Wiltshire's Early Early Christmas Fair staying open for rest of 2020

Instead of the normal two day gathering at Tedworth House, the Early Early Christmas Fair has gone virutal this year.

The idea's simple, the website features more than 160 'stallholders', where we can order festive gifts, treats and essentials.

It's also in support of ABF The Soldiers' Charity, and for every purchase made, 10% of the value is donated to the cause.

The virtual event started off over a couple of weeks but organiser Caroline Cary says it's been so successful, they're keeping it open until the end of 2020:

"As it's snowballed and people were getting used to shopping and the support was fantastic, a lot of people said 'can you not leave it open, why are you closing it down' and we thought well 'why are we'? We suddenly realised that we were asking people to shop within our window, as opposed to when they wanted to shop, because they hadn't got their head around Christmas yet."

Many of us would have got the Christmas shopping underway from this weekend, and Caroline says the support for the charity at the same time would be great:

"If you can do something you're already doing - shopping for Christmas - and raising money for charity, it's a huge plus for us. You go online, you can donate, you go to the shops, click onto them, buy your stuff, put the code EECVF in and then the stallholders know to give 10% of all those purchases coming through the site."

Some shoppers have been praising having the scheme so far:

Charlotte said:

"I can not recommend the fair enough, as a shopper and as an independent business owner. The website is so concise and easy to navigate, using one code across the board was ingenious and made it so easy to shop. There was such a fabulous array of small brands with the most beautiful offerings."

Annabel said:

"I just wanted to say thank you so much for the gargantuan effort you put into the EECVF - you clearly spent an awful lot of your time bringing it all together and keeping the momentum going and now we can shop until Christmas - that is amazing and we adore supporting this charity."

The EEC Fair has been running for the last 28 years, and there are hopes that it will be back in person for 2021, but there's likely to be an online element included next time as this have proved so successful.

The event traditionally raises around £35,000 for ABF The Soldiers' Charity.

Caroline Cary says they're keen to support independent retailers too:

"These small businesses, they all need the support. It's tough for them out there and it's very noisy online, so we've simplified by putting it on the website. Everybody wants to get back to seeing each other, but we have reached out to many parts of the country doing this, which is fantastic."

You can find out more, and do some shopping, by visiting www.eecfair.org.uk