It's all about the lollies, lollies, lollies

It's not about the money, money, money (well, it is but mainly it's about the lollies). It's no surprise that we all have a bit of a sweet tooth here at Rainbow Designs, some more so than others, so it definitely isn't a surprise that our lolly gifts are amongst our favourites (especially when there's some 'quality controlling' involved!).

A lot of our gifts have some type of lolly component in them but these gifts have only the lolly component - all of the sweet stuff none of the savoury stuff or even the chocolate stuff (gasp!).

Big Lolly Box - $48 Now this gift has been around as long as Rainbow Designs has, 13 years! I know right, it's a teenager. Filled with attitude and sweetest you just can't resist.

Just Jellybabies - $29 This is a relatively new gift but we did have something very similar a few years back and were prompted into bringing it back by a few of our Jellybaby loving customers!

Just Lollies - $29 Previously known as Lots of Lollies, we changed the name as we were often getting customer enquiries for a gift that had 'just lollies' in it so thought this might help them find exactly what they were looking for!

Little Sweetie - $50 A very popular lolly hamper we must say and I totally understand why. It's a great price, looks fabulous and has many sweet little goodies to keep that sugar fiend friend happy, happy, happy. The lollies in this hamper do get swapped around from time to time depending on what our supplier has sent us and what we think fits the 'little sweetie' theme - always a winner and makes a super sweet birthday gift as well as a special little thank you present.

Sugar Coat It - $29 Now I have to admit I added this little gift to our range as my favourite type of lolly (at the moment anyway, this can change monthly!) is the jube. Soft or hard, they're just so deliciously comforting and a lovely little pick me up throughout the day. I know they keep me trucking along when things are getting a bit frantic.

So there you have our range of Lolly Gifts but don't forget we have a whole other range of Lolly and Chocolate gifts as well as elegant and super special Hampers with the inclusion of divine lollies to tempt even the fussiest of sweet tooths!

Jacqui ~ Rainbow Designs Boss(y) lady and jube lover from way back

Y is for...Yum

Yum - this is a word I hear and use a lot, goes with the territory I suppose! Our gifts are full of yummy lollies, yummy chocolate, yummy fudge, yummy wines and even some yummy beer (not so much for me but we've sold enough to know there are a LOT of beer lovers around!).

My most favourite chocolate is Fry's Turkish Delight, Nestle Crunch and Mars M&M's - I can't choose just one (please don't judge me!). In our Cravings - Pick and Mix gift we have well over 40 types of confectionery to choose from and without a doubt M&M's are one of THE most popular chooses. I am not surprised. They are yummy! (although there are a few 'Smartie' fans that would disagree!). Milk chocolate freckles, jellbabies and redskins are other very popular choices. To be honest there aren't too many that aren't popular.

Over the years I've had a few failures in the lolly selection area (sugar free & dairy free to name a couple) but all in all, if it's a lolly and it's yummy people will buy them. (and eat them)

Yum!

I've also tried a few other hamper style gifts using Cadbury and Nestle chocolate bars but for some reason, which still baffles me, they didn't prove to be too popular. Don't get me wrong we sold quite a few but not like I had hoped or expected so end in the end we had the yummy task of eating the leftover stock. Don't you feel bad for us ;-) This has to be one of the best perks of my business, eating the stock - I mean 'taste testing' and 'quality controlling' the stock - yum.

If you had to pick just one of our YUMMY gifts which one would it be??? Would you go for the all chocolate one or maybe the Tasmanian Fudge Hamper or possibly you're more a savoury person and would pick the Maggie Beer Hamper or you love a bit of everything and would go the whole hog with our absolutely magnificent All You Can Eat Hamper? Decisions, decisions but at least they're yummy decisions!

