Parrot Street on the road this Christmas

The countdown to Christmas is well and truly on and we are in the thick of the Christmas shopping season. We’ve had our busiest ever two weeks phew! It’s exhausting, but the truth is we love getting out and about to Christmas fairs, festivals and shopping markets. As a small online business, these events represent an invaluable opportunity to meet young readers, their parents and grandparents face-to-face. Talking to customers helps us understand what it is they love about reading – and what challenges they face, either in encouraging their children to read more (or more varied books and genres), or in discovering enough new titles and authors to feed their little bookworms and keep them happy!

In the last couple of weeks, we’ve been at school Christmas fairs in Worcester Park, Wimbledon, New Malden and Wandsworth, as well as Christmas markets in Kingston and at Northcote Road in Clapham. We were also delighted to sponsor a fantastic event at South Ken Kids Fest, featuring illustrators Axel Scheffler, Tor Freeman and Ronan Badel (what a line up!). This weekend we’ve been at events in Herne Hill, Teddington and at our own kids’ school in New Malden. The support we’ve received from the local community in our first year has been amazing and is so appreciated.

We couldn’t write about Christmas shopping without also mentioning the fabulous The Mamahood network and the gorgeous Winter pop-up shop they are running in East Dulwich right now. We are so thrilled to be one of the 80 small businesses featured in the shop – how exciting to see Parrot Street packs out in the wild!

Events form a key part of our activities throughout the year and we’re already planning our schedule for 2019, including literary festivals around the country and what we hope will be an exciting series of events to mark World Book Day in March. Watch this space for more information – and if you know of a book-loving primary school in London, Surrey or Kent who might be interested in hosting a one-off Parrot Street event, do get in touch.