“These articles are from a trade journal, The Gift Guide, for which I was a regular contributor, for five years, almost as long as I had my gift shop, “Juliana’s” in Wahroonga, from 1985 to 1990/91.  It was a time of great turmoil and growth for me.   Gerald and I were separated during that time, he had moved to Melbourne with IBM, and I experienced life as a single mother.   I had very supportive parents living close by, who were wonderful grandparents to Joshua, picking him up from school, supervising his homework, and looking after him when he was sick, as my working hours were sometimes long.  

 

It’s been interesting to look back at the young woman I was then.   I’ve cringed and I’ve laughed, remembering what was going on in my life then.  I was in my late thirties (I turned forty a year or two before I sold the shop) – and just a few months later, I bought another business Dynamic Demo’s, a demonstration company, which I had for a few years.   In my second year, I asked Gerald’s sister, Verna Parker, to become a partner in the business. Our personalities and our skills complemented each other well, and we very well worked as a team, and became very close friends, something I remember with gratitude and happiness today.

 

So much water under the bridge.

 

Thank you Catherine and Andy Hutchinson for turning this writing, straight from the magazine, into Word Documents for me.   Bless you both.”

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A SUBURBAN retailer describes the day-by-day woes—and joys—of selling giftware in Australia

Read carefully

HOW TO SURVIVE CHRISTMAS, STAY SANE, BUT APPEAR ABNORMAL

Have a three-week holiday in the Bahamas before the Christmas rush begins. This is essential. A good tan and a relaxed demeanour infuses your customers with confidence and nobody need know how neurotic you really are.

Make absolutely certain you attend both the Melbourne and Sydney Gift Fairs; buy all the right stock in the correct amounts and colours; and have it arrive at the shop at the precise moment it is required.

Ensure all shelving and window displays are gleaming and pristine in presentation, imaginative in arrangement, enticing to the consumer, and easy for you to get to without moving too many ladders and/or customers around.

Lighting is, of course, spectacular.

Have a chat with the weather man and plan for perfect weather. Not too hot, and with only enough rain to ensure good umbrella sales.

You will already have taken a course in transcendental meditation, and be able to switch into a state of karmic utopia should the desire to scalp a customer arise. Failing this, the methods you picked up in “How to be Unfailingly Charming" will stand you in good stead and will still apply. Put them to good use long before the aforesaid emergency arises.

Have plenty of cheerful, reliable, punctual staff constantly at your beck and call. Make sure said staff neither have a hand in the till nor an inclination to grope your-favourite customer’s husband.

Have a variety of nutritional finger food snacks on hand (the kind you read about in health magazines which you NEVER normally read), like dried fruits, nuts, and Glucozade, for when the hunger pangs threaten to bring you to your knees. Banish hot chips, fried calamari, meat pies and lamingtons. What you want is ENERGY, not pimples, migraine and constipation.

Find yourself a Supportive Partner. If your present partner is the kind who only recognises a pork chop on a heated plate, decorated with a sprig of parsley and smothered in homemade apple sauce, and not as a piece of pale pink dead flesh procured from a butcher, NOW IS THE TIME TO WIPE THE SLATE CLEAN.

You need a partner who KNOWS where the nearest butcher, greengrocer, chemist, dry cleaner and doctor live. What you need is a man/woman who can clean, iron, sew, provide TLC to a flagging soul, prepare hot meals, wrap Christmas presents, plan the Christmas dinner, attend the school prize giving, put clean sheets on the bed and clothes on your back. NOTHING LESS WILL DO AT CHRISTMAS TIME.

Place offspring in a nurturing, understanding, loving environment. A place where you will be upheld as a creative, special human being “Doing Their Best". (You will have sussed out this place earlier in the year.)

You have to forget about being a parent for the next three months. And a spouse. Remember to phone religiously at least twice a week to remind them of who you are and their humble beginnings. (You can make up in January.)

Go to bed at 9 pm every night. Refuse every social invitation you receive.

Do not partake of alcoholic beverages or cigarettes. Do not entertain, have fun, make merry, or indulge in sexual pursuits. These will merely sap your energy for the more important things in life, ie selling and making money.

