Debbie Burgin, senior product manager of global gifts at Boots reveals 2018’s biggest gifting trends

Debbie Burgin, the senior product manager of global gifts at Boots, is fondly known at Boots as Mrs Christmas. She’s worked at Boots for 21 years, 19 of which have been spent travelling the world to trendspot inspiration from international markets for Christmas. Here, she reveals the must-have gifts at Boots this Christmas and what it’s like to spend almost two decades working on Christmas every day of the year. “The journey we take to source the perfect Christmas beauty gifts at Boots is a long one,” says Debbie. “We start typically in January for two years out. We’ll go to New York, we’ll go to Paris, London and big cities in the UK like Leeds and Birmingham.

We’ll also do some inspiration trips to Japan. I went to South Korea last year and to Taiwan, and we look at the beauty and gifting trends in all those markets and then we capture and distil all of that information to match trends to brands and compile a really exciting collection for our customers.”

The most popular gifting brands at Christmas time include No7, Soap & Glory and Ted Baker. They are three really big brands for us – each one ideal for very different people. No7 is really iconic for mums aged 35+. Ted Baker is for anybody – my daughter loves it and she’s 16, my mum loves it, and I love it. Soap & Glory, too, is a real classic.”