Saint Nicholas: choosing in time without browsing the whole shop

There is one evening a year when a Belgian child goes to bed early without being asked. The shoe is by the radiator, a carrot in it for the horse, and somewhere in the house is the thing that has to be standing next to it in the morning. Saint Nicholas comes on 6 December.

The problem is not too little choice

Anyone who starts looking in November rarely runs into an empty shop. The opposite happens: you open a catalogue of several thousand articles, scroll for ten minutes, and close the tab as undecided as you opened it. A smaller choice helps more than a bigger one.

Two questions do most of the work — what age, and how much. Together they take thousands of articles down to a list you can take in on one screen.

Start with the age, and read it as a floor

Every product card shows the age the toy is intended from: 3+ years, 6+ years, and in months for baby articles. That plus sign matters. It is the age something is suitable from, not the age it stops being suitable at.

That distinction costs parents presents. Anyone shopping for a six-year-old who skips everything marked “3 to 4 years” is skipping toys that are suitable from three and stay that way. And in a family a toy is rarely used by one child alone: the box comes out on the table and the older brother sits down too.

The shoe and the main present are two different purchases

Something small goes in the shoe, and the amount is usually fixed in advance. That is what the under-€ 10 band is for: marbles, colouring materials, a small game. Combine it with an age, though — under ten euros there is both something for a toddler and something for a twelve-year-old.

The main present is a different conversation. There the wider bands are what count, and that is where the larger sets and the board games belong — presents more than one child gets something out of.

Ordering early leaves the most room

Orders placed on a working day are usually processed the same or the next working day; the estimated delivery time after that is on the shipping page, along with the free-shipping threshold. In busy periods it takes longer. Ordering at the end of November leaves that room; leaving it to the last week means relying on everything after it going right.