Ah that’s the spirit! Christmas shopping as it should be in 2020
And how we should engage with the small business
Imagine trying to buy presents for either your nearest and dearest or yourself this Christmas without then engaging in the spirit of Christmas itself in the same interaction. Especially this Christmas 2020.
Obviously, one might assume that more people are turning to online shopping to carry out the buying of their Christmas presents this year. And now that we know exactly what we Irish can be getting up to the two weeks at Christmastime we want to be making those Christmas presents extra special given that we might not get to see everyone that we were hoping to. The selections we make might show that we were trying to up our game so that at least there is some sort of warmth felt by our receipients when they, only moments ago, had greeted the delivery man at the door to take their parcel.
And this might mean having to get more creative. If it isn’t already hard enough trying to think of a new thing to buy each year for the people we’re closest to. It might have meant perusing online shops and social media accounts not previously ventured into to go that extra mile. Our high street has had big department stores in all avenues of retail that we have relied on for their expertise and breadth of product choice for well over a few decades at this time of year. They form in part some of our small talk in our first moments of socialising on Christmas Eve when we recount tales of crowded shopping centres while we completed our shopping and how hot and bothered we felt trying to get it all done.
Brown Thomas, Arnotts, Marks & Spencer, Kilkenny Design, Debenhams, Avoca, Dunnes Stores, T.K. Maxx and Penneys have all been a mainstay of our shopping experience with some of them meaning you can get the whole family’s presents within the confines of one of them. No need to leave the building. Your next stop will be the pub for an Irish coffee!
But with our efforts to social distance, the internet has been a useful tool to us to complete this element of the Christmas experience. The aformentioned shops have had an online presence for years too, with staff used to the demands of meeting customer expectation via the practice of order fulfillment- and the specific training required to do so. And as we experience them as customers, the amount of products and stock they have is as much as is possible matched by the staff that the companies have hired to fulfil the orders. Speaking at an overview level, they experience stresses and anxieties of high demand shopping at a general level.
Now won’t you please think of the independent designers?? The small cottage industry clothing and jewellery makers who offer something completely unique and exciting to a sometimes stale and safe Irish designer market. I’m talking about the likes of Kiki Na Art, The Dirt Bird and Fuchsia MacAree. There isn’t even the sniff of an Aran sweater in the metaphorical sketches of these designers’ work. With a modest following on Instagram of under 5,000, over 6,000 and 12,100 respectively, would you say that they have the same order fulfilment infrastructure that the more famous and historical brands do?
Kiki Na Art offers us up hand painted and laquered statement necklaces and earings with pictures of our cultural heroes taking centre stage in her one-of-a-kind pieces. The Dirt Bird has you covered with hats and jumpers with funny and authentic slogans. Fuchsia MacAree’s illustrations are fun and vibrant depictions of modern day society.
You only need to turn to the Instagram stories of these women to learn that more and more customers and local designer shops are developing an interest in their work, with Today FM’s Claire Beck and 2 FM’s Louise McSharry tagging them in their recent purchases.
These women don’t have the infrastructure of giant warehouses with hundreds to thousands of workers, and ranks of shop workers behind them helping them through this busy and stressful time of year, and yet customer orders keep rolling in.
Especially for The Dirt Bird. Sarah Devereux is the woman behind the brand who, in her own words, is a heart surgeon by day. If you follow her on Instagram, you will see that she is hilarious; that the funny slogans on her wares is her through and through. The personality of designer and product is one-and-the-same. In the past she has played fancy dress and put on funny accents as a way to update her customers on her design business and life in general.
And yet the customers don’t seem to want to return her with the same good-humoured favour. On Monday the 30th of November, an Instagram post of hers read:
****CLOSING MY SHOP THIS EVE AT 6 FOR THE FORSEABLE/ UNTIL I GET ALL MY ORDERS OUT!!!
Literally getting emails from people telling me they are disappointed in me.
Im going as fast as humanly possible! It is me doing this. Kind people offered to help but I can’t have anyone in the room with me.
I am not h+m, I am not Amazon, there are delays all over the country/world. Sorry that everyone is used to instant Amazon like standard. I am more so a swamp than Amazon.
I’m really doing my best. Refunds are possible if that’s what you want, otherwise I should have everything out by Wednesday latest. Popping a complimentary gift into every order now to try and apologise for delays x
I tried to send a group email out but it now appears I did it wrong and it only emailed one person 🙃🙃🙃.
