Welcome to the last BritShopS newsletter of 2007! May we take this opportunity to wish you all a very happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year. Don't forget, if you've forgotten Great Aunt Audry's Christmas present or just need to stock up on sparkling wine or mince pies, or you just need something different as a gift idea then don't forget to look at the BritShopS site, we may have just the thing you are looking for!

As you may have seen from our previous newsletters, BritShopS made it's first ever appearance at a public Fair when we hosted a stall at the St Francis of Assisi Church Bazaar in West Wickham, Kent on 17th November. We were delighted with the interest shown by those who visited us. We had, as you can see from the picture, three of the BritShopS team manning the stall and a large range of items from across our broad spectrum of products. The event was so successful we actually ran out of some stock and had to take orders over the counter for subsequent delivery! We have also taken a number of orders from people who visited the stall and took away one of our advertising leaflets.

As a result of our success at the St Francis Bazaar we were approached by another local organisation and asked to put together stalls for two more local fairs in December. The first was on 1st December at the Wickham Court School in West Wickham Kent, and the second was at the Oak Lodge Primary School, again in West Wickham, on December 8th.

We are looking forward to many more fairs over the next twelve months and we aim to push BritShopS products and ethos through to an ever widening audience. We will keep you informed of our progress.

Bad news for the supermarkets.
The last few weeks have been a difficult time for the major supermarkets in the media. You may have noticed in the national papers extracts from a Which? report that found shoppers who were buying consumable and perishable items from the supermarkets over the internet were finding that, in some cases, the items arrived within just one day of their 'use by' date! An investigation by Which? revealed that, on average, groceries chosen online had a considerably shorter shelf life than those purchased in store.

Subsequently there were further newspaper accusations that supermarkets were 'profiteering' after it emerged that some of them are increasing their delivery charges for online orders in the run up to Christmas.

Whilst we fully understand the supermarkets trying to ensure they sell as much of their stock as possible and, in turn, increase their profit margin, we can assure you that BritShopS operate totally differently. As you can see from our Fair Price Policy we have individual arrangements with each of our suppliers which means we can be much more flexible with our prices. It also means that we are not constantly changing our prices to profit from differing market trends. Our prices only change when our producers need to increase their prices due to increased production costs. Indeed we will never 'dominate' our suppliers in the way the supermarket chains do. The producers set the prices, not us.

All too often we hear in the news that producers are forced out of business as the big supermarkets drive the wholesale prices down to below production cost levels. BritShopS will never follow that path. You may find yourself paying slightly more for our products as a result, but we believe that the paying public feels the same way that we do -- we buy quality British products so that you can buy quality British products.
We also do not change our delivery prices depending on the season, our delivery prices remain constant, only changing when the delivery costs to us change.

BritShopS hold minimum quantities of products in stock. Whilst this means that it takes slightly longer to deliver some products, you can be assured that they are as fresh as can be.

We have had an excellent year in 2007, with an ever widening group of producers on our books and a large influx of customers and subscribers from around the world. We thank you all for your support and we wish you all a happy, fun filled and, above all, peaceful Christmas. Look out for all our news updates on the BritShopS Information Page. In the meantime we look forward to seeing and supplying you all with Quality British goods in 2008.

Kind Regards
The BritShopS Team
www.BritShopS.co.uk