47% of Croft & Cole's pre-ordered Christmas trees were delivered before the 1st December this year, as pressures to post festive photos on social media mount and Brits look to escape general election gloom.
As the UK's leading premium home-delivery Christmas tree company, you would be no fool to expect Croft & Cole's busiest week for cutting, preparing and distributing Nordmann Firs to be in mid-December, but statistics show that November deliveries doubled this year.
In fact, of Croft & Cole's pre-orders, which account for around 80% of annual sales, 47% were delivered to customers' homes before the 1st December 2019 compared to just 18% for the same period in 2018.
"We started receiving many emails and calls from our customers from early October asking when they could pre-order their home-delivery Christmas tree - so many in fact that we brought forward the date from 1st November to the 16th October," explained Croft & Cole's marketing director Rebecca Onslow-Cole. "At first we assumed our customers were just being more organised this year but then they started selecting their free named-day delivery dates and saw that 29th November was looking busy.
"We looked at our order books and, based on pre-orders, deliveries in the final week in November accounted for almost half of our sales this season. This compares to just 18% in 2018."
In 2018, the first week of December was the busiest with 52% of Croft & Cole Christmas trees being delivered. This then reduced to 12% in the second week of December and just 5% in the third week.
This year, 47% were delivered before 1st December, with 38% in the first week of the month, 12% in the second week and 3% in Christmas week.
"We've also taken an increased number of calls from customers asking for advice on how to keep their Christmas tree looking good for up to four weeks. As we only source trees from British growers, they are much fresher from field to front door than supermarket alternatives, which are often imported from Europe and have been cut for three weeks before December starts. If customers follow our care guide and use a Croft & Cole water-holding stand, they can enjoy a beautiful non-drop tree for the full festive period."
Croft & Cole customers claim that social media trends are, in part, responsible for Christmas coming early but also that they are looking for something to cheer them up with a December general election looming.
"Many of our customers are very loyal and we know them well, so we asked why they had ordered earlier this year. The main response was that they had seen friends posting artificial Christmas trees on Instagram and Facebook in November and didn't want to feel behind the curve. The second most common answer was that our customers felt like they needed cheering up amid the UK's general election build-up."
For further information about Croft & Cole, the leading premium home-delivery Christmas tree company, visit www.croftandcole.com or call 01280 824 402.