Our Story
Where it all began
The Christmas Cart started off as the side hustle to our side-hustle, it was a labour of love, in fact for the first year we ran it from our homes with glitter everywhere! BUT it wasn’t our first business. The Christmas Cart was started to help us promote our first business, Milestones 2 Memories, which was an online store with a range of products to help people get their photos off their phones and into their lives.
With Kym’s amazing design skills, we had developed a range of beautiful bespoke photo gifts, but little did we know that technology was moving so fast and creating a photo gifts was going to become very accessible, consequently most people weren’t going to need our customised service.
Popping up everywhere
During our first year of running Milestone 2 Memories we set up a pop-up shop during the peak of Christmas with a display featuring our photo gifts, and selling personalised Christmas baubles to draw people in (i.e. side hustle to a side hustle). It worked, we were flooded with orders, and we soon discovered that there was a lot more interest in our personalised Christmas baubles than our beautiful photo gifts.
We did feel a little deflated, but then when the shopping centre asked us to do pop-ups at 2 more of their centres the following year with our personalised Christmas baubles, we thought, ok, let’s see where this goes. At one point we had 23 pop-up shops from Melbourne to Queensland.
The online journey begins
A couple of years in we decided we needed to leverage everything we had learnt and build a website for The Christmas Cart. In 2010 we launched our online store with just 16 personalised products. Over the coming years we grew our products to include many more personalised Christmas decorations and gifts, as well as a huge range of non-personalised products such as florals, ornaments and Christmas crafting supplies. We now have over 3,000 products on our purely Christmas website.
We feel it is important that we keep The Christmas Cart dedicated purely to Christmas. Let’s face it, it is the biggest seasonal celebration of them all and with so many products, we don’t want our customers coming to our online store and feeling confused and overwhelmed.
The birth of next business baby
We were so excited to see The Christmas Cart growing and with its growth we now had a team of amazing people that supported our dream. Consequently, it became important to us to keep the core of our team together throughout the year and so our next business baby was born, Gifts & Keepsakes.
Like The Christmas Cart, Gifts & Keepsakes started with personalised product at its heart. We are strong believers in adding a personal touch to every celebration. Over time we have grown our range to include thoughtful and unique gifts for every celebration including milestone birthdays (or any other birthday in between!), weddings, anniversaries, welcoming a new baby, Valentine’s Day, Easter, Anzac Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day or honouring a lost loved one.
Additionally, as our love of decorating has grown, we have introduced a range of celebration décor to Gifts & Keepsakes. We pride ourselves on providing beautiful and affordable decorations to take any celebration to the next level. We are also excited to be growing a range of craft products and DIY kits that allow you to tap into your creative side and add your own unique style to every occasion. In 2025 we will build a dedicated website for our celebration décor range which we have aptly named, Celebrate In Style.
The Celebration Society - Our Dream Home
And so there we were with three growing websites, an amazing team to support us and an increasing product range, but nowhere to share our love of celebrations. That is until we found our dream home and came out of our warehouse and into our showroom and created a one-of-a-kind destination which we lovingly call, The Celebration Society.
Located in the picturesque village of Picton, an hour from Sydney CBD, The Celebration Society is filled with décor and gifts for every celebration. From stunning Christmas trees to elegant table settings, personalised gifts and keepsakes to custom made floral arrangements, our unique collection ensures your celebrations are as special as the moments they are commemorating.
Whilst you’re there, take a break from shopping and treat yourself at our indulgent café, The Naughty Corner, because you can’t be good all the time. With a menu full of tempting treats, from gourmet ice cream to freshly baked donuts, our café offers a sweet escape for everyone. We’ve also created a collection of studios and spaces that includes a professional photography studio, party rooms and workshops, all with the intention of capturing, creating and crafting memories around some of the important celebrations in our lives.
Why?
And now for the most important part of our story, why?
