Gift business run from home in Selby sees a 350% growth in global turnover
An online gift hamper business run from a home office in North Yorkshire is now expanding into Europe due to its success.
Sarah Booth, a Selby local based in Osgodby, started a gift hamper business on a whim, and now, five years later, she is expanding this business into Europe after her successes in the UK.
She told YorkMix: “I am a Selby girl, whose family has run their own businesses in Selby for many generations.”
After running a graphic design business with her colleague, Jonathon Fava, since 2006, both Sarah and Jon decided to create a gift hamper business in Malta (Jonathon’s home) using their extensive knowledge of website design and creation.
This decision, she told us, was made “very flippantly and spontaneously”.
Sarah and Jon created ‘Gift Hampers Malta’, an online gift hamper service that allowed the sender, who could be anywhere in the world, to deliver a gift hamper to someone in Malta from a supplier based there.
She told us that this business was an “immediate success” and that, after running for a few years, it became the number one leading supplier of gift hampers in Malta and Gozo.
This is what prompted Sarah and Jon to start Gift Hampers UK in 2021.
Huge growth in turnover
Sarah said: “We adopted the same business model – finding quality local gift suppliers who have the capacity to deliver large amounts of hampers across the UK as and when the orders arrived with us.
“Our hampers are of the highest quality, contain beautiful foods, wines and spirits. Each includes a personal gift message, and presented as you would expect a gift to arrive, taking the stress away from the customer, in terms of knowing that a quality gift is being reliably delivered to the recipient.”
This has become another very successful business for the pair and they told us that the business has five-star reviews from customers on both Facebook and Google.
Across all countries, the Gift Hampers business Jon and Sarah created has seen a 350% growth in turnover since 2019.
They are now in talks with suppliers in Ireland as they are in the process of creating Gift Hampers Ireland, and from here they can further expand into Europe.
Both Sarah and Jon are “looking forward to the next 6 months, we plan to expand into Europe, with Gift Hampers Spain, Germany, France plus many more”.
The small business that started on a whim from a home office in Selby has transformed into an up-and-coming international Gift Hamper business that plans to continue its expansion worldwide.