Christmas shop opens but will be smaller (next year)

THE owners of the Tree Barn in Christmas Common have announced plans to downsize.

Jane Ingram, who has run the Christmas shop for 23 years, will scale it back from next year.

She made the announcement ahead of this year’s opening, which took place on Saturday, and said that they wanted to make the retail space more manageable.

Mrs Ingram, 65, said they will reduce the stock the store sells to Christmas essentials such as tree stands, basic lighting and wreaths and a selection of decorations, which would be, where possible, “unique”, ethically sourced and locally made.

She said: “I'm 66 next year, my husband’s a tad older than me and he has got health issues so he’s slowing up. I’m at that sort of stage of life when you start needing a life and the shop rather takes it over.

“I’m working on it all year round. I start the second week of January and I’m just buying. We’ve got at least 2,000 different lines, so add 10 minutes to that and you see how many hours it takes to put it together and do all the ordering.

“I was trying to think how I could cut things back and the best way to go was to reduce the size and sell a simpler offering of Christmas-related items. We’ll see how it evolves. I’m a bit of a gardener so in a way I am thinking about clearing the flower bed and seeing what pops up. That’s the best way to look at it.”

Mrs Ingram said that reducing the shop’s range would give her an opportunity to move away from large imports of goods from abroad and instead focus on stocking more ethical, eco-friendly and fair-trade items.

She said: “The building is quite old. The front is fairly recent, about 20 years old, but the back was an old milking parlour and the floor is very uneven and it is damp. It’s not ideal for a shop. I will probably just use the front third of the shop, instead of all of it.

“I’ll obviously have stock left over and we will decide nearer Christmas whether or not we have a sale to clear it.”

Mrs Ingram said she was very grateful that the shop had always seen a lot of support from its customers over the years.

She said: “At the weekend we had an awful lot of people through, it was very, very busy and some lovely customers who came in this morning said they avoided the weekend and came in for opening at 9am today.

“It’s thrilling when somebody comes in and they’re excited and have been looking forward to coming and starting Christmas all over again. It sounds ridiculous but I’m very lucky to be able to say it. We’re as busy as we want to be, especially on the weekends.”

The Tree Barn is directly across from Greenfield Farm, their Christmas tree fields, which is managed by Mr Ingram and it has always been a worry for the couple when the car park gets overcrowded.

Mrs Ingram said: “It always worries us, especially when you’re selling the trees. It almost feels like a massive sort of elephant that has got carried away with us and we’re just holding on with our fingernails during the week.

“We could obviously take more customers but the weekends are always a bit manic, so that’s another reason for us to slow down a bit.”

Mrs Ingram is helped to run the shop by a number of employees including long-standing staff members Jan Badji and Emma Williams.

The couple’s daughters, Jessica, 34, a tutor at the Royal School of Needlework in London, and Rebecca, 32, who works with antique fine art, often return to help run the shop at the start of the season.

Mrs Ingram said: “There were five of us working five days a week since the beginning of September, unpacking. We get about 70 big pallet loads of stock in and we unpack it, price it, decide where it’s going to go and then do all the layouts to make it look nice.

“There’s a lot of work beforehand, that’s the trouble with this. It’s as if it’s just a massive pop-up shop. So, you’re starting from the beginning every year. Whereas if you’re a supermarket you’ve got all the shop laid out.”

Mrs Ingram decided to open the shop in the early 2000s as a change from her job at Rupert House School in Henley where she worked as a bursar’s assistant.

She said: “We’ve been doing Christmas trees for more than 50 years. My husband planted his first tree before we knew each other and they sold very well. They’re on the right ground.

“I've been with him for nearly 40 years now and about 25 years ago people kept on coming in every Christmas saying, ‘why don’t you sell lights?’ I’ve always sold a few stands and extras and I thought, ‘I’m bored of my work, so maybe I’ll have a go at having a Christmas shop’.

“Some other friends in Essex had a big Christmas shop, so we went to see them for the day and they showed us what they do and how they do it. I went off to a trade fair and bought some stock and started and gradually over the years it has just got bigger and bigger. In its first year the shop was about a third of the size that it is now.”

Mrs Ingram said that while she will miss the shop in its current form she was feeling “relieved” to be downsizing She said: “I have found it a struggle the last few years, particularly with my husband not doing particularly well.

“I’m not the most patient of people, so if I’m not working on Christmas, I’m worrying about it.”

The shop is open from 9am to 5.30pm every day with late nights on Thursdays and Fridays until 7.30pm. Christmas tree sales from the barn will start from Saturday, November 23 with the same opening times. Both the shop and the tree barn will close at noon on Christmas Eve.