John Lewis opens one-stop-festive shop Christmas Emporiums across 10 of their stores.
The Emporiums, a destination for fun and inspirational experiences, will host in-store events and festive workshops, offer personalised gifting experiences alongside an offering of presents and decorations, making it a magical day out for the whole family.
Key features of the John Lewis 2021 Christmas Emporium:
500 FestiveWorkshops
For those looking to get creative this Christmas and make the season a little more personal, John Lewis has over 500 festive workshops to take part in with over 7,000 tickets available. Customers can become a connoisseur with whisky tasting or a champagne masterclass and kick start Christmas decorating with wreath-making or hand-made decorations. Kids can get involved too with jumper decorating and treasure hunts. All the family can get involved with activities in our in-store workshop spaces or from the comfort of their own home via virtual workshops. All events will be available to book on experience.johnlewis.com and go live from 12th November.
Gift food experiences
Peter Jones welcomes iconic champagne brand Moët & Chandon into the store. Customers can create personalised limited-edition 20cl size bottles of Moët & Chandon Impérial and Moët & Chandon Rosé Impérial, which can be personalised with a photograph of your choice and placed into a Moët & Chandon Christmas Cracker. It could be a selfie, a unique moment with a friend, or a cherished memory. The picture can be taken on the spot or uploaded and will be placed onto the bottle, for a truly bespoke and memorable gift.
MicroDistillery gin masters Sipsmith will be in Oxford Street from 29th October offering customers a selection of gin mini baubles. A new zesty orange flavour will be available in-store and those looking for the perfect partner to a bottle of Sipsmith London Dry Gin can personalise a Sipsmith gin cocktail book.
Fevertree will be available in eight shops from the 23rd October offering tasting sessions and its perfect pairing cracker pick’n’mix. Customers can create a box of personalised crackers for the Christmas table choosing from a selection of Gin &Tonic pairings expertly curated by the tonic experts.
Quality Street has returned with personalisation stations in 17 shops and a new exclusive sweet: the Crème Caramel Crisp sweet, the first-ever Quality Street to feature white chocolate.
Local Gifts from Curated Makers
Bringing local artists and makers to five stores the Curated Makers Market will offer customers the opportunity to shop small this Christmas. Each market will welcome four small businesses every week to offer customers a constant supply of curated homegrown talent and the chance to meet the makers behind the products. From jewellery to artwork, candles to dog accessories, Curated Makers Market will be providing locally-made and designed gifts at Oxford Street, Bluewater, Cribbs Causeway, Solihull and Cheadle and will go live from the 18th of October until Christmas.
Sustainability and Charity at the Heart
In another step for a more sustainable Christmas, John Lewis has removed all single-use plastic packaging from their 3m, 4m and 10m wrapping papers saving over 3.36 tonnes of plastic – the equivalent weight of 146 Emperor Penguins. This follows recent years where the retailer removed all plastic from our crackers and made all our wrapping paper recyclable. John Lewis is also the exclusive retailer of A Good Company baubles which are not only made entirely from organic linseed but this is also a byproduct from farming which reduces waste.
Following the huge success from last year, the NHS Charities Together bauble is back with a new design. The Rainbow Heart bauble once again will donate 25% of all profits to support the National Health Service, their staff, volunteers and patients. We continue to collaborate with Advent of Change this year, the non-profit organisation aims to make the world a more fair, equal and sustainable place, creating advent calendars and candles that donate to multiple charities with one single purchase.
Lisa Cherry, Partner and Head of Christmas at John Lewis & Partners said: “Customers have had an elongated summer with restrictions lifting mid way and wedding season starting later than usual but now they are certainly ready to start planning and looking forward to Christmas 2021. We predict many will want to keep some of the traditions we started last year such as, entertaining on the doorstep and creating magical light displays for our neighbours. But we know customers want to plan their festive season to the max, so they can enjoy their favourite family moments alongside the big day itself, such as Christmas movie night with the family and decorating the house. So this year we have created the Christmas Emporium bringing everything into one-stop-shop. These are designed so that customers can blitz their seasonal to-do list and pick up everything they need in one fell swoop, but also be a day out for the whole family to kick off their festive fun with tastings, games for the children and inspirational workshops.”
Christmas Emporiums can be found in: Bluewater, Oxford Street, Peter Jones, Southampton, Trafford, Cribbs Causeway, Kingston, Cheadle, Milton Keynes and Newcastle