Year Of the Gift

I’m still thinking about so many of the conversations sparked at yesterday’s Year of the Gift event, delivered in collaboration with Dovecot, the perfect setting to kick off our Scottish Regional Networking Event.

If you know me, you’ll know I love gift giving. I’ve been planning festive gifts since summer. As I prepare our Retail Trend Report, I’ve been immersed in creative thinking around products that genuinely resonate with today’s consumer and today’s landscape. Yesterday’s event couldn’t have aligned more perfectly with where my focus is right now.

A few themes kept coming through:
• Storytelling matters. Help your customers feel informed and connected. They want to prioritising spending with places and people with purpose and that align with their own values.
• Celebrate your makers. Share their stories proudly.
• Be bold. Use this moment to reassess and realign your range so it reflects your wider mission and acts as a true extension of your organisation’s experience.

These ideas echo so much of what I’ve been hearing from Museum Shop Sunday participants, and what our recent Association for Cultural Enterprises blog piece also prompted me to reflect on.

One of my favourite moments was Nicholas’s selection of 12 objects, a brilliant way to explore the evolution of the gift. From ceremonial, often impractical items like silver spoons, platters and a Portobello tumbler engraved “A Present from Portobello”, to today’s desire for beautiful, practical, and genuinely useful things.

From my research and conversations, here are a few Christmas 2025 gifting trends I’m seeing:
• Home and interior products will continue to perform strongly as consumers prioritise fewer, more functional items.
• Adults prioritising children’s gifts, often choosing an experience promise over presents for each other.
• Christmas crackers: either fill-your-own (the ultimate personalised touch) or beautifully curated versions featuring candles, quality games and thoughtful objects, rather than the usual nail file or keychain.
• Socks! Yes, everyone was talking about how well socks are doing.
• And a small moment of sadness: envisioning 12 soft-toy Highland cows lined up to be considered who is discontinued and who stays the ultimate retail cull. But I do agree: less is more.

We all agreed that Macbowser should absolutely be put back into production and the word Scotchity is staying with me for good.

What’s on my own Christmas gift-giving list?
• For my neighbour: a personalised Papier Productivity Planner, good pens, and a Christmas cracker filled with a locally made candle and oat milk chocolate.
• For visiting family: we’re pooling together to rent a holiday cottage for the festive days.
• For nieces and nephews: still very open to ideas!

Thanks to our hosts Dovecot Studios, Paul Griffiths, Celia Joicey, Scott Byrne and our fab speakers Allison Everett, Nicholas Oddy, Caroline Reid, Vicki Thomas, Erin Thompson

Liinked-in Post  -Reproduced with permission of Fiona Heather Anderson.Creative Development Manager, Association of Cultural Enterprises

Image  Credit

Dovecot IKEA exhibition and photographs by Fiona Heather Anderson