Libby Holden, owner of Lovely Libby’s in Rayleigh, Essex, is gearing up for Autumn/Winter, with the stock room already starting to be taken over by a plethora of pumpkins, gingerbread men and gonks, both Halloween and Christmas-themed.
Can you tell us how you’ve approached your buying this year Libby?
“Last year was the first time we bought into the Autumn/Halloween interiors trend. While we only really skimmed the surface, cautiously opting for more interior friendly ornaments, such as tiny Autumn gonks and neutral decorative pumpkins, as opposed to overly obvious Halloween decorations, and it proved to be a great hit. Therefore, this year, we have decided to go bigger and better.”
What are you stocking up with for Halloween?
“We’ve definitely bought more into the typical Halloween themes to broaden our selection and appeal to a wider range of customers as the trend continues to grow and, of course, to up the ante with our window display.
We’ve gone down the ghost and ghoul route, and some of my favourite arrivals so far include our fleecy ghost cushion and fleecy ghoul pumpkin doorstop from Langs. They are the perfect combination of spookiness and Autumnal cosiness, so I definitely think they’re going to be one of our best sellers this year!”
When are you launching the collection?
“As per last year, we are planning to set a launch date for the release of the collection on our website, which we will promote with images and videos on our social media. We found this strategy to be hugely beneficial to us last year. We recognised that autumnal/cosy interiors were a huge trend on sites such as Pinterest and Instagram, and by integrating our Shopify with the content we were producing, we were able to expand our customer base within these audiences engaging with the content, leading to both an increase in sales and growth on these platforms. Here’s hoping this little trick leads to such a treat again this year…”
Top: Last year’s Lovely Libby’s Autumn window.
