I’m always on the lookout for fun new designs for Christmas, which is great ... because who doesn’t love Christmas!
I work on the festive bedding sets all year round. I get the Christmas range sorted by March, then we start looking at the next year’s range around June time, so it’s Christmas pretty much all year round for us.
My favourite set this year is the Cheeky Elf bedding. I think he’s really cute sitting on the dinosaur all tangled up in the Christmas lights, and we’ve got a fab cushion to match. It's great to see people talking about it on social media too, like this Instagram post from Chloe:
I also love the Camping Bears bed set and cushion. We know our customers are animal mad, so it’s no surprise that this is one of our best sellers. We put all the different kinds of bears together – so you’ve got little polar bears, brown bears and pandas on a camping trip. The panda’s my favourite. The set is really over-performing and has had some great reviews on George.com. I knew it would be popular, but its success has even taken us a little bit by surprise!
My team and I are constantly on the lookout for new ideas. We took our inspiration from social media for the bears set. I spend a lot of time on platforms like Pinterest and Instagram looking at what people are sharing, listening to what customers are saying and seeing what’s trending. I scroll through bedding pictures and look at what’s generally being talked about. For example our Snowglobe duvet features lots of popular trends from this year with an extra Christmas sparkle – it’s got flamingos, unicorns, mermaids, cacti and more!
I also take inspiration from things like cards, wrapping paper and decorations. We look at quite a lot of vintage stuff and artwork too – we're always looking for new prints that could translate onto bedding, and forever talking pictures when we're out and about. On a recent trip to London we found some really cool vintage shirts that have a cowboy print on them. That could be on the cards for next year.
Our customers just can’t get enough of our quirky bedding designs, especially in the run up to Christmas. It’s great when I meet new people and tell them about my job and they say: “I love Asda bedding” – and it's always brilliant to see all the posts people share on social media about our bedding. Here are a few recent posts I've spotted:
I think the demand for quirky bedding started a few years ago when pugs suddenly became popular; they were on everything and really kicked off the novelty trend for us. We’ve had dinosaurs, cats and sugar skulls since then, and the demand for fun new bedding has just got bigger and bigger. The trends are constantly changing. Unicorns are the big thing right now, but we’re always on the lookout for the next fun thing.
Our vintage cats bedding is inspired by that whole Christmas of the past, retro, kitsch feel … and we know how much our customers love cats! Anything with cats on goes down a treat – we’ve had Purrmaids, Catastronauts and Kittycorns this year, and they were all a hit.
We’ve got loads of other fab designs this Christmas including Vintage Deer, Santa Panel and, of course, a Christmas Unicorn duvet!
The more traditional lines are still some of our best sellers though – like this tartan set which is inspired by cosy log cabin Scandi vibes. It’s a design that we reinvent every year, it’s always really popular. This year’s set is brushed cotton so it’s nice and snuggly, and perfect for winter nights.
Brushed cotton is something that we’ve always done, but we had a lot of success with it last Christmas so we’ve got more of it in this year’s range. Normal bedding sets are usually a mix of easy care cotton, whereas brushed cotton is 100% cotton and goes through a special process – the fibres are brushed which makes it really nice and soft. A lot of my friends buy it and comment on how soft it is. It still maintains your natural body heat without making you overheat, it’s really clever, and it’s a very competitive price at George – our tartan set starts from just £13. The quality is great too and you don’t have to worry about ironing it.
Our bedding sets are popular with both adults and kids so we’ve made all the Christmas sets available from single right up to super king. We always get lots of requests for super king sets so it’s something we’ve taken on board for this year’s range. Check it out in stores and online now.
