About Us
Kristina's is a family run business nestled between the North Yorkshire Moors and the Yorkshire Dales National parks, in the quaint market town of Thirsk. We first opened the door to our shop in June 2015, which was both scary and very exciting. Our business has grown year on year and we are looking forward to reaching out to you and broadening our horizons with this online adventure.
Everywhere you look there are gift shops and Thirsk is no exception but at Kristina's we attempt to sell gifts that fit into very specific categories to support the ethics set out by business owner Kristina herself. Our shop sells a wondrous mixture of beautiful and exciting gifts and cards for all occasions. Upon entering our store we hope you are struck by the vibrant colours and rustic feel our main collections provide.
It has taken time to find the appropriate products to fill our shop and each purchase from us is based on a gamble some of which pay off and some of which don't. We don't however use any old wholesaler of gifts made anywhere or by anyone. We buy exclusively items which are either:
- Handmade or made in the UK, often locally.
- Supporting Fair Trade or Ethical Trade.
- Eco Friendly
- Recycled
- Personalised
- Ethical
Or...
- Handcrafted by us in store.
Managing to keep to our code and still fill the shop (and now website) with such eye-catching goodies is much more difficult than you may think. So many gifts on the market these days are mass made in parts of Asia, often in horrific working conditions most of us couldn't even imagine. Furthermore it is often the case that some of the labour mass producing gifts for western demand is carried out by children sometimes as young as six years old.
If the western world at large starts to consider and care about where and how some of its luxuries are produced then little by little we'll be able to reduce the exploitation of workers that is currently going on, often amounting to nothing more than slave labour. Some of the gifts we sell are aimed at children and it should be comforting to know that your child won't be playing with a gift which was produced many miles away by a much less fortunate child.
Whether it's our Rainbow Ceramic collection hand painted in Thailand, our Soaps handmade locally in Malton or some of our organic cotton children's wear which is made from Organic cotton and traded fairly, we sincerely hope that there is something that pleases.
Enjoy browsing the shop and please get in touch if you would like any further info or if you just want to say hi. I (Kristina) love to chat 😃
