The Redbows Promotional Gifts Blog

I’ve been wondering whether the Labour government or any of the political parties should be advocating a little retail therapy. Firstly as we all know it does you good to have a splurge from time to time. Secondly UK retail needs it, as does manufacturing, services and most other industries. But not every silver lining has a clould behind it. Look at this week’s news – we hear that over 12,000 retail stores have shut up shop over the last year or so. Now you have to delve a little deeper here because there is a missing statistic – how many have moved to an online operation only i.e. Woolworths? Whatever the stats say though we all need to keep investing and spending. We just need to make it more strategic and thoughtful. Looking at our own ecommerce statistics, I am amazed at the sales growth of some of the promotional products we supply – such as bags and stress gifts. We have even recently supplied bespoke stress shapes including a handheld speed camera – yes they even sent us one to model from….great fun. What do these trends tell the Redbows team? That people are stressed and being subjected to a flood of stress balls and shapes? Or that buyers are getting out into their markets and ‘bagging’ all those special offers? I am not sure what the answer is. All I know is that if you are strategic and focus on growing your marketing momentum, your sales will follow.

Promotional gifts are continuing to rise in their popularity. For sure average order values are less than normal but overall volumes are higher. This is because organisations are turning to promotional gifts as a form of Below-The-Line (BTL) promotion as they cut their traditional Above-The-Line (ABL) spends on advertising. Public Relations (PR) is always seen as the second choice alternative to main stream advertising when it comes to promotion but even PR is seeing a resurgence in demand. This is because PR has longer legs and can be used more effectively to promote an organisation and build a more sustainable, long term image. Promotional gifts work well with either ABL and BLW promotions but are in themselves becoming a force within the marketing communications mix. Within tighter economic times, organisations are looking for bargains, promotions and incentives – a perfect environment for promotional gifts to prosper and play a pivotal role in developing marketing momentum.

We are looking for a neat solution to volume pricing on the Promotional Gifts Store and soon to be launched Promotional Sweets Store. The problem is that our suppliers price their sweets and chocolates differently. On our websites we want to show a uniform solutions to visitors and this means that we do have to get creative. Chocolates and Sweets are typical examples. One group of chocolates may be priced per unt (for example ‘each’) and another may be priced per 100 pieces. This does not allow us to achieve great functionality in price comparisons i.e. listing search results from lowest to highest and vice versa. We will work on this during the week and hope to get a solution in place shortly. In the meantime ‘meerkats’ it may not always be as ‘simples’ as we want so if you are confused please call our Promotional Gifts Consultants.

I’ve spent a lot of time in the office over the last few days. It strikes me that we do a pretty good job in providing information to clients but sometimes some of it is so obvious that it can fly over anyones head. Price breaks are a great example. Promotional gifts are priced according to volume. The more you buy the lower the unit cost. Our printers work on price volumes and break their prices at set quantities. Taking a pen from our promotional pens range, like the Panther Extra Ballpen, as an example; this pen has a particular price break between a quantity of 250 and 500. The 250 unit price is higher than the 500 and vice-versa. So if you want a price for a quantity of 350 what do we charge? Well the until you get up to 500 or over, the 250 unit price applies. It really is that simple. Another example can confuse this relative simpicity. Suppose you have a 1 colour imprint and want 1000 pens, all of the same type but with different coloured trims. Provided the pen is the same you can order 250 of 4 colours or 500 of 2 colours. The set up and origination charges apply to the imprint itself. Once the ‘jig’ is set up to run, the colour of the trim is irrelevant. The next issue is that we only publish a few price breaks on the Promotional Gifts Store. Our back office systems contain several more levels and outside these our project planners get involved to provide the most economic solution possible. Simples. Meerkats.

Redbows continues to grow its international reputation and reach. The company has just been accepted for full membership by the Promotional Product Service Institute (PSI) in Germany. Being elected to this society gives Redbows greater access to global promotional gifts manufacturers. This latest membership also in some way acts as a further endorsement that Redbows is a company of some standing within the gifts industry. Alongside BPMA (British Promotional Merchandise Association) and Promota memberships, and the number of satisified comments that Redbows regularly receives, customers can rest assured that they have found a gifts supplier committed to service excellence. In this day and age success is all about positive differentation.

Within retail bags are one of the hottest topics at present. We are being asked to move away from traditional plastic bags to become more ECO friendly and in most instances now have to pay extra if we want one. We reckon that this is one of the reasons why Promotional Bags have seen increased sales within the gifts industry. At Redbows we offer a variety of bags for personalisation and this appears to be the key. Bags whether they be shoppers, rucksacks, document or laptop bags offer great advertising opportunities, centred around a personalised gift. What makes our shoppers environmentally friendly? Well they can be purchased in a variety of materials including organic cotton and Jute. We can also supply bags made from recycled materials. There are no stats or market research on which sectors of the promotional gifts market have seen the biggest switch over to ECO friendly versions but we would put our money on promotional and personalised bags being top of the list.