A Christmas trail looks simple from the outside and isn't. When it works, a town centre fills with families for a fortnight and the shops on the route all get a share of it. When it doesn't, you're left with some very large ornaments and a lot of explaining. We run the Nutcracker Trail for councils, BIDs and shopping centres - including a ten-stop trail for Lichfield BID with a city-centre map, a story and spot-the-difference pages - and this post is the plain version of how the format works and where it fits.
What the trail involves
We set out 8 to 12 Nutcracker figures, each one 6ft tall and all-weather, around your location: a town centre, a shopping centre, a Christmas market or an event space. They come in different colours, which matters more than you'd think, because "find the one in the blue jacket" works far better with children than a row of identical soldiers. We agree the positions with you and install every figure ourselves, including inside participating shop windows where a business wants one, and we secure them so that a gust of wind or an enthusiastic toddler doesn't rearrange the trail overnight.
The booklet, the entries and the results
Finding the figures is only half of it. We build a bespoke downloadable booklet around your location, and it can work off a map, the Nutcrackers' names or their colours, with simple activities alongside - a colouring page and a spot the difference come as standard. Families hunt down the figures, record what they've found and return completed entries through a Santa's post box we supply, or through an online form if you'd sooner keep the printing down. We then process the submissions and keep a record of the successful groups for you, so the organising side of it stops at publicity and prizes.
The prizes themselves stay with you. A draw of correct entries works well, or pick a winning time if you want the trail run as a race. Some organisers ask the businesses on the route to chip in towards the hire, others collect donations along the way, and either route usually covers a fair slice of the cost. Hire starts from £2,995 plus VAT, with a minimum spend that depends on where the event is, and delivery is nationwide from our base in Rotherham - the Nationwide page explains how far that reaches.
Where it fits, and where it doesn't
The trail needs footfall, so a quiet precinct in early December is a harder case than the two Saturdays before Christmas, and a market town with a regular market crowd will get more out of it than a retail park nobody walks through. The figures are 6ft, so shop windows need to be properly window-sized, and it helps if most of the positions sit indoors or under cover. How many figures you need depends on the venue: eight covers a compact shopping centre, twelve spreads across a market town with room to breathe. If a full trail is more than the budget allows, Nutcracker prop hire covers a pair of figures for an entrance, and the Nutcrackers are available for decoration in their own right once the trail itself is done.
Everything is installed by our own team, the figures are cleaned between bookings and that cleaning is included in the price, and we can send risk assessments and insurance documents to your venue or council before anything goes on site.
If a trail sounds like the right shape for your town, ring 0114 345 0135 with the dates and the routes you have in mind, and we'll plan the positions and the booklet with you. The rest of the seasonal range sits under Christmas event hire, should the trail be one part of a bigger event.
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