PayPal Stories Archive

Whether it’s seasonally popular Christmas sacks and stockings or year-round favourites like photo-frames and necklaces, Personalised Gifts Shop puts smiles on faces.

 

Founder Jane Gokgoz has built the business from its kitchen-table beginnings to today’s warehouse of over 14,000 personalised gifts. 

 

Jane has used PayPal from the outset. PayPal handles customer payments and Jane uses PayPal Invoicing to process reduced-rate replacement charges when a customer has made an error on that all-important order. Where possible, she also pays her suppliers with PayPal.

 

The secret of Jane’s success is her drive to be different. She explains:

“[From the beginning] it went really well, but, after a while I noticed that the suppliers I was using were limited. They couldn’t give me the designs I wanted. They were more geared towards providing the same mass-produced goods for everybody. There are lots of sites selling personalised gifts, but they were all using the same few wholesalers, so the designs were all the same.”

 

“I wanted to do something a bit different,” she continues. “I wanted to offer a little bit more. So, I thought, couldn’t I produce these myself?”

 

And, she did. Jane used PayPal Working Capital to help fund a larger stock of gifts purchased directly from suppliers and personalised in her firm’s own warehouse. 

 

“If I’m placing an order for stock and the supplier can’t hold it for us, I can say ‘Okay, we’ll pay now,’” says Jane. PayPal Working Capital gives Personalised Gifts Shop the ability to guarantee it has the stock it needs for the peak Christmas season.

 

PayPal Working Capital also helped Jane negotiate better prices from suppliers, as she explains:

“I can get better pricing by placing larger orders. Having PayPal Working Capital there gives you that power. And, it means I can pass on those discounts to customers.”

 

Personalised Gifts Shop sells wholly through its website, PersonalisedGiftsShop.co.uk, and uses social media for marketing. Its Facebook page has over 30,000 followers.

 

“Social media works well for us. It’s good just to be out there and having some contact with our customer base. If you look at our Facebook and Instagram pages, it’s not just all about our products. People like to have a smile put on their face, too. We think that’s important, because that’s what our business is all about: putting smiles on people’s faces. It’s about building a community with our customers.”

 

You can watch how PayPal Working Capital has helped Personalised Gifts Shop put smiles on more faces, here: 

The views provided are the business's and not necessarily those of PayPal Working Capital.