By Steph Douglas – Founder Don’t Buy Her Flowers.

It turns out that, for many, Workplace gifting is a poisoned chalice 

When we were first talking with businesses looking for gifts, I (naively) thought ‘what a great job! They get to go shopping with someone else’s money!’. I was wrong for a number of reasons.  
 
1) It’s usually an ‘additional’ task to someone’s actual job 

2) There is a pressure to get it ‘right’ – you’re representing the company and if the company are sending gifts, it’s to connect with a client or employee – as a reward, or for acquisition, or to represent the company’s care for someone. So it matters.  

3) Everyone has an opinion, and they can be very subjective, so you might think you’ve got it all sorted and then an involved CEO says ‘ah I think we should send a kilo of jelly beans with our logo on instead’.  

4) A lot of the ‘corporate gifting’ in the market is dull; it’s not actually something that a person wants to receive but it ticks a box. And it’s usually pretty inflexible so hard to personalise or cater to different recipients and their likes or dislikes.  

On that last point, if companies are spending resource and budget to send a gift, you can just get it done and tick it off, but it makes a lot more sense if you can connect with the recipient, make them feel like someone has thought of them as an individual, and get across company values and branding at the same time.  

I’ve been gifting for a living for almost ten years, so we’ve learned a thing or two and as we’re a thoughtful gift company, our aim is to make sending excellent gifts from your workplace as easy as possible, while retaining what we hold central – the thought in and behind the gift. 

  • We want to understand your brief – why are you sending gifts? What does your workplace want to achieve? – and we will create a proposal in response to that 
  • We create visual quotes, which really help our clients share within the company to get stakeholder sign off. 
  • Our products are all British and mostly from independent brands, so no run-of-the-mill here. Knowing where products are from also better supports CSR values. 
  • We can add branding to gifts, via products and packaging, and ensure that when your recipient opens their gift, it’s YOU they see first, not the company supplying your gifts.  

Corporate gifting was never the intention behind Don’t Buy Her Flowers – we were very much set up as a B2C brand. And yet, as more and more businesses came to us for gifts, we recognised that not only was this an opportunity for the business, but also an opportunity to take what we do brilliantly – being thoughtful – to companies and shake up Corporate gifting. Our clients in particular have realised how important it is to connect with people, to add some meaning to gifts, and that’s where we can help.  

If you’re looking for help with gifting, or just want to chat with us contact us here.

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