Our Feature in Cheshire Life - “Truly Gifted”
We’re thrilled to share that Top Hampers has been featured in the November issue of Cheshire Life! The article, “Truly Gifted,” beautifully captures our family story - from Cathy’s inspiration to start the business to how each hamper is carefully curated with love, thought, and a touch of luxury.
It’s a wonderful reflection of what Top Hampers is all about: celebrating the joy of giving through meaningful, beautifully presented gifts that bring happiness to both the giver and the receiver.
You can read the full feature below to discover how our family turned a shared passion into a thriving business - and why our hampers have quickly become a favourite for thoughtful gifting.
Cathy Catto and her family launched their luxury hampers business in 2023 after discovering an opening in the market. ‘I had retired from my previous business, SkinFirst, with my daughters taking over, and I moved to Spain,’ says Cathy. But it wasn’t long before I realised retirement wasn’t wholly pleasurable for me. I’ve always been a bit of a small-time, solo entrepreneur and wanted to have that one thing that was passion-led – that would be much bigger than small-time; something where I worked with other people, ideally my family, to build something special.
‘We had some visitors stay and afterwards they sent a gift as a thank you. It had a bottle of Moët in, but it came in a box with no packing and thrown in there was a dead plant. It was badly presented and lacking in thought and I knew it wasn’t representative of what our guests would have wanted to give us as a thank you. They would have been so disappointed if they had realised how it had arrived and the calibre of it. ‘Then my husband started a new job and his CEO sent him a lovely bottle of champagne but the packaging was poor, it was just handed over by an Amazon driver and lacked any air of celebration. ‘The idea of doing hampers, but really, really well; beautifully packaged with the option for people to curate the contents themselves to reflect the recipient, or the giver, sparked from here. ’Cathy had found her passion project, and with her family, started to roll around ideas about how it would work and how to make the experience special for the giver and receiver. ‘Half the joy of gift giving is in the choosing – finding something that reflects the person you’re gifting it to. And when you’re gifted something that’s beautifully put together, with quality items, the joy of opening it all up is just enhanced,’ she says.
Cathy, daughters Millie and Isabel and sons Jamie and Max, developed the idea of a hamper company where the giver can be as involved in the contents as they wish to be – select every item or buy a pre-designed hamper from a very extensive collection – but know that whatever their choice, it’s going to be beautifully presented and of the highest quality.
Cathy says: ‘There is a selection of themed hampers, from a sort of “grab and go” collection, where we have hundreds of pre-curated hampers in a multitude of themes. There are hundreds of options ranging from £38 to £340 across 17 themes, including sports and hobbies, which do well. ‘Then there’s the option to select every single item you want in the hamper yourself, so you can create your own theme, or simply choose a mix of items you know the recipient will appreciate. You can then personalise many of the items in the hamper.‘Finally, we have a bespoke option where the buyer sets a budget, supplies information about who they are sending the hamper to and we
choose the contents. This is proving popular with time-poor shoppers, especially men.‘We’ll handwrite a card and we’ll personalise products that go inside. We’ll personalise a packet of biscuits if that’s what the client wants. We source items for the hampers as locally as possible and mostly from the UK. Occasionally, we purchase from further afield, such as our selection of Murano glass from Venice and other fine French, Italian and Spanish accessories we are introducing now.’ Cathy sees Top Hampers as leaders in this rapidly evolving industry, and it all happens in Warrington.
She says: ‘My daughters are full-time with the business – they’re in the process of selling SkinFirst so they can dedicate all of themselves to Top Hampers. Millie is our creative director and provides most of the input for the themed hamper ideas and aesthetics. Isabel looks after internal accounting and customer care. Jamie has his own digital marketing agency, plus he works or us part time and Max is a partner in an international recruitment business and acts as a non-executive director for Top Hampers, helping drive strategy. My husband, Neil, is a CFO for another company but acts as a non-executive director on our board. We also have the amazing Lucy Batten, our general manager, who is a whiz on systems and on anything she touches, in fact.
‘I feel as if I’ve reached the pinnacle of my business life in the sense I’m now working with my family, we’re starting to have success and we’re all really enjoying it.’.
