Customer Stories: View Garden Centre’s Christmas Market

As much as people hate to admit it, Christmas is fast approaching. The festive countdown is already ticking away for those preparing to ensure this years’ Christmas tree beats last year’s efforts. For retail businesses, Christmas has been at the forefront of their minds since before the Easter Eggs were back on the shelves. That’s particularly true for Garden Centres whose displays get more magical and enticing every year. For them, the race is on to capture the imaginations of shoppers who just can’t get enough seasonal illuminations and embellishments to create that ‘instagrammable’ moment.

The evolution of the Christmas Market

Once upon a time, ‘Christmas market’ either meant a trip to Germany or a chilly weeknight trip to a council-run Victorian evening with a plethora of stalls and a standard hot chestnut seller. Now the craze has spread to every corner of the UK — including garden centres. Such is the need to increase footfall and tempt physical shoppers away from the world of online shopping, retailers need to stand out and offer something unmissable to encourage visitors.

View Garden Centre, based in Rayleigh, Essex, has taken the Christmas market and given it a Scandi make-over this year. Their Nordic Christmas Market is full of traditional Christmas Fare, as well as Scandinavian delights. View have pulled out all the stops to ensure their customers have an unforgettable visit and they called on Solopress to help with their finishing touches.

Take a video tour…

The team at View very kindly allowed us to film the production, installation and unveiling of the stunning signage we were able to create together. It was great to watch its progress from guillotine to grotto!

What did they need from us?

View Garden Centre needed signage to help guide their customers through to their market and enhance the ‘wow’ factor of their displays. Working closely with Samantha Baxter, View Garden Centre’s head of marketing, we provided the following:

• Flyers advertising the Christmas market and the special events they are hosting, such as a food and wine tasting weekend and late-night shopping events with music.
• Roller Banners to promote their Santa’s grotto and special events
• A-Boards to inform customers of refreshments available from their food cabin and also directional signs to lead them to the market.
• Custom shape Signage Boards for their entrance, exit and the top of the food cabin. These large custom cut shape signs really helped bring the market look together with large scale, eye-catching designs that match the theme perfectly.
• Foamex and Correx Signs for their illuminations section to direct customers to the separate room where the lights are displayed.
• Solopress Design Service. While View provided all their own stunning artwork, our expert designers were able to offer a few pointers to help the wording of the larger signs really stand out.

A Successful Launch

We were thrilled to be able to capture the journey of View Garden Centre’s signage, from brief, to print, to delivery and installation and then finally to its grand reveal to the public – at the Nordic Christmas Market’s launch event. 

‘We’d like to thank Solopress for outstanding customer service, fast delivery and brilliant quality – we will definitely be using you for all our printing in the future. Ria in sales and Emma in the Solopress Design team were particularly helpful – thank you!’ 

Martin Collins, Owner of View Garden Centre 

Our products stood out proudly and the entire event was a wonderful success. Solopress were able to provide a quick and seamless process of some extraordinary custom print, and we were proud to see everything in situ. We couldn’t think of a better way to start the festive period.