The Redbows Promotional Gifts Blog

These are a great addition to our ECO range of products. Made from recycled tyres these promotional coasters are available in round or square shapes and have the option for a 1-4 colour print. Off course the background colour will always be black. For this type of environmentally friendly gift the pricing is now bad either, and off course is volume dependent. I think that these type of gifts represent great value for money and in a more ECO aware world we are seeing a growing demand for products that are either made from recycled materials or can be recyled later. We already have pens, mugs, paper and other such products available in ECO format and I am sure that this will grow further in 2008.

I came across the MyBiggerPicture.com website the other day and have to take my hat off to these guys for coming up with a wonderful approach to personal gifts. They can take your image and apply it to a number of items in their range (small and large) to personalise them up. I really liked the idea of photos on deck chairs. At our summer BBQs this would help to save so much hassle over the family arguing over whose chair is whose. They have some cool items for pets as well but I am sure that our Coco would simply freak out if she saw her reflection coming back from a personalised dog bowl or grooming bag. Check out the website if you want something really unique for your family. If you are looking for photo frames for personalisation in any quantity we offer several alternatives.

Now you may be wondering if I am going to blog about the wonderful properties of carrots. Well hang fire. We have teamed up with a local baker this year who provides us with some wonderful promotional cakes and slices. So far we have supplied these to corporate customers who have used them to say ‘thank you’ to their staff but the options are infinite. Each one has a custom designed label (68×96mm) printed for the occasion and event. The baker provides us with quite a selection to choose from including: paradise, toffee, choc & nut brownies, muesli, choc fudge, almond, cherry bakewell, banana, krispy, ginger, apple, choc sweetie, lemon, coconut, banana and toffee, jame and cream, farmhouse and off course, my favourite - carrot cake. For anyone looking for something a little different for their clients and employees this coming party season then I can thoroughly recommend these mouth-watering gifts. 

Just a note to let you know (as if you didn’t already) that this time of year is the maddest for promotional gifts companies and their suppliers. The artwork guys really do feel the strain at this time of year and it is common for studios to get back logged. We do our best to keep them moving in the right direction and our advice is to think about avoiding anything beggining with the word ‘custom’ if you now want a December manufactured delivery. There are still many products available for personalisation which can be delivered in time for Christmas including calendars and diaries, hampers and gift baskets. All we ask is that if you have artwork make sure it is ‘good to go’ and if you need our design team to get involved, then we need to tee-them up for your project as soon as possible.

Our growing sales of promotional flashdrives has been quite staggering this year and we have recently announced an extended range - see the press release in our newsroom. We now have over 50 different models we can offer clients and a new customisation service. For high enough volumes we can offer clients the option to have a flashdrive manufactured to match their physical design. A recent development has been that of a battery-shaped one and more are in development. Wooden flashdrives are also now available. As with any custom product there can be extra costs to consider and there will always be a longer leadtime for deliveries.

The final design for the 2012 Olympic Stadium was released this week. Five years seems an eternity but some marketing managers started working towards this event some time ago. I was wondering the other day just what we will see develop in terms of promotional gifts over the next few years. Certainly, this is going to be a ‘big-one’ in corporate land with many campaigns and incentives built around it. If you could predict what the hottest gadgets in 2012 are going to be and which promotional items will be ‘with it’, then you will be onto a real winner. Even with five years to go, I can say for sure that we will see customers ordering at the last minute or should I say last 1/1000th of a second to go! Well no matter, creativity, customer service and express delivery is what we excel in.

Redbows is very pleased to have received a marketing support grant for its new gifts website due for development and scale-up over the next few months. The grant is important because it helps us to invest further in our technologies and customer service but it is also a marker of how our business is developing. Attracting EU funding, which is hard to get at the best of times, means that we have really caught the eye of government as a fast rising business. We are very proud of what we are achieving at Redbows and I believe that our ethos and style is reflected in the numerous emails and letters of thanks we get from our ‘delighted customers’. Thank you.

How was your bonfire night? This is one of those dates that once get to it, you know that you are on the count down to Christmas. It is also one where the gifts associated are very time limited - being either explosive or edible. For our party, I do have to admit to sneaking in some moulded chocolates that I managed to get my hands on and rock sweets. They all went down really well with our neighbours, friends and family. Not unlike the penultimate firework that my husband tried to let off. He managed to get a large rocket to explode 3 feet above the ground rather than at its cruising height of 100, because of a lack of a launch tube. One day…

Robin was having dinner earlier this week with a colleague who suggested we look at the creative potential of social blogs like Myspace. The dinner guest manages an Indie/Rock group called Spiked in his spare time. Now this all-girl band are relatively young but the sound they produce is exciting and Myspace offers them a place on the Internet to post-up information on the band and some sample tracks. They probably recorded their work on an Apple Mac-based system and are a generation who have been brought up alongside technology - quite simply they are techno and media savvy. So what does this mean for a company like Redbows ? Well quitely simply we are a business within an industry (promotional gifts and marketing services) that has to be just as technologically orientated and media savy. Our industry is one in which we have to continue to develop our marketing skills, invest in our technologies and people and keep up with the latest trends across the whole plethora of socio-economic, political and cutltural groups. It is a huge ‘ask’ but one that means we can have a better understanding of our customers and be in a better position to differentiate ourselves through customer service.

Last Sunday, I took the family down to Covent Garden in London. It was a warm, dry November morning and I have to say that the area lived up to all expectations. The street performers were quite simply amazing. One, a juggler commented that his was the purest form of entertainment. He had been doing it for nearly 13 years and was so successful he still worked on the streets! Well this got me thinking back to the foundations of the promotional gifts industry. What are the purest gifts we supply, which can create the ‘buzz’ that this street entertainer had with an audience of over 300 people passing by? The truth is that there is no one gift that falls into this category. They all can. It just comes down to finding the right product and message, and delivering it in the most informative, interesting and educational way possible - at the right time. Just like the street juggler in Covent Garden that morning.