Pay outstanding bills as they fall due to keep business relations sweet. Ignore letters from long lost friends, pleas for help from anybody, and hand over any crises to said Supportive Partner. Organise your banking daily. And efficiently, for to keep your bank manager happy is Essential. Do not get sick. This is Most Important. Swallow large quantities of vitamins; avoid anyone who has succumbed to any illness of any kind in the past year; and remember that Granny believed that wearing a singlet at all times kept one in peak physical condition all year long.

If you follow this strict regime, you should land up on Christmas Eve exhausted and quite rich. The fact that your family and friends will have long abandoned you will be a small price to have paid.

I mean—after all—what is IMPORTANT here . . .???!!!

★ ★ ★

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

ECCENTRIC: (Oxford Dictionary)—Not concentric (to another circle); not placed, not having its axis etc placed centrally; (of orbit) not circular; (of heavenly body) moving in an eccentric orbit; irregular, odd, whimsical.

Are you eccentric? Are gift shop owners more inclined this way than other professions? This is a term which has been applied to me at various times in my life, and it is hard to understand.

The older I get, the more amusing it becomes. Me? Eccentric? Good heavens, no! I have met more eccentric people in my shop over the past few years than I have encountered in a whole lifetime, but I suppose it depends on one’s definition of the word.

Here are some examples:

There is a man. A typical affluent businessman, typically dressed in a grey pinstriped three-piece suit, black brogues, leather briefcase, and most serious of nature.

He wears a white towelling cricket hat at all times.

There is a woman. She always wears black, and rings the changes with her large collection of hats. She has a marvellous large woven sombrero, worn with or without a gaudy collection of plastic flowers. She has a striped woollen beanie. She has a hat shaped like a little umbrella in red and white stripes.

Do you think hats are making a comeback?

AND:

I was formally introduced to Barclay last week.

A highly appropriate name for a very classy male. It was impossible not to notice him, as he takes a walk past my shop every night at closing time.

I say walk, not jog, because if you knew Barclay as well as I do, you would understand that jogging is definitely not his bag. Walking is. A leisurely, measured pace, with his lean legs and muscled back evident in their strength. I can imagine encountering him on a brisk walk on the moors of Devon. A sort of English aristocrat, rather aloof, terribly healthy, and “taking the air”.

Yes, Barclay is, most definitely (or so I thought) a terribly cultured, well bred, upper crust male. Charming and well mannered to boot. He displayed remarkable good taste by standing and staring into my window each night, admiring the goods on display. Yes, I thought, Barclay is a Male to Admire.

I felt very flattered, and even began to suspect that Barclay’s interest in my shop might reflect more than a passing interest in me . . .

So you can imagine my shock and horrified reaction when Barclay raised his leg to piddle on a display at my shop front.

You see, Barclay is a bull mastiff. Bull mastiffs are not the prettiest breed of dog in the world, I know you will agree. And Barclay is particularly ugly. (But noble you understand.) He also suffers from halitosis. However, I have developed a fond affection for him over the months, and his ugly face and body are capable of displaying great delight when he sees me.

His owner and I quite naturally fell into conversation when she confided that of ALL the shops they passed on their nightly walk, Barclay enjoyed mine more than any other.

He was particularly pleased when I changed the window display, when she literally had to drag him away. And without my shop, she would NEVER have known that Barclay had a deep and abiding affection for teddy bears, dolls, and ducks.

She has augmented my annual income quite considerably by adding a few to his collection.

The MORAL of the story is: “You never know where your next customer will spring from!” Be kind to people with dogs. That animal might be a PARTICULARLY creative soul who belongs to a particularly sensitive human being with a particularly large bank account. Be stupid. Be soppy. Gurgle and goo.

But just make sure that your displays are wrapped in plastic ...!

★ ★ ★

Now here is something I have been meaning to bring to your attention for a long time!

EMILY’S LAW

1. Dark Clothing Always Attracts Delivery Men

Have you noticed that the days on which you wish to appear glamorous, chic and sophisticated—wearing something dark of course—are the very days you have to unpack stock?

All that straw, shredded newspaper and polystyrene transfer themselves to your immediate person like glue, so that customers are obliged to keep their distance rather than catch the Galloping Dandruff you are obviously suffering from.

