Baskets Galore Ireland

Happy Monday Bloggers, I just wanted to write a quick update regarding our delivery rates to Europe , as I think it's pretty good news for those of you wishing to send gifts internationally. As you may know BasketsGalore has always offered a European delivery service, and we have even delivered further afield to the likes of the US, Canada, Australia & Russia in the past. Currently we are concentrating on a great, cost effective delivery service to countries based in the EU, as then there are no worries about customs hold ups & charges. When exporting/importing to non-EU countries Customs can hold a parcel for inspection & can also add duties/charges on, so when delivery is attempted they ask the recipient to pay this additional charge. These customs charges are separate & on top of the delivery price that is paid to the delivery company, so we have no control over the charges. So for this reason we specialise in sending to the most popular EU countries our customer...

Spring is a busy time for us in Basket land as we get a little run of occasions in a short time period. The romantic Valentine's Day , followed by St Patrick's Day , Mother's Day and shortly afterwards Easter ! All of which are best celebrated with a gorgeous gift basket of course! For 2012 we have created a new range of holiday gift baskets for you to enjoy. I have included a selection of them below, but please do see our website for lots more ideas. And as ever if you don't see the perfect gift basket you can always create your own ! Delivery is available all over Ireland and the UK. We also have some great shipping rates to Europe too. The BGie Team

Hi Folks, We would like to say a big thank you to everyone who shopped with us during November & December for Christmas hampers & gift baskets . We hope your friends & family members enjoyed receiving & eating the contents! We know many of you shop with us every year & we really appreciate your continued custom. We have been steadily growing for the past 10 years and make improvements to the systems every year. One thing remains constant though, we only offer great quality gift baskets that we would love to receive ourselves! We were so pleased the snow stayed away this December, although we know many of you have been hindered by it in the past couple of weeks instead. It meant we were able to keep dispatching Christmas hampers right up until the 22nd December, for delivery on 23rd December. Some of the couriers even worked the Saturday, Christmas Eve, to get those last few parcels delivered. We even dispatched baskets on Friday 23rd December & these were delive...

Apologies Bloggers, It's been a little while since we last posted! It has been a hectic summer, with many projects on the go at once. There are lots of things to tell you about, but I thought I'd start with the 3 major projects that spring to mind. One of the main things we've been working on is the introduction of a new management system, which works as a stock control & order dispatch system as well as an accountancy & reporting package. After researching all the available packages on the market we decided to go with one called Linnworks, as it integrates seamlessly with our Magento E-commerce store. With any new system it takes a while to implement, learn & test before everything is as it should be. There was a lot of data entry to do, but now all that initial information has been inputted it will simply be a matter of keeping it up to date. Easier said than done I'm sure! We also had the Corporate Restructuring, as detailed in an earlier blog. This has a...

Our Top 10 Mistakes: (Part 1 of 2) As Basketsgalore approaches its 10th Birthday we’re looking back at some of the highs and lows of setting up an online gift basket business. As you can imagine a lot has changed since the first Basketsgalore website went live in 2001. Over the years the primary website has seen five rewrites with numerous amendments in between. Here is a selection of our most memorable mistakes. And on the basis that more is learnt from our mistakes than our successes, we begin with the aforementioned. 1) Maya the talking Mannequin. This was a great idea in theory. It involved purchasing a software licence to enable a 3D character to talk to the customer and deal with their most frequently asked questions. The character had to be programmed to blink and make facial changes. We got to the point of beginning voice recordings for the character and programming changes in facial expressions. Maya was uploaded to the website, but was met with a hail of opposition. “W...