The Redbows Promotional Gifts Blog

We’re working hard to launch our new ECO Gifts Store. Taking an eco environmentally friendly view to promotional gifts is like looking at your industry from another dimension. There is so much to consider and yet somehow it feels right to bring carbon footprints, CO2 emissions, sustainability, material recycling and reclaimation into our field of scope. We know that we are going to have a lot of fun with our new ECO gifts website and are looking forward to client feedback as we drive forward to populate it.

Everywhere you look people are jumping on the green bandwagon. Promotional Gifts suppliers are no exception but how green are the gifts they supply? The issue is not whether their gifts are made from recycled materials but the costs of doing this. Think of a pyramid with ECO gifts at the top. Supporting them are factories, suppliers, transportation systems, materials, processes and systems. There are now many products made from recycled and reclaimed materials available within the promotional gifts arena but how ECO friendly are the processes and organisations that deliver them? At the very least factories should have a environmental management system accredited to ISO14001. When you consider transportation, it is easy to find ECO stamped gifts made in China and India but then you have the costs of transportation which in themselves can have a significant impact on the carbon footprints of your promotional flashdrives, mugs and mousemats. The management team at Redbows has challenged itself to gain its ISO14001 certification over the next year. What’s as important is to ensure we work with suppliers who also share this ethos and think wider in terms of their Corporate Social Responsibility. For more information on our ECO gifts see our Environmentally Friendly Gifts collection.

I read an article the other day about a company that incentives people to recycle in the US. They have a micro-chipped bin which weighs the materials they put inside it and then are rewarded with points they can spend on their high street. This can generate up to US$400 per year per household. What a great idea! So we are living in a world where recycling will become an everyday function and to help this we also have to find ways to adopt more ECO friendly purchasing processes. It is going to become a fact of life that you should think ECO before looking for an alternative rather than find a product and then consider if there is an environmentally alternative. So with this is mind we have an Environmentally Friendly Gifts collection on the Promotional Gifts Store and plan to launch ECO portals for our promotional gifts like pens, mugs and mousemats later this year.

When it comes to promotional sweets and personalised chocolates does price matter? Well the answer is simple – ‘yes’ and ‘no’. Let me explain. To be environmentally friendly (ECO if you like) costs money.  The same applies when it comes to being healthy. Take chocolates as an example. Nowadays you can opt for a Fairtrade and/or organic version of most chocolate products but you expect to pay a little bit more for them. Somewhere along the line extra costs are incurred and as we know promotional products, like any mass manufactured merchandise, are priced to volume. Now take sweets, how can these be healthier? Well like chocolates we can opt for Fairtrade or organic sweets but also sugar-free options. Now sugar-free you may think, is a healthier alternative. Wrong. Not always. Take sugar, nature’s natural sweetener and replace it with a man-made chemical. Point made? Also consider colourings. Food colourings are added to get a specific colour but what are they made from, how are they applied and are they everyday approved food colourings. So, how do you ensure you are getting ‘pukka’ products? Well check out where they are made, do they comply with all relevant European labeling legislation, do they use standard everyday food ingredients, and above all remember that quality is often reflected in the price. Finally look at the shelf life and ask for the date of manufacture. If you buy sweets and chocolates, remember they may have been made en-masse and then branded in smaller batches. If brought in from overseas (yes mints do come from China) they can be several days or weeks in transit, and often not in a suitable ambient temperature. If you buy sweets, confectionery, chocolates or any other snack items, you want to ensure that they are going to be fresh and editable for clients within your expected usage dates. Presentation is not everything with promotional sweets and chocolates – often the ‘proof is in the pudding’ and how it looks under the wrapping and eventually tastes.

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.

Well the other day I actually had a field visit from one of our international promotional gifts suppliers. It was actually great to be face-to-face with someone from a global manufacturer and merchandise supplier – a company with whom we normally only correspond and communicate through voice comms (mobile and telephone) and email. When you strip any relationship down, it always distills to the basic of how much you ‘connect’ with that person. We live in a world where all too often the inputs we require to ‘connect’ are missing. Even with video conference calls, video cams and software packages such as Skype, nothing makes up for meeting face-to-face. At Redbows we also try our hardest to have some ‘banter’ with all our stakeholders and clients, and try to establish a meaningful rapport. Not because we are sales people but because we just ‘love to be loved’ and connect. After all even a promotional gifts consultant is human. Nothing can digitize that. And what about the supplier? Well, I am now inspired to push more promotional pens and paper pads business their way – their rep or road warrior or whatever is the most politically correct term these days – was lovely! She also loved her Blackberry and was keen to let me know how it saved her time and helped to de-stress her day. I can see that iPhone getting that little bit closer.

Well this June our promotional gifts blog is two years old. Boy that means we have been writing thoughts and ideas down for 24 months. So a big thank you to everyone at Redbows who has contributed and even authored the odd post here and they. During this time our blog has been imitated by many, hacked and plundered for it concepts and content. However, we remain vigilant and look forward to being creative and doing what we do best – effective promotional marketing for ourselves and our clients.

Well we have had quite a week updating our environmentally friendly collection of ECO gifts for 2009. There was much to add this year and we will be building on this collection as more suppliers provide ECO alternatives to their standard products. What constitutes ‘environmentally friendly’ to us is that the products are either manufactured from some sort of natural, organic or recycled materials and/or are biodegradable, or are powered from an environmental source – such as water or solar power. It will be interesting to watch this collection grow throughout the year. A personal favourite of mine is the ‘Thank You’ plant. Dale Carnegie wrote in his book ‘How To Get On And Influence People’ that using a person’s name is one of the sweetest sounds to them. Well getting a ‘Thank You’ is also a big plus in my book and these days there are not often enough opportunities to do so – so ‘Thank You’ to all our clients and suppliers and everyone at Redbows this week who helped us to finish on such a high note.

We live in a world that wants environmentally friendly ECO gifts but is there a price premium for such promotional products? A couple of years ago when ECO products were just emerging as a promotional merchandise alternative, ECO gifts did carry a price premium. However the pricing of all promotional items no matter whether it is a promotional pen made from recycled plastics or corn maize, is volume related. No only have the volumes of this type of promotional product increased but the manufacturing processes have become more efficient enabling lower manufacturing process costs. The real question therefore is not just is there a price premium but which ECO gifts are the most environmentally friendly? To answer this you need to look at the materials used in their manufacture, how they are reclaimed and perhaps also start to question the carbon footprints generated to bring them to market. For example, take promotional coasters using recycled plastics or reclaimed rubber tyres, where are they actually made? If UK sourced for a UK gifts supplier then they could be more ECO friendly than those shipped in half-way round the world from China. However, even with shipping costs the Chinese alternatives could be cheaper due to their lower manufacturing and labour costs. So when it comes to such ECO promotional products you have to balance price against the true ECO nature of the material reclaiming, manufacturing and shipping processes.

The internet is proving to have another major effect and this is on the environment. As websites like the Promotional Gifts Store become more sophisticated they offer visitors an electronic catalogue which can be browsed anywhere in the world. Apart from great content all the website needs is superb navigation and search facilities – something we trust our Gifts website is becoming known for. The effect on the environment is massive in terms of CO2 emmissions and deforestation. So what will we do in 2009? Is the end of the paper-based Redbows Promotional Gifts Catalogue as we know it in sight? Probably is the simple answer. Another factor affecting the decision on when to end the catalogue is its ‘updateability’. With over 6,000 products to manage (and many more we could add) we probably update around 20% of our items on a regular rolling basis. No printed catalogue could expect to keep pace with such changes and removing them will help us all move towards becoming Carbon Neutral.