From their inception, fresh fruit baskets were exactly that attractive baskets filled with fresh fruit, carefully chosen and expertly arranged to appeal to customers worldwide. They gained popularity as more and more couples motored through the countryside with the advent of the automobile stopping at roadside fruit stands displaying their freshly picked wares. Somebody, somewhere, packaged a selection of items into one attractive display, placed it in a wicker basket and a trend was started. Before long, fresh fruit baskets started creeping up in popularity behind flowers as the gift of choice.
As time went by, companies began to spring up whose sole function was to purchase just the right products at the peak of their freshness to be marketed as fresh fruit baskets and sold as gifts all across the country. While some of these companies later morphed into growers of their own product simply to control the prices and the quality of the items they placed into their fruit baskets, others remained solely as purchasers of quality produce and marketers of different fresh fruit baskets. When the market got saturated, new ideas were needed to propel sales and profits along in a positive manner and the Fruit of the Month Club concept was born. Essentially a monthly fresh fruit basket delivered to your house each and every month on a contract basis, fruit of the month clubs sprang up in mail order catalogues all over the country. Gone were the attractive baskets, and the beautiful displays, but essentially the product was the same fresh, quality product shipped directly from the grower to your door, in a safe and timely fashion so the precious fruit inside remains at the peak of its freshness when it arrives.
Among the vast array of products marketed as fruit baskets today, you can still find a simple, honest, fresh fruit basket to send out as a gift. Priced for as little fifteen dollars or ranging into the hundreds, fresh fruit baskets still maintain their lead over all other gifts. If one company could monopolize the entire business, perhaps by claiming a patent, the gross revenues would be larger than the total proceeds generated by many of the planets developing nations. A simple idea, started by someone that has evolved into one of the most successful businesses in the world, fruit baskets are here to stay. And even with the way the simple fresh fruit basket has evolved, the original is still the most popular and probably still the best.
