To kick off our new site we thought we’d start with one of our favourite Australian online gift shops, Bockers & Pony.
First of all, you’ve just got to love the name. I gather Bockers is the nickname of Nicole Rosenberg and Pony is the nickname of Leonie Henzell. Someone & Someone names just sound posh, and the obvious personality radiating from these two gals (ahem, online entrepreneurs) reminds me of Trinny and Susannah reviving the self esteem of women’s breasts everywhere.
These two obviously have style, and that is reflected throughout their site. The site design, although having been around for a few years now, still looks fresh, inviting, thoroughly modern and very stylish.
It’s exceptionally easy to navigate around and they have a good range of products in each category. The pictures of the products are high quality and the entire site oozes professionalism. The one minor gripe with the site setup, is a lack of enlarged or detailed images when you want to have a closer inspection of the gifts on offer.
So far, so good. Now lets dig a little deeper.
Lets have a look at the Rolly Polly Puppy. It’s actually the Baby Gund Activity Centre, which you can buy on many E-Bay stores for around $20 AU. (Not that we would recommend that!!!) Yes, the Bockers & Pony product comes nicely gift wrapped and presented in a photo box, but $49.95? Hhmmm. It seems style is costs.
Style Costs?
Let’s have a look at another gift then. In the Toddlers section, there’s a cute pull along wagon – the mini red or mini pink wagon. At $29.95 it seems quite reasonably priced to us.
This wagon also features in other products to create similar gift products popular on American gift stores such as GiftTree.
Would you pay $60 for this Plush Horse?
Lucky’s Wagon costs $89.95, so by our reckoning, that cute horse costs $60.00.
The theme continues with the Stripy Red Wagon which costs $199.00 and adds a blanket and substitutes a puppy for the horse.
Verdict:
Bockers & Pony offers extremely stylish gifts. They offer a good range, supply the gifts in well presented storage boxes and offer very reasonable delivery charges – $7 in Victoria and $12 around Australia. If you have no inclination to shop around and budget is not your top priority, then this is a great destination gift site.
For others who like to shop around, the higher end gifts in some packages seem to offer less value as more products are added. Also bear in mind that these are premium products, so make sure you’re comparing with similar quality products on other sites.
Happy gift shopping to you.
