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.

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.

This month we have focused on increasing our range of promotional bags. These make great wonderful gifts because they can be reused and have a long life expectancy, as well offering a very large area for a customised imprint. In terms of leisure bags one of my new favourites is the Backpack with Cord Ties – the number of times I needed one of these with the kids with all their clubs and after school activities. They are great for summer and winter time promotions and their low cost, even with branding means that they can be squeezed into most budgets. On the new ECO Gifts Store we have also been working on our environmentally friendly bags collection for shoppes and general leisure use. The Jute Multipurpose Shopper is a firm favourite here and I am getting quite attached to mine.

Not everyone is into gardening but these ECO Plants and Seed packs are wonderful for office and home based promotions.  Available from our new ECO Gifts Store, they are a great way to promote ECO friendly activities within an office or home environment. The desktop gardens could be real winners from a Feng Shui point of view within an office and help to remind staff that Spring is not that far round the corner – allowing plenty of inference opportunities to energise activities. The ‘Thank You’ Terracottas are a personal favourite – well ‘thank you’ is one of the most powerful phrases in any language.

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.

The term ‘Promotional Gifts’ covers such a selection of promotional merchandise. When our Promotional Gifts Consultants are advising clients they always try to tie back the chosen merchandise to an original campaign brief. For example, suppose that you want to launch a new environmental awareness campaign and are considering ECO themed gifts. Off course you would automatically think about products made from recycled or reclaimed materials. You could widen your thinking to consider promotional gifts that have a ECO theme – such as plants, seeds and desktop gardens, or go even wider and look at promotional merchandise that conserves energy or generates its own such as wind up gadgets and solar powered promotional gifts. The point is to start with a simple positioning statement as to what you want to achieve and then take the time to ‘brainstorm’. Look for a range of suggestions from the conservative to the ‘whacky’, talk to a Promotional Gifts Consultant and get some ideas and then make your selection based on the best possible match to your brief. Selling promotional gifts is fun and sometimes the more creative our thought processes, the more innovative (and effective) the promotional gifts.

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.

The promotional gifts industry continues to expand its supply of recycled promotional items. Within the last year we have seen environmentally friendly product alternatives become available for almost all the standard corporate gifts lines we supply. Within the recycled products section of the Promotional Gifts Store we offer a wide range of items made from ‘green’ materials. The best priced also feature within our Essential Gifts Store – recycled promotional items collection. There are actually two types of ECO promotional gifts. The first is made from recycled materials such as plastics, denhim or paper such as money or newspapers and even old car tyres. Examples of this type of product would include plastic mugs, coasters, mousemats, keyrings and pens. Wooden-cased products also fall into this category and include pencils, pens and flashdrives that use wood for their barrels or outer cases which has been farmed from sustainable sources. These woodlands may also be FSC certified. From overseas markets we are also seeing bamboo offered as an alternative casing, especially for flashdrives. The second category of ECO promotional items can be classed as those made for the green thinking client rather than offered to tap into a growing trend. Solar powered calculators have been around for a long time off course but now we are seeing more solar and even water powered products. Off course fuel-cell powered devices are many years away but there are also some interesting green promotional gadgets coming onto the market such as a fuel-cell powered remote control car which could be ideal for executive and more upmarket promotions. What we are also seeing is the general cost of recycled promotional items falling as they become more popular but also as manufacturing volumes and processes become more efficient. Recycled promotional items are definitely here to stay but there are few suppliers and websites like the Promotional Gifts Store that can offer true alternatives to those everyday essential corporate gifts and promotional items.

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.