A step-by-step guide to help you achieve a lasting impression.
Getting the ideal corporate gift for clients, partners and customers can be rather daunting, given the wide range of items to choose from. These items can range from gadgets & electronics to travelling accessories, stationeries and even apparels and bags! When it comes to choosing a corporate gift, costs, time and possibly the embarrassment of getting an unsuitable gift can be top worries.
With just two months to Singapore Gifts Show 2016 to go, we worked with some of our upcoming exhibitors to bring you some insider tips and tricks to help you stay in check when sourcing for gifts and premiums.
Money Matters
Step 1: Get that budget signed off and stick with it
This might be a no-brainer but there are several reasons why having a formal and written sign-off for your budget in advance is necessary. For one, it can save you from difficult conversations later arising from verbally agreed budgets. Secondly, changes to budgets waste a lot of time when you would need to renegotiate with your supplier and potentially changing what you are able to get.
In order to stay within the allocated budget, be clear about your requirements and have flexibility in considering options and alternatives. It also helps to communicate clearly your budget with suppliers so they are able to recommend a list of suitable options for your selection.
Step 2: Decide your order quantity
This does require some effort and experience to work out exactly how many gifts you need. You may also want to consider adding a 10% buffer to your order as a contingency plan for last minute head counts or extras for other opportunities.
Ordering a larger quantity also means the cost per gift decreases allowing you to enjoy economies of scale and cost savings in the long run. However, do make sure that these 10% is included in your budget as well!
Step 3: Be informed about all costs and additional fees
From delivery charges to rush order charges, customisation to printing costs, buyers need to take note of the final price quoted by suppliers.
If your order includes delivery to your recipients, do find out what delivery options are available as costs will vary. Many companies prefer using express shipping with insurance as any liability arising from losses is transferred to the courier.
#SGSHack: Check your database for any address updates as you could incur extra costs to deliver them a second time round if the address was wrong in the first place.
Step 4: Consider the origins of your gift
Leading specialty lifestyle brand Totally Hot Stuff shared that in order to meet budgets, some products need to be manufactured in certain countries that offer competitive manufacturing services.
However, while most customers are generally budget conscious, there are some who willing to compromise on the budget to obtain gifts from a different country of origin that connotes a higher product value and quality.
Product & Design
Step 5: Consider the relevance of your gift
When considering what to get your clients, partners or customers, make sure it is relevant to them and at the same time, has market value which can help to generate interest and sales about your organisation.
Some questions to ask to aid in your gift selection include:
Step 6: Fine-tune your design
To increase the marketing value of the gift, buyers typically prefer to have their company’s logo to be printed on the gifts. This is a nice touch if done tastefully and discretely. But logos only form a small part of a product’s design.
With many gift and premiums suppliers offering design services, why not engage their help to gain some inspiration for a more unique product? Totally Hot Stuff is one such organisation who provide design services including artwork, mock-ups and samples which provide further reassurance of the quality they deliver to customers.
Step 7: Get real about customisations
To make your gift stand out, customisations can be included as well. If you put yourself in the shoes of the recipient, you would want a gift that feels like it has been tailor-made for you, rather than an “off-the-shelf” product.
Customisations need not be elaborate if your budget does not permit it to be so. Instead, simple touches like tags or cards with personalised messages can add that personal touch.
#SGSHack: As a rule of thumb, Totally Hot Stuff suggests costs resulting from design and customisation should not exceed more than 20% of the initial item cost.
Established in 1986, we are a humble small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) providing signage solutions for both industrial and personal clients. Our prices are modest, and our deliveries are prompt, allowing a steady increase in our range of products and services we can offer. At Brighten, our work philosophy focuses on sincerity and harmony.
We are venturing into the consumer market for customised accessories and home accessories like clocks, display plaques and more. Our uniqueness lies in the special selection of materials and method of inscription of the design or layout of the product, which we have decades of experience in.
Brighten has always produced quality products based on the needs and requirements of all our industrial clients – we have never had to result to turning to ready-made items. We believe that we are now at a stage where our current setup allows us to take the next step to innovate.
Once, we had a customer who ordered some plaques from us, only to find out at the last minute they had given us the wrong layout. We rushed out the replacement plaques and on that same day, delivered the plaques personally to Changi Airport as our customer was flying off that night.
Based on the customer’s needs, we created a bespoke plaque unlike anything even we have ever seen. It had a custom-sized wooden back, laser-cut aluminum plate with UV-printing on it, a hook drilled into the wooden backing, and to top it off, a carabiner attached to the hook.
Singapore Gifts Show 2018 | 28th - 29th August, Copyright & Copy; 2018 TTG Asia Media
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