Is gift wrapping as a service going the way of the bread cutters in grocery stores?
Yes I could have used other analogies but this was the first to come to mind.
Having gift wrapping is such a rarity that most people don’t even think of asking anymore. When I was a child, all the stores wrapped gifts, for free! Then as time went on there were charges for wrapping, but you could always get a free box with tissue paper. Now it is rare to even see gift wrapping anywhere.
Since we opened we have always provided free gift wrapping on all of your purchases. No other place in our town offers this same service. It is a funny phenomena that when someone gets a store wrapped gift in our town, they have a good idea it is coming from The Beadcage. It seems like such a small thing, but it really is a great service we have been providing for years.
Believe it or not, gift wrapping is a costly service to provide to customers. We had no idea how costly until we started looking at the numbers. Just having a space to hold the wrapping material and do the wrapping takes up valuable selling space. There is a great deal of training that goes into teaching how to do a nice gift wrap. Then there is the time involved and employee costs that go into wrapping each gift as nicely as we do. There seems to be a cost factor behind all the stores dropping this as a free service.
Nevertheless it seems like The Beadcage is the last hold out relic still providing free gift wrapping for our customers. In fact, we have not been able to figure out if people are coming to us because of this service. If they are, then we are grateful. If they are not coming to us because of this and we offer this to them, I know they are grateful too.
Tags: Columbus Georgia, FREE, Gift Wrapping, No Charge, The Beadcage