Again, as stated, her Instagram following is over 6,000. Amazon is the 2nd richest online retailer in their country of origin USA, with a net worth of over $17 trillion. The US wing of Amazon’s Instagram has a following of 2.6 million. Even their warehouses are a minefield for poor working conditions.
One comment under The Dirt Bird’s post said “no need for free gifts! No need to eat into your profit margins and put yourself out of business just because some people have no clue how difficult it [is] to do what you do.”
Is the above an insight into how her Chritmas run of 2020 is going a symptom of us all being too ignorant to how we decide we engage with different businesses based on the type of offering they have? With the lack of bricks and mortar in the exchange, perhaps we don’t have the luxury of sight, sound, and smell to gauge what kind of business we’ve walked into? Probably.
I doubt she’s purposefully ignoring customers.
But even Instagram has tell tale signs for what kind of business set-up the retailer has. What about the graphic design and marketing tools at their disposal. For The Dirt Bird, it is her in her home where we see her using pieces-to-camera to sell her wares, and frolicks around her home showing us the items that have been lovingly placed on the furniture around her house.
The staffing she has. Just her! It is her that runs the whole business from top to bottom.
The premises she is able to use as her base of operations. She rents a space in an artmakers studio to create her designs, and again uses her home for other essential activity for the business. Again, she offers behind the scenes looks into her work as she works on bringing her product to release to market stage. Luckily she is able to set up pop up stalls at seasonal markets like The Dublin Flea.
So it is a huge conundrum as to how there is such congnitive dissonance between purchaser and designer. Perhaps the main issue is that not every consumer has such an emotional attachment to individual creaters and makers. Perhaps, not everyone is interested in design as a cultural endeavour at either the micro or the macro level. Maybe we don’t all get the same kicks from the sensations felt when someone comes out with an innovative item that knocks our senses for six.
Bu then again, how did a female designer who started out with a teacher’s salary who had her first little shop called Let It Rock in London in 1971 have one of her bridal dresses featured in the first Sex and The City film in 2008. I’m of course talking about Vivienne Westwood. With Kate Moss as one of her biggest supporters, Vivenne Westwood has shops around the world.
The international lore of the Royal Family is huge for Britain. Arguably so too is it’s fashion industry and it’s footie matches. Documentaries have been made for all of the top designers to come out of there and it’s own celebrities wear them proudly to TV interviews.
With an ear to mainstream life in Ireland, it is hard to say that we have that same institution of communication for our own creaters. Or that our our own creaters are given that same chance to get off the ground. Unless you are a fashion or Irish women’s magazine fiend. British designers don’t seem to be confined to the pages of fashion magazines. It is a delight that now Kiki Na Art et al are listed in our national papers as places to go for Christmas gifts this year.
In the story arc of documentaries used to chronicle the lives of the designer, the most relatable bit can usually be found in the years of trial and error, sweat and tears, years of tins of beans on toast. Of turning up to the dole queue that the designer has had to endure in the hope that the art they have lovingly created will help them self actualise and change countless lives for the better.
With the dynamic soundtrack and the interviews, the watcher can empathise with the designer for all the toil they have gone through to provide us with the pieces in our own wardrobes that bring us excitement to us in our own challenging lives.
And at a macro level Britain places a great deal more importance in this as a career, and as an industry to be proud of. This offers a diverse shopping experience at a mainstream level.
Similarly, Queen Elizabeth’s and her grand-daughter’s in law public engagements always include international media detailing what they have worn.
Back to The Dirt Bird and her ilk.
We need to recognise that our own designers here in Ireland have to go through this initial period of risk in the lifetime of their product and a testing of limits so that they can then meet the next hurdle. And so on. Like the risk we champion in tech start-ups. It’s in the same realm of existance as indie musicians having to forgo trips to another part of the world as an exercise of rest and relaxation so that they can pay for a new instrument- so that they can become Fontaines DC who have just been nominated for a Grammy.
We don’t promote this part of the small independent designers’ journies in as nearly theatrically or excitedly as Britain does for its’ designers. It’s not seen in the same esteem here as the courses predictably picked every year on the CAO like accounting or medicine. Sorry accountant or doctor if you have been offended. We love you equally for your essential service. This article isn’t about you. Smiley face emoji.
So please. Give our own hard working designers space to grow and breath so that you will have, in time, a more efficient shopping experience with them when hopefully they will be in every mainstream department store the length and breadth of the land with all the historical heritage of retail training and order fulfilment that these stores provide.
Thank you very much!