Gourmet goodies packaged in a wagon is one of the many gift baskets The Bountiful Basket can make to please Dad on Fathers’ Day
(SAN BERNARDINO, Calif.) – It’s tough being a single parent today, but one’s dad’s success in this role helped in creating this special day for all fathers.
Several websites credit Sonora Smart Dodd, a young mother in Spokane, Washington with organizing the first Father’s Day celebration. Her father, William Jackson Smart, had raised Mrs. Dodd and her five siblings after her mother died giving birth to the couple’s sixth child.
As Mrs. Dodd sat listening to a Mothers’ Day sermon in 1909, she thought of how her father had been both mother and father to her family. She set about to establish a new holiday recognizing the important roles fathers play in their children’s lives.
The next year, her church held the first Father’s Day celebration. By 1926, the word had spread and people were celebrating Father’s Day across the country.
For dads in 2008, a great way to say “thanks for all you do” is to order him a customized gift container from The Bountiful Basket in Highland. This company can take orders from anywhere in the world through its website, www.thebountifulbasket.com
“Whatever a dad is interested in, we can make a basket or other gift to help him enjoy his hobby more thoroughly,” owner Marilyn Taylor said. “And we have other baskets that just say thanks for being a good dad.”
Taylor and her team have come up with some new ideas just in time for this year’s holiday, which falls on June 15. One sure to be a hit with most dads is her “Father’s Day Toolbox.”
“It’s a good-sized orange and black toolbox filled with tools and snacks,” Taylor said.
For a new dad, who probably won’t have quite so much time to play with tools, there is the Daddy’s Diaper Dootie Tool Belt. Instead of tools, this gift package is filled with diapers and other baby products, and for dad, rubber gloves, safety goggles and a clothes pin for the nose.
If tools aren’t your dad’s favorite things to play with, and his little ones are past the diaper stage, The Bountiful Basket can design a gift with his interests in mind.
The company has several examples displayed on its website for sports fans, especially for those dads who like golf. New baskets are in the works for baseball fans, NASCAR and Harley-Davidson enthusiasts. There are also gift baskets for movie and music lovers.
And what dad wouldn’t love a little pampering? The Bountiful Basket has a line of bath products, Bountiful Spa Therapy, that have been a hit with both men and women, due to its universally appealing unisex scent. The company will gladly make a gift basket featuring the products men love.
The Bountiful Basket has more than 250 different baskets to choose from, ranging from $10 to $500. These are grouped by themes, such as holidays, corporate, children’s and teenagers’ baskets, college students’ designs, and gifts with different varieties of products within.
But, if none of those designs are exactly what you’re looking for, The Bountiful Basket can custom-make the perfect gift that you will be proud to give and will fit within your budget.
For more information, go to their website, www.thebountifulbasket.com or call Taylor at (909) 425-2203 for help with your selection.
The Perfect Assistant, a gift basket filled with sweet things for a coffee break, is one of many great gifts The Bountiful Basket could create to reward a hard-working employee on Administrative Professionals’ Day
(SAN BERNARDINO, Calif.) A well-functioning office staff is to their employer what oil is to a smoothly running machine. They strive to keep things running perfectly.
April 23 is Administrative Professionals’ Day, and the perfect opportunity to show appreciation for their hard work. This holiday, along with its related Administrative Professionals’ Week, (April 20-26) has been celebrated since 1952 in recognition of the work administrative professionals do in almost every business office.
The term administrative professionals takes in a wide variety of positions, such as receptionist, secretary or administrative assistant, office manager, file clerk and customer service representative. Many companies also have highly specialized employees who aren’t part of the administrative team, but are equally deserving of recognition.
If you’re stumped on what to give your hard-working employees, The Bountiful Basket, a southern California business that specializes in creating custom designs, has lots of unique ideas.
All good workers deserve a good coffee break, so The Bountiful Basket owner Marilyn Taylor has designed a “For the Perfect Assistant” basket with this in mind. This basket, actually a faux-leather train case, is filled with gourmet snacks such as butter wafers, shortbread cookies, chocolate and caramels, and a tin of coffee, cocoa or tea.
The gift basket also comes with a notepad and picture frame, perfect accessories for the well-organized administrative professional’s desk.
“This gift basket is elegant and sophisticated, like administrative professionals strive to be,” Taylor said. “And it helps them to feel good. What’s more, when they’re done with the snacks, they have a wonderful upscale container to help them stay organized.”
Taylor designed her “For the Perfect Assistant” gift basket with women in mind, as most administrative professionals are women, and most women are fond of sweet confections For male administrative professionals and those bosses who would rather not indulge their employees’ sweet tooth, she has other designs as well.
For a man, Taylor recommends her Gourmet Sampler gift basket. This basket is filled with savory snacks like cheese and crackers, nuts, popcorn, pretzels, mustard and sausage. There’s also coffee and cookies in this basket.
