moment.
Our battery-operated outdoor lights are a great innovation. They’re so versatile! Because they don’t have a plug, they can be strung anywhere in the garden.
Everyone at Otter has a part to play in the Christmas season.
It’s a much-loved time of the year which touches every corner of our business, from the visual team who focuses on styling and implementation, to our buying team who carefully selects the products to our retail team who have the huge job of moving around our store layout.
We start the transformation at the end of August, it is an 8-week programme.
First out are the Christmas cards, then decorations and lighting, and finally the table top displays.
We feel this gradual build-up helps everyone to spread the cost of Christmas by making their purchases over a few months rather than all in one go.
These are amazingly popular and bring joy to all ages. It is magical to see the smiles on visitors’ faces as they watch our animations and the fun, they bring for all the family.
They also help us to raise money for our very important charities of the year. We own the animations and they’re moved to our different Otter Garden Centres each year. This time round at Ottery you’ll find the three yetis, two talking reindeer heads and a donkey head; Torbay has three talking reindeer heads; Jack’s Patch, Lymington and Taunton have the fabulous acappella penguins; Wincanton has two reindeer heads and a donkey head; Plymouth has our story time yeti and reindeers stack of snowy houses. Some branches also have the talking post boxes which are very popular with the little ones.
Our visitors are always very generous in donating spare change into the buckets at each of the main animations. These are the charities we’re supporting this year:
Our team can’t wait to welcome you into our Otter Garden Centres this year to celebrate Christmas with a sprinkle of Otter magic!
If you’d like to see more of what is in store this year including finding out how we sprinkle Otter magic across our stores, take a look at our latest blogs…
This year Otter Garden Centres bring the magic of Christmas with 6 beautiful festive trends.
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