Sustainable Christmas Greetings
Sustainable Stunning Stars!! – a blog post about a very special Christmas window installation.
I remember the day well, as it was HoH’s lowest takings day of the year. The pandemic still felt in full swing for us and our little business. Christmas always brings some cheer and there was definitely the start of some festive rumblings in conversations with our customers. However, the struggles of the last couple of years linger on….
A customer called Elly came into the shop and gave us an offer we simply couldn’t refuse.
The day was about to change!!
Elly reached out to us as a small business that has been pretty vocal in the pandemic period about how tricky and tough recent times had been. Like any professional ‘Window Display Designer’, she recognises that a window is super important for shops approaching a (fingers crossed) busy Christmas season and offered to give us the biggest of Christmas presents. To design and install our Christmas window display for us.
Of course, we said YES PLEASE!
The process of designing the window seemed effortless to Elly (I’m sure it wasn’t). Her creative ideas for eco-friendly displays were so exciting and together we agreed on a sustainable stunning starry hanging display, that would show case our exciting plastic free and eco gift ideas, whilst creating an opportunity to invite passers by to take a look into our refilling store.
The community spirit of Christmas
We called out to our customers to donate materials for the 600+ origami stars, that Elly and her family impressively made by hand. We received magazines, books and prints, that all contributed to our window and shop decorations. I particularly loved this idea, as it really felt like a joint effort. Our customer community have participated in our sustainable project – just perfect.
With a little (probably quite a bit) more planning, it was finally installation day! Elly arrived early morning on the 3rd November and I naively believed she’d get straight on with the installation. How wrong I was!!
Much like any decorating job, preparation of your work surface is key. Elly spent the morning meticulously cleaning, wiping, scraping our (what I believed clean) shop windows. It was amazing and really rather amusing what she found and of course it was super important this canvas was right before installation started. Very impressive.
The stars started being hung. The potato stamper was in action. The staple gun was firing. What a lark, as my Grandma would say! And didn’t passers by enjoy the show!! Garlands were being weaved with origami stars and twinkly fairy lights. As the dark early evening encroached, the shop started lighting up.
Two days later, our shop was officially ‘Christmased’. Festive feelings all round and lots of gifting offerings are now available for you, your friends and family.
Come and visit us, I look forward to welcoming you at my store, Harriet’s of Hove – for a different way, a refreshingly eco way and a tinglingly exciting way to do your Christmas shopping. We are extremely proud supporters our local and sustainable suppliers, whilst also honouring a living wage for our small and hard working team.
Thank you for your support
As an added thank you for reading this Sustainable Stunning Stars story, feel free to ask for your very own HoH origami star at the till. We have a goodie bag of homeless stars and after all – we don’t like waste!!
Harriet’s of Hove will be launching a social media ‘Guess How Many Stars’ competition in December. Having read this blog post, it gives you a substantial head start on guessing how many are displayed in store. Good luck!
If you have enjoyed reading this story, please share with others.
Merry Christmas from Harriet and The Team at Harriet’s of Hove.
