I can’t believe that it’s the last day of September. It’s always a busy month for me as we’ve got three family birthdays to celebrate one week after another. So one Christmas countdown milestone took me slightly by surprise this weekend, yes the Christmas Next Directory turned up on Saturday morning.
Next Directory for Christmas 2012 – Front Cover
So then for a few glorious minutes on Saturday morning with husband and toddler son safely play in the sitting room I managed to sit down in the conservatory with my much needed coffee, the remains of our weekly Graze box delivery and the new Christmas Next Directory.
The first thing to grab my attention was right on the inside front cover. When you place an order with them you can now opt for Evening, Sunday and even Same Day delivery. Having worked in various technology and eCommerce related jobs I can imagine the skilled organisation that must go into offering same day delivery on the sort of scale and at reasonable prices that Next are doing. This is really setting the standard that other websites are going to have to try and follow in years to come.
There are pages of lovely Christmas decorations and I’m sure that looking at them will get you in the mood for Christmas.
This Christmas is going to be difficult for retailers to get their stock levels right. I think we’ll see quite a few with a good range to temp us in but possibly not the depth of stock so late shoppers might well be disappointed. My advice as ever is to look through things like the Next Directory to get Christmas gift ideas and develop you shopping list now at the start of October. This way you’ll have a budget to work to and it will be easier to stick to it. So as you work through this years Next Directory and its equivalents I really recommend ordering any special Christmas items as early as possible. Every year the popular Christmas children’s clothes, Christmas lights and trees sell out quickly. Over the coming weeks I’ll be picking some specific items from the Next Directory and other retailers brochures to highlight the more unusual or special gift ideas.
Must agree with you about ordering early. I wanted some of their Christmas tree lights last year when I found my old ones were broken and they had sold out of all the nice ones.