The Redbows Promotional Gifts Blog

Well the boy done good. I’ve no idea if Sir Alan Sugar knows what great family viewing The Apprentice is. My whole family is gripped every series. None of my kids will even contemplate going to be bed (even the 6 year old) till they seen Sir Alan putting the apprentices through their paces. This week we had a split in our house with myself and eldest daughter voting for Claire, my two youngest for Lee, and my husband sitting somewhere in between! Well roll on the next series. There is simply no better way to unwind after a hectic day in the promotional gifts industry. You know what I mean…

The Royal Mail has announced that 94% of online shoppers are more likely to purchase from an internet retailer if they are happy with the delivery of their goods. Their checklist includes several good pointers including specifying your delivery promise on your homepage, making delivery charges transparent, advising customers when they can expect delivery, offering a range of delivery options and confirming details by email. Are we seeing the end of the days when the websites offered the earth but failed to deliver very little? I am not so sure and would expect that most people need to add their own further checks. I am always a little dubious of websites that use a trading name for their website operation rather than a Ltd or Plc company. If in any doubt, check out their ‘bricks and mortar’ operation with a quick telephone call before parting with your money.

Well my other half made it back from the Portuguese Moto GP this week and boy did it look as though he had fun. Packed with corporate merchandise and giveaways from the stalls outside the ground he walked into our office proudly waring his latest fleece. Later in the week panic set in as he noticed that the top of his ears had started to turn black and peal. He stated categorically that had he fallen when drunk there would have been far more damage. He thought the worse and we decided to let him sweat a little till we pointed out (in a giggle) that his other ear was also pealing - this modern day marvel had sunburn! Shame…Now the winner of this race was a new rookie Jorge Lorenzo and he certainly looked like someone worth watching.

They say that if you are not in Google, you do not exist. I reckon Wikipedia is approaching a similar stage when it comes to describing, well almost anything - take the current hot topic ‘Credit Crunch‘. This phrase needs to come with a health warning. If you lend money to people with a limited ability to pay it back, gamble on interest rates and disposable incomes, and make it your main revenue earner then you are sure to have created a business that is too sensitive to economic swings. The world is changing fast and the internet and our demand for data is driving it. Economic growth in the UK for 2008 may only be forecast at 1% by Ernst & Young, but this is an average with both lows and highs at opposite ends of a Bell Curve distribution. The UK promotions industry continues to expand - rapidly. A slower economic growth rate is actually useful. It forces organisations to step back and realign their strategies to the environment they find themselves in - or should do. At Redbows we are seeing clients focusing their spends on more measurable promotional activities - they are increasing their direct mail and sales promotions budgets. Promotional gifts are also being used as part of wider PR and advertising campaigns to help improve call-to-action response rates and drive prospects towards tailored-landing pages - all easily measurable activities. So, we need to appraise what is happening in our industries, keep scanning the horizon for changes but perhaps relax a little and question whether we really do always need to catch a cold if America sneezes.

My IT guys started to install a Dell PowerEdge 1900 server on our network today. This latest piece of hardware is part of an on going strategy designed to take us towards single-source data storage. Redbows now has over 5,000 products on its Promotional Gifts Store, with access to several thousand more. The new server will be used to store images and price data, pdfs and specifications, providing our Gifts Consultants with the ability to generate Virtual Visuals and self-serve data to clients. There have been some interesting aspects to this project. Aside from the construction of a new server room, I was intrigued by the artistry of the packing materials used to protect the server in transit, and Dell’s ordering and tracking process.

This year is going to be the year of the Green Gift, or ECO Gift or to give it a full title the Environmentally Friendly Gift. We are not the only industry being forced to move with the times and take a more responsible approach to our planet.

The other day I picked up a copy of The Big Issue and read with interest an article on Green Weddings. Research on the internet brought up some interesting websites for people who want to move away from the consumerist White Wedding to one with an ECO nature. Green Weddings is one of the first serving this new emerging segment and I am sure that we will see more of these types of websites offering all sorts of advice. What I did notice was a general theme of involving family members and guests in preparing for the weddings. I whole heartedly support anything that brings the family together back to what were once called ‘traditional values’ and a ‘family focus’.

Over the last three years Redbows has grown dramatically - we have got busier and busier, employing more staff with an ever more complex supply chain to manage. Now, my team want me to update my little old diamonte clam-shell phone to something called an iPhone. So I can be always in touch, on demand and have everything at my finger tips. Well I am no techno dummy but I just could not fathom what the fuss was all about till I went into my local O2 shop. Wow! When you see this gadget in the flesh and touch that screen you can see that it is an absolute winner. Sadly for me (and my team) the catch is that it is not a G3 phone and so therefore only really becomes powerful when you can connect to a wireless hotspot of which there are over 7000 in the UK - unfortunately there are very few where I live. So for now I am going to rely on my little clam phone. It does exactly what it says - it phones and when I do not want to talk it clams….well it gives me that little bit of strategic thinking time that all busy working mums, internet entrepreneurs and senior executives need from time to time.

Just as I was looking at our budgets and projections for 2008 I heard the first enquiry come in for next year’s Easter Eggs. Well done! This year Easter falls early on Sunday 23rd March and so we can expect a very busy period just after Christmas for this product line. Back to the sales graph and once again it shows the busiest periods for a promotional gifts company as March, May and November with peak sales in these months. Whilst we do not have a true Walls ‘Bangers and Ice Cream’ strategy, it is fair to say that with over 6,000 promotional items we are getting to a similar stage of development and our new e-commerce website will mean that we are always open and ready to process an order and deliver on-demand.

Please let this be true! Alan Shearer is being touted as the potential England Manager. After Wednesday’s awful result I read this morning that Alan Shearer could throw his hat into the ring . This would be absolutely fantastic - a leader who can inspire, motivate and work some magic both on and off the field. I just hope that the job goes to a home-grown Englishman like Shearer and that we have the guts and commitment to give him the time to work through the problems in the England football camp and come out fighting for the next World Cup.

The Toy Retailers Association has just announced its top twelve toys for this Christmas. Now it has to be said that with three kids I sometimes do not feel ’smarter than a 10 year old’. I do however have to take my hat of to Noel Edmonds who just seems to have that knack of being able to come up with game shows that catch the imagination. Perhaps after some Nintendo ‘Brain Training’ I will feel ready to tackle their latest craize.