How to choose corporate gifts

Two numbers frame every gifting project: how many people will receive something, and how much each of them is worth to the budget. Decide them in that order, because quantity changes what a given budget can buy.

Our minimum order is 10 pieces per style, and mixed sizes plus up to three colours count as one style. A run of ten hoodies in three colours and five sizes is therefore a valid order; ten different products at one piece each is not. The planning consequence: giving one hundred people the same well-chosen item is cheaper and faster than assembling ten micro-runs of ten.

Quantity is also the main lever on unit cost. Small runs carry the print set-up cost, so the per-piece price drops sharply from 50 pieces upwards, and every product page shows a quantity table with the exact price at each step. Before you fix a per-recipient budget, look at the price at 50 and at 100. The gap between those two steps often decides whether the same total budget buys a printed tote bag or an insulated bottle.

• Count recipients, then add five to ten percent for latecomers, damaged pieces and the handful the sales team will give away.
• Round up to the next quantity step rather than down. The extra pieces are usually cheaper than the per-piece penalty of staying below it.
• Fix the budget per recipient, not per project. It makes the trade-off between one good item and three cheap ones explicit.

The full catalogue is filterable by category, and how to order explains what happens next.

The same product is a good gift for one audience and a poor one for another. Four audiences cover most B2B gifting, and each has a different test.

Employees judge a gift by whether it is good enough to use outside work. Apparel works when the fit and fabric are ones people would choose themselves, which is why hoodies and t-shirts from garment brands tend to be worn rather than stored.

Clients and partners judge a gift by what it says about your standards. Fewer, better items win here: notebooks, tumblers or items from the premium gifts selection. A discreet logo is usually the right call; the recipient is more likely to use an item that does not turn them into a billboard.

Event and trade-fair visitors judge a gift in three seconds at a busy stand: it has to be light enough to carry, useful enough to keep and cheap enough to hand out in volume — tote bags, pens and lanyards exist for exactly this job.

Recipients of a milestone gift — an anniversary, a closed deal, a retirement — judge it by whether it was chosen for them. Here the occasion should drive the category, and awards or a single well-made object beat a branded kit.

One occasion note: year-end gifts compete with everyone else's year-end gifts, so plan them around usefulness in January rather than novelty in December.

A branded item earns its cost through repeated use, not through the moment it is handed over. The useful question is not "will they like it" but "where will this be in six months".

Items that stay in daily rotation — a water bottle, a backpack, a notebook carried to meetings — keep your logo in view for years. Between two products at the same price, the one that replaces something the recipient already buys is almost always the better gift.

Shelf life has a second half that is easy to overlook: the decoration has to last as long as the product. A print that cracks after ten washes turns a good garment into a reminder that the gift was cheap. This is why the decoration method belongs in the product decision rather than after it — a stitched embroidery on a sweatshirt and a fired ceramic transfer on a mug both outlive the typical printed alternative. The branding methods guide covers which method suits which material.

Material is worth checking on the product page, where our catalogue lists it in the specification block. The recurring ones — recycled RPET, stainless steel, ceramic, cotton, glass — behave very differently under branding and under use, and recycled materials carry a message of their own, which is the point of the eco collection.

Most disappointments in branded merchandise are decided by geometry. Before a product goes on the shortlist, look at where the logo will physically sit and answer three questions.

Is there a flat, uninterrupted area? Seams, zips, pockets, handles, ridges and steep curves all reduce the usable area. A bottle with a smooth cylindrical body takes a clean print; the same bottle with a moulded grip does not.

How wide is your logo at its narrowest detail? Embroidery is the premium option on garments and works best for logos up to about 10 cm, but it renders thin strokes as stitches, so hairline detail needs a simplified version. Laser engraving and pad print hold small detail better on hard surfaces.

How many colours does the logo need? Multi-colour and gradient logos belong on methods that reproduce full colour — DTF or screen print on textile, a fired transfer on ceramics, offset or digital printing on paper. Engraving reproduces shape, not palette, so prepare a one-colour version of your logo before you commit to it.

Branding itself does not carry a separate line on our quotes: print, embroidery or, on ceramics, a high-temperature ceramic transfer of your logo is included in the product price, with no setup fees. That removes one usual constraint from the decision, but not the physical one — a logo that does not fit the area still does not fit.

Seasonality affects gifting twice: in what the recipient will actually use, and in how busy production is when you order.

On the first, match the item to the months after delivery, not to the month of the order. Summer campaigns and outdoor events favour summer and event items, umbrellas and cooler bags; autumn and winter favour sweatshirts, blankets and hot drinkware. A summer product delivered in November is first used eight months later, by which point its campaign is over.

On the second, work backwards from the date you need the goods in hand. Standard production and delivery is from 5 working days after mockup approval, and the clock starts at approval, not at the enquiry — the days spent exchanging logo files and approving the visual are yours to control. Add time for a sample if you want one: a blank or decorated sample ships within 2-3 working days and its cost is credited against your order. Express production is available when a deadline is fixed; tell us the date.

The lead times, quantities and EU delivery guide works through the full backwards schedule for an event date.

• Ordering below the step where the price breaks. Because the per-piece price drops sharply from 50 pieces upwards, ordering 45 pieces can cost more in total than ordering 50. Check the quantity table before you fix the number.
• Splitting a budget across too many styles. Every style needs its own minimum of 10 pieces, its own mockup and its own approval. Three styles are a project; twelve are a logistics problem.
• Choosing the product before the decoration. A textured, curved or seam-crossed surface can rule out the method your logo needs.
• Sending the logo as a low-resolution image. A logo pulled from a website at 200 pixels wide will look exactly that sharp on the product.
• Counting the lead time from the enquiry. Production starts after mockup approval. Every day spent deciding on the visual is a day added to the delivery date.
• Skipping the sample on a first order. Two to three working days and a credited cost is a cheap way to avoid discovering a colour problem across 300 pieces.

If you already know the category, start from the brand pages — each lists everything of that brand we can decorate.