The Mulberry Bush Blog

We’ve got some great offers in our after-christmas sale.    Don’t miss out as there’s only a few days to go.

We are now unable to despatch further orders before Christmas and as we will be closed from 23rd December until 3rd January any orders placed now will not be despatched until 3rd January 2012.

We wish all our customers a happy Christmas and enjoyable New Year  

A reminder that our last order date for guaranteed delivery in time for Christmas is Monday 19th December so there’s still time to order those last minute stocking fillers – or even larger items.  We have stock of most of our range though a handful are sold out so don’t delay – order today !

We’re clearing the decks before the Christmas rush.  Don’t miss our latest fantastic reductions in our Sale & Offers section.  Grab your bargains early, because when they’re gone, they’re gone!

As part of our offer and for wooden train enthusiasts we have sale prices on a whole selection of wooden track pieces, compatible with all leading brands.  Extend your Brio, Big-Jigs Rail, Thomas & Friends Wooden Railway or John Crane layout for a fraction of the usual price!

We hope you’ve noticed the new look to our website?  After many months of designing, building and testing we hope you’ll agree it’s even easier to find your way around.  We’ve improved the way you can search for toys and get ideas for presents.  The images are bigger and sharper too, and over the coming weeks we’ll be working hard to upload extra pictures of many of our toys so you can really see what they’re like.  We’d love to hear your views so do please e-mail us at sales@mulberrybush.co.uk.

Are children’s toys and Christmas presents about to become more expensive ?  Last week The Times carried an article suggesting that manufacturing costs in China were climbing as workers look for ever higher wages, and materials costs are rising too.  It seems certain that those costs will be passed on to Western consumers, and here at Mulberry Bush we’ve already seen a number of proposed price increases from importers.  Needless to say we’re negotiating hard to keep increases to a minimum, but imported toys are bound to cost more this Christmas.

One might think that it would be a good time for some of our UK toy manufacturing, lost over recent years, to come back to Britain.   Sterling is comparatively weak, we have higher unemployment and a manufacturing industry that isn’t doing much at the moment.  Yet I was intrigued to see this question from a toy industry member who asked in an online forum:

“Are you manufacturing toys or games in the UK?  If so I’d love to hear from you with a view to forming a consortium to promote UK made toys and games”

That was back in January.  As of June only one company has responded, and they are games manufacturers who still print their cardboard components here.  Just one company !

Perhaps the reticence to manufacture is increased by the ever tougher legislation that surrounds toys, EU legislation that has slipped in largely unnoticed.  New toy safety laws come into effect in the next few weeks, and these will only serve to reduce further the range of toys available whilst further increasing prices because of the high cost of compliance.  It’s difficult to argue against it, because who would want to be responsible for injury to a child, or worse, resulting from an unsafe toy.  I can’t help but think though that parents will wonder why they can no longer buy the toys they played with quite happily when children themselves, and will question the higher prices for those that are still available.

Our Spring and Summer catalogue is now available and if you’re on our mailing list then you should receive your copy in the post in the next day or two.

There are plenty of new toys,  loads of old favourites and lots of fun too!

To get your own copy just visit this page

We’ve just completed our annual stock take and we have a number of toys where we have just a few left – in some cases just one.  They won’t feature in our next catalogue so we’ve decided to put them in our Special Offers section on the website and reduced them by up to 40%.  It’s first come first served so why not get yourself a bargain now ?  When they’re gone, they’re gone ! 

For the time being Mulberry Bush will absorb the additional cost of VAT and will not be increasing any prices.

Although the recent bad weather severely disrupted deliveries in many parts of the country, both Royal Mail and Parcelforce have reported that their backlogs are being cleared quickly.  We too have caught up fast and all orders placed before Tuesday of this week will have been despatched by the end of today, Friday 17th December*

However in view of the latest snowfall in the North and the forecast for heavy snow in the South we cannot guarantee delivery in time for Christmas for any orders placed after Thursday 16th December.  Whilst we can be certain that we will despatch in good time, we cannot be certain that our couriers will be able to deliver in time because of the possible impact of the weather.

For our customers in Scotland, Parcelforce have advised that they will not accept further parcels into their system after today, Friday 17th December, and we have therefore ensured that all orders for Scottish addresses have left us already to give them the best chance of arriving in time.  We regret therefore we cannot accept any more orders for Scottish postcodes for Christmas delivery.

* Any exceptions will have been contacted by us.