Is this a service you would use?

[wildwildsouth]

I've inherited quite a bit of money and am planning to open my own business within the next couple of years. I have a few ideas but this one I feel is genius. However, people I speak to in real life about it don't seem that impressed.

My idea is a shop that does wrapping. It would sell lots of wrapping paper, sellotape, scissors etc but on top of that it would offer a wrapping service.

So someone could come in one gift and ask to have it wrapped really nicely with ribbons and bows etc. Or someone could come in with their full Christmas presents needing wrapped. Maybe the ones they have for their kids from Santa, they might choose just a basic wrap which would cost less etc.

There would be trolleys etc near the entrance for people with lots of things needing wrapped.

Is that a service you would use?

Nope - for a few reasons:

A) traipsing gifts to another location to be wrapped
B) the safety of the gifts while at that location (and that they don't get mixed up with someone else's)
C) the added expense of paying for gifts to be wrapped when I could do it myself.

Also, from another perspective, I would think a lot of your prospective clients would be seasonal. Therefore unless you have the funding to buy in a prime location for good footfall, you may not make enough to to pay your overheads year-round.

Sorry no. I think you need to sell something else other than that in your shop

No

I do think there is potential if it is combined with a gift buying service. This can be a corporate thing for employees/clients/events and also for time poor families. Lots of people just don’t enjoy present buying or don’t have time. I bet there a people out there that would pay for a generic Santa sack especially for younger kids. They could also task you with Santa’s list too and you deliver it all wrapped and ready to go that may. If you added some spare wrapping paper/free wraps for anything ad hoc they buy that would help too as it would all match.

For other family members you could have a wide range of gift ideas on your website for mums/dads/sisters/nephews etc etc. They pick one, you order it, take delivery, wrap it up etc and it could then be sent direct to the recipient possibly including a card. I know there similar sites out there but you could be a one stop shop for all the presents someone may need through the year. I am imagining a stereotypical single rich banker who can’t be arsed trailing round shops!

No. This doesn't have legs. People who are cash-rich and time-poor, aka your only real target market, will either buy from luxury stores that wrap for free at point of purchase, pay for wrapping as part of ordering goods, or want someone to come to their house and wrap there. A shop wouldn't be at all financially viable. As a business it would only exist for a few weeks a year.

You need to make a proper business plan and research your market. Overhead, costs, tax, business rates, with a realistic estimate of how many possible customers there even are in your area, how much they'd pay and how many you could realistically hope to attract and serve. Then see what would be left for you to take out as a wage. I think you'd be way into the red before you ever took out a penny for yourself.

You'll find the right thing for you. Before I started doing what I do now I was weighing up different options. One of them was a website where people could buy a small gift either for themselves or others but they wouldn't select the gift, they would check boxes of types of things they liked and things they didn't. Idea was I'd pick the gift, wrap it beautifully and post it out.

Mulled it over for about a week and decided it was stupid. 😁

But. I found my thing and I've been doing it happily and successfully for 2 years now.

You should list your strengths and weaknesses, fields that interest you and narrow it down from therr

So 20 people leave their entire Christmas shopping at your shop... specifying, presumably, what wrapping for what gifts, do you attach tags? How do you identify different gifts for 20 different recipients? By the time they have specified tags per gift etc, chosen different papers and finish, and delivered the whole car load, and picked it up again, hoping you haven’t made any mistakes...

And will you have storage for a Christmas Rush load of gifts? A small secure warehouse?

Or is this just your stationery fantasy?

In-store gift wrapping normally doesn't look very nice though, in my experience. Sometimes the paper even advertises the shop!

This isn't just a bag.
Rowan Atkinson is genius.

No - there is a shift away from single use wrapping now and all the ribbons and bows.

My friend's church (central London location) did this as a Christmas fundraiser one year. They set up their church hall as a wrapping station where people could have mince pies and hot coffee while the volunteers wrapped their purchases for them, Christmassy music playing the while. The general conclusion was that it was great for outreach but only really made a profit because they enlisted unpaid volunteers.

No, but only because wrapping pretty presents is one of the only things I'm half good at and actually enjoy.

I remember watching one of those channel 4/5 programmes about the super rich and their super luxury lives. The Christmas one featured a young woman who offered a bespoke wrapping service where he gift were wrapped in paper with Swarovski crystals put on by hand. Some of them took days. It was in YouTube

No, it’s a terrible business idea for a shop. There was a similar gift wrapping concession based inside Selfridges around 12 years ago. I used it once in a big rush on my way to a party. Even with a high-end demographic the place closed quite quickly.

No. Many places will gift wrap for you anyhow.

If someone was cash rich and time poor, you are not saving them time by making them make a list of their presents, and the recipients, message and lug their presents over to the shop, park and then collect them back again in reverse.

How would you tag the presents so the customer gets back exactly what they handed over, like my dry cleaners. Once wrapped up, the customer can no longer identify the gift. Room for misunderstanding.

I think the only way this can work is if you do it in the customer's house. That is probably the only way it will make sense for a cash rich time poor person. Perhaps you could run other errands as well. That would mean they are paying you for your time with an uplift for your skill in wrapping presents.

No. Please no. You will regret this. No again. There’s a reason no one has done this. No.

The trouble is that any decent shop also offers the gift wrap service. Personally I wouldn't use it unless on occasion I've bought one single gift and want to send it straight on. Also it needs to be wrapped at purchase, otherwise it's another trip (x2) plus the risk of a new company - bit of a risk to just drop all your Christmas gifts off. I would have thought the best success would be to try to get a unit in a shopping centre. That would work as people are already out with all the purchases, it will enable them to put them down to carry on shopping and will have the security of knowing you're based in a reputable place. You could offer a deliver to the car service too?

No

I think it's great you're getting creative but you should definitely listen to the consensus and really think about whether this is a profitable idea. Personally I wouldn't leave my Xmas presents with anyone to wrap as I'd be terrified they'd go missing or something.

I most definitely would use it at Christmas. I absolutely detest wrapping presents and im completely shit at it.

This sounds like something you would quite like to do yourself, not a viable business plan.

People who don't have time/can't be bothered to fancy wrap presents aren't people who would want to be burgered with dropping off and collecting gifts for wrapping.

And the environmental waste would be huge. It sounds more like an American idea tbh.

No, not something I'd use.