A Time of Magic » Shopping

Personalised gifts everywhere

admin — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 11:41:49 +0000

Not so long ago personalised gifts (in the sense of gifts with one’s name on them) were very much the preserve of the upmarket shops. It just cost too much to personalise everyday things.

That’s changes a lot in the last decade or two though with automated personalisation being very much the order of the day. So much so that there are even specialist categories like personalized gifts for teenage girls which you simply would never have even thought of even 10 years ago.

Is it a bit too much though? Do you really want, say, a book with your name on it? Such books were certainly all the rage for kids a few years ago but are nowhere to be seen these days. They seemed like a great idea but they needed to ask so many questions to enable them to be created that people just made up the answers which made for a silly text obviously.

Moreover, there are problems when you come to offload some things. It’s fine to have a personalised t-shirt, but what if you want to sell that computer with your name engraved in big letters all over it?

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Do you believe the marketing, or look at the price?

admin — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 22:24:48 +0000

Marketing hype can add a LOT to the price of any product if it’s done right.

Probably the best example of that at the moment is the iPad. The much more capable Android machines are coming in at little more than half the price for no reason other than the marketing spend of Apple to explain that difference. Is it really worth another £200 for that iPad logo?

Similar price differences can crop even with the likes of acne cream. There’s a surprising number of teenagers who’ll pay massively over the odds for a particular logo, regardless of whether the product is better or not.

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Rainy season is here :(

admin — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 10:00:07 +0000

Unfortunately, that means pulling out some very dodgy looking rain boots and assorted naff clothing for many people.

It doesn’t need to be that way as there are lots of fashionable alternatives available these days if people would only look for them. I suspect that it’s the looking for them that’s the problem really: people don’t really want to think of rainy weather so they don’t bother specifically shopping for clothing to cope with it.

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Peculiar economy, peculiar pricing policies

admin — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 13:36:50 +0000

We’ve been keeping more of an eye on our spending than we normally would of late and it’s interesting to observe just how many changes to prices there have been in the shops lately.

Whilst I couldn’t claim to remember all the prices of everything there are a number of things that I’ve noticed moving in peculiar directions as the weeks have went by. Lucozade for instance has a seemingly endless series of different offers with six packs starting off at Â£2.99, going down to Â£2 in some places then back up to Â£2.99 and then to “2 for Â£5″ (ie Â£2.50 each). Obviously a case of the shop or supplier experimenting with the price to try and find what will make the most money for them but the problem is that it’s showing clearly that the higher prices are bringing in a profit so canny shoppers just wait ’til the price goes down.

Even more confusing is one of the milk drinks that the kids like. This comes in two places in the shop in bottles that are identical apart from a single word being added to the bottles in the fridges which seemingly is enough to add 30% to the price even though the contents of the other bottle are identical.

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Time to start thinking about the Christmas presents

admin — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 09:03:20 +0000

Leaving thoughts about Christmas presents ’til you’re into December is a recipe for disaster or at least one for rather naff and inappropriate presents.

If you start now though you’ve the time to browse through things like redenvelope christmas gifts and the various speciality shops where you’ve a much better chance of getting a present that’s appropriate for the person you’re giving it to. Leaving things to the last minute greatly reduces the chances of you getting that the person would even remotely like.

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Are you a Canon, Nikon or Fuji owner?

admin — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 12:23:25 +0000

We’ve all three makes in our household and you’d think that it would be easy enough to switch between them, at least at the level of a compact camera but it isn’t.

Whilst I don’t have any problems changing between the Canon camera and the Nikons, when I try to take a photo on the Fujis it just never seems to turn out quite as I was expecting it to. Oh, the menus are different for sure but the cameras are basically set up for point and shoot so you’d think that would work quite well. Still, at least it makes Wendy’s camera hers and mine, mine

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Spare part shopping

admin — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 12:45:11 +0000

It used to be that shopping for spare car parts involved trailing round lots of scrap yards in search of that elusive part for your car or alternatively of paying an absolute fortune for it from the dealer.

These days though the likes of Mopar performance parts offer a massive range of surprisingly affordable parts for lots of cars. The scrap yard option is, of course, still there but realistically I suspect that most people just find it a depressing waste of time these days.

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Sprucing up the home office

admin — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:57:15 +0000

In days of old it used to be simple to equip an office. Just buy a nice desk, chair and filing cabinets and you were all set.

These days, of course, office furniture is much more varied and generally needs to be updated too which is a nuisance. Not so long ago everyone ran with desktops so “computer desks” needed somewhere to put that tower not to mention a monster of a monitor. These days many people stick to laptops even in the office but even for those that don’t the towers are a whole lot smaller and that monster monitor is now an even larger flat screen.

There’s not even so much need for those filing cabinets these days as more and more documents move online. So, for example, the human biology course that I’m currently doing comes with course books on paper but also downloadable copies of them (how long will such dual production continue, I wonder?).

You still need that nice chair though. Probably a heavier duty one as we’ve all become a whole lot heavier over the years!

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Shorts ‘n sandles

admin — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 13:47:10 +0000

Unsurprisingly, that’s my standard summer attire when we’re in our place in France.

What’s maybe a little more surprising is the sheer number of sandles, shorts and sunglasses that you get through over here. The snag is, of course, that these things aren’t usually designed for long term wear so you end up having to look towards more sturdy items such as Dansko sandals rather than the usual cheapo makes that everyone buys.

A bit of a nuisance in some ways but a nice indication of the weather that we usually get over here

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Isn’t it sad how the grand names of yesteryear are disappearing?

admin — Sun, 17 May 2009 09:35:57 +0000

The roll of closures over recent times has included true household names across lots of business areas and it’s sad to see so many of them go by the wayside.

Just a few months ago Circuit City added its own name to that roll and with it disappears 60 years of trading history. Unfortunately, in todays economic climate it proved to be just too difficult to maintain its own unique brand of trading and despite massive efforts to save the business and to sell it on, it’s gone from the highstreet.

However, with each substantial loss comes gains for others in the same areas of activity and whilst there’s no obvious highstreet chain taking up the slack some of the internet retailers have tried to pull in business that would previously have gone in the direction of Circuit City.

Although it’s good to see that others can benefit from these losses it’s still sad to see so many famous names disappearing.

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