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Every year we see countless celebrities sharing their extravagant Christmas decorations on Instagram – which appear to get bigger and better each year. One woman who is behind some of these stunning, bespoke displays is Adele Gregson, founder of The Christmas Company, who says ‘money is no object’ for the rich and famous when it comes to their festive requests.
As a professional Christmas decorator, Adele, 39, and her team, have dressed the homes of some big stars from the likes of Molly-Mae, Jonathan Ross, Helen Flanagan, Paddy McGuinness and Tanya Bardsley – to footballers Ronaldo, Mo Salah and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain.
Adele’s wealth of celebrity clients pay a fortune to get their properties looking luxurious for the Christmas period, spending thousands of pounds on everything from 40-foot trees and huge door arches, to gigantic nutcrackers and baubles. But meeting her customers’ super high expectations and delivering such a demanding service takes a year-long effort.
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Adele, from Liverpool, who started The Christmas Company around 11 years ago, told the Manchester Evening News: “I started it up on my own because I love Christmas and I’ve always been a bit obsessed with it. I had always wondered how people had their homes looking so good.
“I had my own home decorated professionally one year, and at the time I was looking to buy an interior design company. I then thought, because Christmas decorations are very interior design-led, it’s something that I could do myself as a business.”
And it wasn’t long before Adele started attracting her ultra-rich clientele. “We were probably one of the first companies to offer professional Christmas decorations, so naturally, anybody who wanted the job doing on the scale that we do it started coming to us,” she said.
“We built up our clientele organically because once you do a good job, especially with celebrities, they all talk. So it was about building up a good reputation and then getting more clients through recommendations and word of mouth. We get a lot of interest through our Instagram as well, especially after a celebrity posts and tags us we get a massive hike in enquiries.”
Over the years Adele’s business has grown to new heights, with the company dealing with more high-end customers and brands each year. Adele and her team has now done festive displays for the likes of The Ritz London, PrettyLittleThing and Boohoo.
One key to her company’s success is down to the trust that she has built up with her clients. Adele explained: “A lot of the time celebrities book through their PA’s, so you don’t always know whose house you’re going into.
“As we’re going into these people’s private spaces and we’re privy to a lot of sensitive things, we all sign an NDA so there’s confidentiality there, which is an extra service that not that many companies offer. I think we’ve built up a reputation for being trustworthy and discreet.”
Adele added: “We’re so used to dealing with this kind of clientele now so we know what to expect, and that’s served us really well. I always say to the team that we are massively privileged to be trusted to go into these homes and to be treated so well. It’s not every day you get to work with some of the celebrities and high end people that we do.”
The Christmas Company does everything from lighting trees and wrapping bespoke presents to installing giant sleighs and snowmen. Adele says the requests are getting ‘bigger and better’ each year. “We do everything on a big scale. People are now wanting these huge Christmas trees that five years ago would only been seen in a shopping centre. They’re wanting 40-foot trees in a hallway which is ridiculous really, but because of the size and scale of the properties they work,” Adele said.
“There’s one job which we’ve been on for six days this year, because we’ve lit every tree and bush possible, then inside he’s got seven Christmas trees, giant nutcrackers – the list goes on. People still want more though, you go in and they start off saying ‘oh we’ll just have three Christmas trees’, then you get a call from their PA and they’ll say ‘actually can you come back they want more’.”
Adele says some of her rich and famous clients simply trust her and her team to do ‘whatever they want’. She said: “These people are very busy and don’t have time to go to a garden centre and decide what they want. They literally just want someone to come in and do it all for them. A lot of our clients don’t even discuss it, they just ring up and say ‘Adele can you come and make my house look good?'”
Money is no object when it comes to celebrities’ Christmas decor, with Adele revealing her clients will pay thousands and thousands of pounds to get the look they want. “My clients find the money for it, no matter what they do. It’s taken really seriously – sometimes too seriously,” Adele said.
“Some people will ring you up over the ‘wrong shade’ of a bauble like it’s life or death. But they’re paying a lot of money so they want it right – their expectations are so high but we’ve got to meet it.” Adele added: “We do about 150 houses each year, but because of how we operate and the scale of what we do, we generally won’t go out and do a job for any less than £2,000 because it’s not worth sending a full team out.”
The Christmas Company is based in Knutsford with the majority of their clients homes’ in and around Cheshire, but Adele’s team have travelled far and wide for some of their most esteemed customers. “This year we’ve gone to footballers’ homes who have moved from Cheshire down to London. There are some clients who we have had for years, so wherever they are we’ll drive and do the job, even if they’re far away”.
Despite it being a Christmas company, Adele’s team work all year round to prepare for the festive period – whilst offering other services throughout the year too. “We decorated our first home for Christmas on the 1st of October this year, it’s getting earlier and earlier. Typically it starts after Halloween, that’s generally when all our team are out and it’s all systems go,” she said.
“We start taking bookings now for the following Christmas. People are already contacting us for next year because they haven’t been able to get booked in this year. Next year we’ll be going to China and Germany in February to look at all the new designs so we know what we have for next year. We also do Valentines decor, Easter and then autumnal decorations have become popular as well, and then we’re straight back into Christmas prep.”
This year Adele has seen huge statement pieces such as nutcrackers and baubles become more ‘popular than ever’. “We do these oversized baubles and we’ve had to stop taking orders on them because they’ve been so massively popular. And the giant nutcrackers, we’ve never in our history done so many, we must have put up about 70 this season.”
Speaking about her own Christmas decorations, Adele admitted: “I either decorate my home super early or super late. We finish on the 21st this year and so this year my decorations will probably go up on Christmas Eve which is late, but I always wait until I’m finished with work so that I can put time into it. When it gets to this time of year now, I don’t want to see another Christmas tree.”
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