Easy gift-shop sellers – colourful, useful and giftable, with broad appeal and a good perceived value for an independent retailer.
Mango wood meets Indian ceramic art – the combination of a solid wooden box with colourful glazed ceramic detailing gives these a distinctive artisan look that stands apart from ordinary decorative boxes.
Made in North India and directly imported from a long-standing AW supplier, adding genuine craft provenance and a useful story to tell customers.
Plenty of uses means plenty of customers – ideal for jewellery, crystals, keepsakes, tarot accessories and those little treasures everyone seems to collect.
Excellent for cross-selling – display open with tumble stones, jewellery or small gifts inside to help sell the contents as well as the box.
Strong visual merchandising – colourful designs add instant interest to shelves, window displays and gift tables without taking up much space.
These boxes come from Saharanpur in North India, a city with a long history of wood carving and wooden giftware.
For many years Saharanpur was especially known for Sheesham wood, but as regulations tightened and export became more complicated, many makers gradually moved over to mango wood. A very good move, as it turned out. Mango wood has a warm natural colour, takes carving and finishing well, and is particularly suited to decorative boxes and small pieces of giftware.
AW has been buying from Saharanpur for many years, and the place has changed quite a bit in that time. The roads are better, factories are more organised, and today AW has good relationships with several makers in and around the city.
One of those relationships goes back a particularly long way.
Years ago, David travelled from Delhi to Saharanpur by sleeper train with Mr Chatterjee, arriving to a rather different city from the one seen today — muddy roads, timber yards everywhere and even camel carts hauling enormous logs through the streets.
It was all rather more adventurous in those days.
The oldest supplier is still visited whenever possible, partly because long relationships matter, partly because there is usually something interesting being made...
...and partly because the family once served David one of the best biryanis he can remember.
So yes, business is business.
But a good biryani can apparently help a supplier relationship last a very long time.
These little boxes carry a bit of that history with them — Saharanpur woodcraft, long-standing supplier relationships and many years of AW sourcing experience, all tucked into something small enough to sit on a gift-shop shelf.
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