Fabulous Tasmanian Fudge Hamper

Affordable Gifts was why I started Rainbow Designs

One of the main reasons for starting my business was to try and provide an online store that offered something a bit different to the traditional gift hampers and bunches of flowers BUT for less and in the theme of YUM. I wanted somewhere that was easy to navigate, easy to read, easy to order from and easy on the wallet. I wanted to have my prices cheap, well affordable, and to include everything - the gift, the gift tag, the packaging and the delivery. So when people came onto my site they could see WHAT the gift was, HOW much the gift was and WHEN it would be delivered. The hardest part is the DELIVERY. This is by far the hardest thing to control. Delivery is always (well almost always as I do deliver some myself when it is local) done by a third party, a business that is NOT part of Rainbow Designs. I basically hire them to deliver MY gifts, sometimes easier said than done! I'm currently using Toll Express and have been for about a year now and they have been much easier to regulate the delivery times with. Basically they deliver within 1-2 business days of the parcel being sent. The majority are next business day - great news for me and my customers! Of course there are the inevitable delays which generally come from incorrect/insufficient address details or sometimes the courier is just swamped and has had to hold back some items until the following day BUT in general I can rely on Toll to deliver efficiently.

Now having this type of delivery means the delivery charge I pay to Toll is, in the whole scheme of my gifts and business, quite expensive BUT I do think the reliability and speed far outways the cost. The prices I charge for my gifts include everything and this means the gift box/bag, contents, gift tag, delivery and customer service. It's a tough balancing act - offering affordable quality gifts with fast delivery and making some sort of profit.

I think I am managing to still have great priced gifts and with the use of Toll much better control of delivery times and also great quality lollies and chocolates and even fancier gift boxes! Something that doesn't help is when the BIG supermarkets sell their confectionery and gift items so cheap - I can't compete with them on pricing, never will be able to, their buying power is MASSIVE compared to mine! What I can compete with is quality and customer service - I think I can beat them quite easily most of the time!

Not everything should come down to price but it does form a pretty significant part of any business and also customers, as we all have to be mindful of where, when and how much we spend - money doesn't grow on trees!

$22 - no more to pay! Under $30 - we can do that!

Until next time,

eat some jellybeans!

Jacqui

Lolly Hampers

It's a Lolly kind of day today it seems! So many of the searches included the word 'Lolly' and it is something we have a LOT of here at Rainbow Designs! I think I might be missing something though? There are so many of these types of searches that don't end in an order, why? Maybe they are after more 'traditional' style Hampers? Maybe we don't have the types of lollies they want? Maybe they need it faster than we can delivery? (even though we do have Next Day delivery) I'm starting to think I need to include some different types of Lolly Gifts but what? I've tried Sugar Free, Dairy Free, Gluten Free, Peppermint, Licorice, Freddo Frogs, Kids styles BUT none of them did very well. What am I doing wrong?

I'm going to try another style of Lolly Gift soon, still using the gift box that a lot of my Lolly and Chocolate gifts come in but in a different style/colour. These new lollies are chocolate coated lollies and are made in Australia. They will be individually packed in 150g bags/boxes making it just over the kilo - pricing will be about $65 and this will include the delivery charge, as all my gifts do. I am hoping this style of gift will be more suited to the people who search for 'Lolly Hamper' and end up at Rainbow Designs. I guess I'll find out in a few weeks! (fingers crossed)

I've also been deciding on whether to have a Cadbury Gift box?? Made up of a variety of different Cadbury Bars and Blocks - "Cadbury Cravings" maybe??

A couple of weeks ago I added an option to many of my Lolly/Chocolate Boxes to add a Bear to their gift - I don't know why I didn't do this sooner! It has proven quite popular and I have realised that the Pink bear is a big favourite! I sold out too quickly - I feel sorry for the other colours. Luckily the company I get my bears from are pretty speedy with their deliveries so generally bears aren't out of stock for long. One of the hardest things is updating the website to reflect this - it is very fiddly and time consuming and more often than not an order will come in before I have had a chance to put something out of stock! Typical!

A few months ago I added a gift called 'Cravings' where you can select exactly what you want to go inside the box - popular! I've just added a larger Cravings gift called 'Cravings Overdrive' for the BIG sweet tooth.

I try and use lollies and chocolates that are known ie Allens, Mars, Nestles, Trolli etc so people know what the quality is like and can be happy ordering something for a far away friend or relative. The new gift I plan on adding soon is from a small business called Freckleberry so is a sort of unknown to most people but I hope over time my customers will realise that the quality is great and is just something a little bit different but still yummy and priced well.

If I can get small quantities of some new products I might look at trialling the special diets gifts again and include sugar, dairy, nut free products - it all depends on what I can find and the prices as I still want these gifts to be affordable and value for money, like all my other gifts.