To be honest, when we started our business journey we really didn’t know. We both just loved the idea of building a business, creating something new and nurturing and growing it. Over the years we started to ask ourselves, why do we pour so much love and energy into our little business? It took us sometime to figure it out, but now it is so clear. As busy working mums, we understand the importance of stopping, making memories and capturing them. We do it for the people we love, and we do it for ourselves.
We believe intentional and thoughtful acts of celebration create connection, deepen relationships, honour traditions, share cultures and provide creative expression, and are such a beautiful tool for self care.
Our purpose is to help you create seasonal celebrations and special occasions that are meaningful and memorable to you.
We believe your life is meant to be celebrated!
Celebrate with us
Sharing our love of celebrating throughout the year has led us to create three fun and exciting ways to give you oodles of ideas, tips and all the support you need to make your next celebration special;
1. The Celebration Central Facebook Community: a place where you can share your ideas, ask questions, get inspired, enjoy member-only exclusive offers and content, and most importantly, connect with people, like you, that just love celebrating. Be sure to join us here.
2. The Celebration Central Weekly newsletter: it’s packed with tips and tricks, specials and promotions, it’s everything you need to help you prepare stress-free celebrations, find thoughtful and unique gifts, and decorate your special events like a pro. Be sure to sign up.
3. The Celebration Central YouTube Channel: where we bring you videos highlighting the latest event decorating trends and informative step-by-step videos to help you take your seasonal celebrations and special occasion decorating to the next level. Make sure you subscribe to never miss a video.
And of course our Christmas Cart Facebook and Christmas Cart Instagram pages are one of our favourite ways to keep in touch with our fellow celebration crazies. There’s plenty of decorating tips and inspiration as well as product features and amazing competitions too.
We would absolutely love to help you share the spirit of Christmas in your own unique way so be sure to follow us on our socials and get in touch by emailing info@thechristmascart.com.au or call us on 1300 72 47 10 if there is anything that we can do to help.
Here at The Christmas Cart we love to share the fun and joy of Christmas. Our Christmas Glitter Fairies and Elves are passionate about helping our customers create the perfect Christmas decoration or Christmas gift, with a special glittery personal touch.
It all began in 2008, when Deborah Quinn and Kym Aldred seized an opportunity to open a personalised Christmas decoration pop-up shop to compliment Milestones 2 Memories, a business they had established some years earlier. As two mums who love Christmas and enjoy nothing better than sharing the festive spirit, this was an opportunity they couldn’t turn down.
So Deb and Kym came together, utilising their respective skills as a marketer and designer, and this is where The Christmas Cart all began. What started as just a bit of fun “on the side” for the pair to enjoy and share their love of Christmas, soon grew into a blossoming business providing personalised baubles and many other Christmas keepsakes at affordable prices.
The number of retail outlets has grown each year and now The Christmas Cart and Milestones 2 Memories combined have over 20 pop-up shops throughout the eastern states of Australia that open from 4-6 weeks depending on the location.
In 2010 we launched our website to make it possible for people from all over the world to order from our beautiful range of Christmas baubles, gifts and decorations. Our personalised Christmas baubles look perfect in every unique location from a chateaux in France, a farmhouse in New Zealand to an apartment in New York, not to mention a warm and loving family home anywhere in Australia .
Getting to know our customers is one of our favourite aspects of being in business, and so in 2011 we created our Facebook page The Christmas Cart. We now have over 25,000 friends who share their lives and love of family and Christmas with us. Our Facebook page is a mixing pot of all things festive, funny and heartfelt. We offer lots of Christmas decorating tips, inspirational stories and regularly post our favourite recipes, because let’s face it: one of the best things about Christmas is all of the food! We also love to share what is going on in our lives with our customers through stories and photos that make us all smile, and of course there are regular offers and competitions for our friends.
So that is a bit about us, but now we would love to hear a bit about you, so please stop by our Facebook page, pop in to one of our shops at Christmas time, drop us a line via info@thechristmascart.com.au or simply call us on 1300 72 47 10. We would love to help you share the spirit of Christmas in your own unique way.