“Men appreciate more savory snacks, so this basket is filled with the things they like,’ she said.
Administrative professionals also crave serenity at the end of their day, and for women, The Bountiful Basket’s Serenity Pampering Gift Basket strives for exactly that. This basket is filled with Taylor’s own Bountiful Spa Therapy line of bath products, including intensive moisturizing hand cream, body wash, bath salts, a luxurious towel and more.
“I think it’s important to let women know they should pamper themselves,” Taylor said.
She noted that men like some of the Bountiful Spa Therapy products as well, so a basket could be tailored for them.
If a boss knows their employees have certain interests outside of work, a themed basket may be best for them, Taylor said. She’s already designed baskets for golfers, sports enthusiasts, gardeners, movie lovers and many others with specific hobbies, and can custom-make baskets as well.
The above gift baskets, as well as many others described on the web site www.thebountifulbasket.com , would also be great gifts for Mothers’ Day and Fathers’ Day, which aren’t far behind Administrative Professionals’ Day on the calendar. And for those who have a wedding or graduation on their calendars, The Bountiful Basket makes a large variety of baskets sure to please.
(SAN BERNARDINO, Calif.) Gift baskets filled to overflowing with gourmet goodies, pampering products or specialty items a company can use to market itself, have garnered a high award for Marilyn Taylor, owner of The Bountiful Basket.
Rave Reviews! magazine has named this Southern California business one of the Top 50 Gift Basket Businesses in the United States. The award recognizes The Bountiful Basket as one of the major gift basket makers based on Taylor and her team’s dedication to her business, the creativity of her customized baskets and the wide variety of upscale products included in them.
“This is a prestigious award,” Taylor said. “Rave Reviews! is an upscale magazine that caters to advanced basket designers serving a high-end clientele.”
This is the third time Taylor’s has been named a Top 50 Gift Basket Business. In 2005and 2006, Gift Basket Review magazine named her to its Top 50. This magazine caters to both professional gift basket designers such as Taylor, and to those who design gift baskets as a hobby.
Before being named to Rave Reviews! Top 50, Taylor completed a detailed questionnaire. It asked about the types of baskets she designs, which are the best sellers and how she markets her baskets.
“Some gift basket retailers don’t design their own baskets, but order shipments from large foreign suppliers then resell them,” Taylor said. “We take great pride and pleasure in designing our customers’ gift baskets ourselves.
“Our biggest competitor is Costco. People can go there and see 20 baskets all the same, with no personality.”
“For the same price they can have a beautiful unique basket custom designed for their recipient, delivered to their customer’s or loved one’s door.”
Taylor does half of her business on the web, and will ship orders all over the world. Many of her customers are out of state; one of her biggest clients is in Texas and a large number of orders come from New Jersey and New York.
Since 1995, Taylor has made a career out of designing her own gift baskets. Her team scours trade shows and elsewhere looking for gourmet foods and uniquely shaped baskets. They have more than 500 different products that can be used to create a specially designed gift, many of which can’t be found anywhere else in the local area.
What’s more, the baskets and other gift containers come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes.
For instance, she discovered a company that hand makes baskets in the shape of states, and uses a California-shaped basket to hold an assortment of products native to the state, including chocolates manufactured locally.
“We have a wonderful variety of made-in-California products that are not found in any grocery stores,” Taylor said.
About four years ago, they started designing children’s baskets, and now sell many of them to families with children at Loma Linda Children’s Hospital and other hospitals throughout the United States. These baskets are filled with interactive toys, games and books.
“I search the globe for things that get children to use their minds,” she said. “It’s hard to find things that aren’t video games or otherwise keep them in their own zone.”
Earlier this year, one of her top-selling kids’ baskets included Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars.
For adults, both men and women, many of her best-selling baskets contain her Bountiful Spa Therapy line of lotions and other items for the bath. She developed this line after sampling hundreds of similar products and finding none that were “just right.”
Other baskets could be filled with coffee, cookies, chocolates, savory snacks, fruit or many other choices.
At the website, www.thebountifulbasket.com Taylor has dozens of examples to choose from, $10 to $500. These are grouped by themes such as holidays, corporate, children’s and teenagers’ baskets, college students’ designs and gifts with different varieties of products.
But, if none of those designs are exactly what you’re looking for, The Bountiful Basket can custom-make the perfect gift that you will be proud to give and will fit within your budget.
“If someone is allergic to peanuts, we won’t put that in there,” she said. “Or if they would rather have tea than coffee, we can accommodate that.”
She also encourages businesses to include their own products in their gift baskets. And she can imprint names and custom messages on the ribbons that adorn the baskets, for an even more personalized and professional touch.
How do you create an award-winning business from the Inland Empire?
“We treat every customer as though they’re a business next door and they come back again and again,” she said. “Our business is our passion and it shows in every gift we create.”
For more information about The Bountiful Basket, call (909) 425-2203 or visit www.thebountifulbasket.com
