It can stock around 50,000 products at any one time
A Merseyside warehouse known for its stunning displays offers everything from homeware and florist supplies to must-have Christmas decorations. Back in 1990, Kate and Paul Reeves started creating floral arrangements in their home garage before expanding to open their own home and garden warehouse, Inspirations Wholesale, in Bromborough.
Located on Old Hall Road, today the business can stock around 50,000 products at any one time and has become an established name in the region, also boasting 83,000 followers on Instagram. Loved by shoppers in Wirral and beyond, every year customers are dazzled by their incredible Christmas displays, which include everything from trees to decorations, wreaths and more.
In more recent years, Inspirations Wholesale has also opened its own coffee shop on site, Leaf & Vine, offering delicious breakfasts, lunch and cakes. Now 34 years on from when the business started, the team have seen generations come through their doors.
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General manager Jason Evans, 42, has worked at Inspirations Wholesale for 14 years. As part of the Liverpool ECHO’s How It Used To Be series, we spoke to Jason about the history of the business and how it has evolved.
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Jason, who lives in Chester, told the ECHO: “Kate and Paul Reeves started the business 34 years ago now. Kate was a merchandiser by trade and Paul was a welder.
“Kate had made a few floral arrangements for friends and everyone was saying how good they were and then more and more people started asking for them. They ended up buying a bit more material and putting more together and then the demand started coming in, so Inspirations started from their garage.
“And then just slowly over the years it sort of continuously snowballed and now we are what we are. We’ve consistently grown and become really strong in homewares, interiors and seasonal products.
“We travel around the globe meeting factories and suppliers all over Europe as well,” Jason said today in their Old Hall Road site, there could be around 50,000 products in the building at one time.
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Since the 90s, the business has seen trends come and go and has continued to offer new products for new demand. Jason said: “When I was a kid, Christmas would fit in one box because every decoration you got out would like to expand.
“Christmas would come to an end and it all collapsed into these little foil-looking spring decorations. Now people come here, they get inspired and come in earlier and earlier.
“We’ve got people buying Christmas trees already. And autumn is the biggest one that I’ve seen that’s grown by tenfold in comparison to five years ago.
“Autumn trees are being dressed now. Businesses are putting Christmas trees up but decorating them with autumnal products. Then you get multiuse out of the tree so I’m seeing trees going out the door at the minute.
“Social media has pushed everybody beyond what they would ordinarily do because now you see these sorts of displays on a daily basis just on your phone. Then it makes you think, I wouldn’t mind doing that myself.”
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When it comes to seasonal products, Jason said the team are already planning for 2025. He said: “It’s a long, long time of preparation. I always laugh because outside of Christmas, I think I get about four weeks of my life where I’m not looking at Christmas products because we’re so far in advance.
“In a few weeks, we’ll be working on 2025 Christmas. But we’re not just Christmas – throughout the summer months, homewares, interiors, artificial plants, trees, garden furniture – we have all sorts of products in.”
In more recent years, the site has introduced a stunning coffee shop, Leaf & Vine. Jason said it’s become another place for their generations of customers to regularly visit.
Jason said: “We’re trying to make sure that we’ve got something for everybody. What we’ve got now is generations – you’ve got the grandma now bringing the mum, bringing the daughter.
“We all struggled with Covid and the coffee shop that was born out of the concept of we want somewhere where people can come and sit together and meet the mum or meet the sister or meet the friend and just sit and have a chat and catch up.”
For Jason, one of the proudest things about working at Inspirations Wholesale is how passionate and creative the staff are. He said the business also wouldn’t be here without “the people of Wirral.”
Jason said: “This business changes every day, there’s always something new. I’ve got a great team, I work with great people.
“We get to see new products all the time, see what trends are around the corner, we get to influence some of those trends which is always a nice thing to see. But people make this business work, from staff to customers, that’s the great thing about it.
“Our bloodline is the Wirral, this is where we were born, this is where we’ve grown. So the people of the Wirral are everything to us, without the people of the Wirral we wouldn’t be here.
“If you look at the way the world is now, business is tough, it’s not an easy thing to do. Technology creates the ability for people to get stuff delivered to their front door.
“We’re not one of these big businesses that have one in every town. For us to be what we are we need the people of Wirral, Liverpool, Chester, the ones who can come through the door and see what we’re trying to do, what we’re creating and hopefully inspire them to do the same as us.
“A big message for us is thank you to everyone who knows us and comes to see us and everyone who continues to see us in the future.”
