Corporate Gifts
You know from time to time you get given something useful like a pen, a calendar, baseball cap etc. but with a company’s name or logo on it? “Bob’s Engineering” on a hat or T-shirt never looks great in my opinion but they are fine for the gym or the beach and you always feel good when you are given them. Well all those items are manufactured and sold to the companies that give them to you. Better than that, most companies want a range of products, and most manufacturers only make 1 or 2 lines. That makes this the prefect business for a middleman i.e. you!
The reason that this gets even better is that you can’t carry any stock. Think about it, you can’t predict who you will sell to, what logos are required etc. You can make up some samples but effectively you will buy in bulk using the deposit money from each company to pay for your orders, it’s a no-money-down kind of business.
You will need to spend a lot of time on finding suppliers, and you will need to put together a catalogue of the items that you can supply as well as some samples. We’ll talk more about this in the “where do I get my stock section”.
In terms of distribution, business to business marketing is always more limited in terms of approaches than retail marketing. The number of businesses is smaller than the number of people in any given market and you need to get in front of the person responsible for buying. There are some factors that can help you though: -
Negotiate with suppliers for sample prices as many companies will want to see their logo on the item before they pay, if you have already run 1000 pieces this can create costly mistakes.
Try to get very small initial order sizes, for example 20-50 pieces. This will help you to get deals from smaller companies and even if it is only on 2 or 3 product lines.
Be creative, everyone has pens, Frisbees, T-shirts and baseball caps. Think outside of the box, even if your customers don’t order it gives them something to talk about.
Build the biggest range of products that you can. You don’t have to carry samples for everything, a catalogue with example photographs will often be sufficient.
There are no clever ways to find your customers; homework and legwork are the order of the day. We suggest you start with the following: -
Networking
Ebay
Website
Forums/Chat rooms
Yellow Pages
When you start a business tell everyone what you do. It doesn’t matter if you have never made a sale, or bought so much as a sample. If you tell people you are in the corporate gifts business then that’s what you do. You may have a job as a bank clerk or a supermarket check out girl but you are in the corporate gifts business. Print and hand out business cards to everyone you talk to; friends, family, colleagues, acquaintances, the lady next to you on the bus on the way home. You never know where those cards might end up. If someone asks you a difficult question simply explain that you have just started and you will get them the answer, it means they have to give you their contact details and you might make a deal later or simply a new friend.
Ebay has 88 Ebay stores listed under a search for “corporate gifts” and 87 listed under “company gifts” I bet they are essentially the same stores, with one store having forgotten to use both keywords. This is not ultra competitive but I wonder how many people will actually look on Ebay for their company gifts. My guess is that at Xmas and possibly Halloween some small company owners will look there. You can however link your Ebay store to a url of your choice and make it your payment gateway, which might be a useful tactic.
There are over 12 million results for a search on “company gifts” on Google. This is ultra competitive and honestly the business is one based upon personalities and connections. I would not even try to get to the top of the rankings. Use your website to show your stock to people that have heard of your company and know your web address. This might be people who have seen an advert, have your business card, or met you in an internet chat room. There are all sorts of people who will look up your site, include it in the signature block of every email and user id that you have.
Forums and Chat rooms are the bane of corporate America. They eat hours and hours of employee time and waste more resource than anything since the dawn of the internet. They can however be a great source of business for you. A large percentage of my website visitors come from chat rooms, and I only post one or twice a week. My wife has a friend who built her entire wealth management business from chat room contacts. Be sociable, try to help people and from time to time remind them what you do. Oh and don’t forget to make use of that signature block.
The Yellow pages will bring you some business if you advertise, but it may bring you all of your business if you use it to cold call companies, or simply to gather their addresses and send them your catalogue. I would use a “cut down” version of the catalogue to save on cost and a simple introduction letter telling them who you are and why they should consider you. When you start you may want to deliver these by hand to keep your costs right down. Don’t be upset by rejections, I guarantee if you do this diligently you will make some sales, and you will make more by doing more, your selling skills and confidence improve as you practice and you will work out how best to position yourself. In the early stages simply tell yourself that rejection is the price for learning the business.
www.alibaba.com can provide you with suppliers who will be flexible, speak English, and understand how this business works. You will however need numerous suppliers and you will need to speak to several for each product line that you want to carry.
You will need to spend some money to get some samples made and posted to you. Have them made with your website address on, so that you can give them to prospective clients.
Ask the suppliers to provide you with photographs by email; you can use these to build your website and catalogue.
Make sure that you understand the pricing for different size orders. This can help you to secure larger orders from clients, if they need 400 items but at 500 the price drops they may well order 500. At a couple of cents mark up on a pen this is not a lot but on items where you can make a dollar it is well worth knowing about.
Before you start make a list of items that you think would make good gifts, and then look up some of the bigger corporate gift sites such as www.epromos.com and see what they are offering. Don’t simply copy their ranges though; spend the time to think before you look as you are more likely to develop an original product line.There is a lot of work involved in setting up this business, and it is very competitive
Try to differentiate by offering smaller minimum order sizes, or different products, not on price.
If you plan to carry items such as Diaries or calendars then make sure you contact prospective customers close to the year end, but with plenty of time to get their orders in.
I know a guy who did this and built a thriving business which he sold for enough money to retire in his early forties.