2. Never Plan a Quiet Day

This is so elementary that I am loathe to include it here. This is the day the lost order turns up with missing items, incorrectly invoiced, and broken, to boot. This is the day 14 reps call to see “if you need anything”.

This is when the school telephones to say your child has a raging fever and your staff are all unavailable. This is the day your friends telephone to bring you up to date on the traumas in their lives, and when your Grandmother phones to say her whisky bottle has run dry, and when the neighbour telephones to say your house is being "cased” by a suspicious person.

This is the day you somehow take great figures, turn up at home late and exhausted, and discover you have no meat defrosted, the cat has flu, and all the fuses have blown.

This series will be regularly updated.

★ ★ ★

Christmas

Christmas means a lot of things to a lot of people.

One of the things Christmas means to me is Wrapping Presents.

Do you giftwrap for your customers? I do. Free of charge. Free of charge to THEM that is. The cost of tissue paper, wrapping paper, ribbons, Cellotape, seals, etc is not inconsiderable, but it is a service my customers have come to expect and enjoy.

Generally I enjoy it too. (When I remember how I used to cringe at the thought of wrapping my personal Christmas presents BS (Before Shop) I have to laugh.) I now wrap thousands— beautifully—very quickly, without a thought.

Almost. Give a thought to the paper you purchase this Christmas. Last year my partner and I deliberated for hours and finally chose a very smart, upmarket gold foil paper. We carefully selected sophisticated colour co-ordinated ribbons to match and were well pleased with our choice.

Then the paper arrived, and the fun began. It quickly became apparent that the Cellotape had a distinct dislike of the foil paper, and refused to adhere at all. We used four times the amount of Cellotape, and quickly learned several yoga positions which involved the teeth, elbows, fingers and breastbone, all of which were necessary to clamp two pieces of wayward paper together quickly enough to persuade the yards of Cellotape to adhere.

Not only that, but the gold “paint” came adrift and covered everything around it. Us, the counter, the floor, our clothing and hair. At the end of a typical day, we could have auditioned for the woman in James Bond’s “Goldfinger".

To add insult to injury, my partner developed an allergy to the stuff, and was covered in painful hives which itched and scratched mercilessly. I had to do the wrapping. (My skin must be totally insensitive.)

So choose your paper carefully. At Christmas when you have to perfect the techniques of selling, answering the phone, unpacking stock, pricing, repacking shelves, taking money, wrapping seven presents at once, and smiling till your jaws ache, it is definitely not in the FUN category to be grappling with hostile paper.

There are easier ways to learn strings of expletives.

★ ★ ★

And now to the nitty-gritty. Have you completed your family/ friends shopping? (We all know you won’t “get out" for another three months.)

Have you, or your SP (Supportive Partner) written your Christmas cards to those long-lost overseas chums (the ones you met when you were 17 and bumming your way around Europe?) The ones you send cards to once a year, and every year promise a “proper” letter next year?

Have you found your boxes of Christmas decorations and ordered a tree? Have you persuaded your Supportive Partner to make a Christmas Cake (like our mothers used to) and mix up a batch of Christmas puddings? Is there anything in your fridge and pantry that has not expired its “use by” date?

Have you, or your SP, planned any jolly social get-togethers; dinner parties: Sunday brunches by the pool; happy family outings to the zoo, picnics or movies?

Did your SP organise the long Christmas holidays for your children whilst you worked from dawn until dusk? Will you remember that you gave your mother a casserole dish for the past three Christmases and MUST NOT do it again this year?

Can you find the stamina after closing time on Christmas Eve to go home and be merry and hide presents and bake mince pies and wash your hair and stand in the kitchen all Christmas Day? Can you be sufficiently grateful to said Supportive Partner before he or she wilts forever under the strain of Christmas? Or worse, leaves home?

If you answered “no” to any, if not all, of the aforementioned questions, “Congratulations”. You’re a normal, well adjusted, frazzled shop keeper. If you smugly answered “yes" to any, if not all, of the above, go to the bottom of the class. You have NO PLACE reading this magazine, or this article. You're far too perfect for my liking.

May Christmas be the happy, exhausting, mad time it can be. And enjoy the break because

THERE’S A NEW YEAR DAWNING!

With my sincerest good wishes for a wonderful festive season.