Small Business Saturday Blog

Based in Banstead in Surrey, they’ve shipped packages all over the world: Lauren told us, “Being digital and having access to platforms such as eBay allows you to reach different people. I’ve sent packages all over the UK, to America, to Australia, all over the world.”

She set up her business during the first lockdown in the UK, when her contract came to an end and everything shut down. In the circumstances, Lauren wasn’t optimistic about finding work. She’d been thinking about starting her own business for a while, but in June 2020 she decided to take the plunge, and hasn’t looked back.

As a new mum herself, Lauren wanted to create hampers that would make it as simple as possible for other new parents, with different packages to reflect a growing child’s different developmental stages.

All of her baby, toy and mum hampers are based on personal experience. Often she was gifted toys that she wouldn't have thought to buy herself but ended up loving, and has carefully sourced the same or similar high quality products for her hampers.

The other bespoke packages followed after careful market research, and are designed to be as useful as possible while adding an extra touch of luxury. Every hamper is made to order and put together personally by Lauren, and can be tailored to the specific needs and budget of any individual or company.

She also tries to think about her impact on the environment as much as possible, for example reusing boxes and packaging, and trying to source her products from businesses that are based in the UK.

Lauren has worked in customer service roles for many years and prides herself on providing a high quality personalised service for every customer. She told us, “Platforms like eBay make it so easy to rate you, so you’ve got that inbuilt trust. People know if anything goes wrong, you’ve got eBay there to help out.”

She attributes her success so far to hard work and persistence, excellent customer service, and being as visible as possible across social media and digital platforms such as eBay, which help her find new customers.

In the run up to Christmas, Laurent’s advice for other small businesses is to be prepared: she told us, “If I order something, I’m excited about it and I want it now!” In her own business, Lauren aims to despatch items as fast as possible so customers have them as soon as they can.

For the 10th anniversary of Small Business Saturday UK, Hampers by Lauren will be taking part in a Christmas market surrounded by lots of other small local businesses – and maybe doing a little bit of Christmas shopping of her own.