The Redbows Promotional Gifts Blog

So later this week the Chinese will celebrate the start of another year. This time its the year of the Rabbit, bringing a time to rest and retreat from the battles we experienced during the 2010 year of the Tiger. However, in resting one cannot become complacent and must prepare for new battles and trials. In terms of business this all seems to make sound sense and especially in the promotional gifts industry. The last two years have forced many companies to refocus and fine tune their marketing and promotions. Survival and prosperity has rested on an organisation’s ability to survive, adapt and above all innovate. Fortunately innovation and adapting to market conditions are within the Redbows ‘DNA’. What we are best at is listening to clients and aiming to deliver the best possible service. This means constantly reviewing our methods and practices, benchmarking and looking for new ways to innovate. Our latest website, the ECO Promotional Gifts Store is one such innovation. Responding to client requests for a more specific eco-friendly range of gifts we launched the website late last year. Judging by traffic and customer comments, the ECO Gifts Store is already finding its place within an emerging market space. Over the next year Redbows will continue to expand its recycled promotional products ranges and develop new ways to market these within the social media mix.

Happy new year! So what does 2011 hold for promotional gifts suppliers like Redbows? The year ahead holds lots of promise and we expect to see several trends continuing throughout 2011. For example, eco promotional gifts will continue to grow in importance as more and more companies and organisations embrace the need to be green and more environmentally friendly. Redbows will expand its ECO Gifts Store with even more environmentally friendly products. We also anticipate an expansion of our promotional products microwebsites – Promotional Pens Store and Promotional Sweets Store as we develop wider global supplier relationships. Price will remain a key driver for 2011 and Redbows will continue to deliver the best possible promotional gifts, priced to give the best value and budget optimisation. In terms of marketing in general, social media marketing will continue to grow in importance within our own marketing mix. We already run the Redbows Promotional Gifts page on Facebook – check us out and click the ‘Like’ button if you want to keep upto date with our activities or follow us on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/redbows. Linkedin is also something we will continue to explore and evaluate and Dawn Koffler our MD already has an active profile page. So 2011 is all about expansion, product range extension and increasing our client communications. We look forward to an exciting year ahead and to helping you promote and grow your businesses.

We drink six million bottles of water a day in the UK and this generates quite a substantial carbon footprint – logistics, packaging, disposal and recycling. Drinking bottled water has health benefits and it is available in many outlets but how much healthier is normal tap water, if at all. There is an argument that companies and clubs can make a difference if they supply and make readily available eco promotional water bottles – so that their clients and members can choose.

What does it mean to go green when it comes to eco promotional gifts? We wrote a small blog post on our ECO Gifts Store if you want to learn more about ‘greenwashing’ and how products on our ECO Gifts website are classified and grouped according to their eco credentials.

We’ve been working on our new ECO Gifts Store, a website for environmentally friendly promotional gifts. As well as uploading new products, we have written a few articles covering some of the key terms used by eco gifts suppliers, like sustainability. For the full blog entry click: sustainable ECO promotional gifts.

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.