Most corporate gifting is a wine bottle with a ribbon, and everyone involved knows it. The bottle gets drunk, nobody remembers who sent it, and the money is gone. If you are going to spend, spend on something that survives the week.
Why the defaults fail
Wine. Not everyone drinks. It is impossible to tell an expensive bottle from a middling one without a label people recognise, and half your recipients cannot tell either way.
Hampers. Consumed in an afternoon, usually by whoever is in the office at the time rather than the person you sent it to.
Branded merchandise. A logo on something makes it a marketing item, not a gift. People know the difference and they treat it accordingly.
Gift cards. Efficient, and read as thoughtless, because they are.
What a good corporate gift has in common
It gets used. The point is not the moment of opening, it is the recipient reaching for the thing in June and remembering where it came from.
It has no size. Anything you have to guess a size for will be wrong for someone, and they will be too polite to say. Socks stretch. Beanies fit everyone. Yarn, fleece and homewares have no size at all.
It is better than they would buy themselves. That is the whole trick. Almost nobody buys themselves good socks. A pair in a material they would not have chosen is remembered every time it comes out of the drawer.
It travels. If you are posting to twenty people in five states, it needs to survive a satchel and arrive looking intact.
It tells you something. Australian, traceable, from a family farm rather than a container. That is a conversation the recipient can repeat, which is more than a bottle gives you.
Three price points that work
Under $50, for a broad list
A single pair of good socks. It sounds modest until you consider that the recipient will wear them for years and think of you each time. This is the right answer for a list of thirty people where a $100 gift each is not happening.
$50 to $100, for clients you actually deal with
A beanie, or a boxed pair with something small alongside. Enough to read as a proper present, no sizing risk, and it looks like more than it cost.
$100 and up, for the relationships that matter
A boxed set. The gift box format matters here as much as the contents, because a corporate gift arrives in front of other people and how it looks when opened is part of the job.
The practical side nobody mentions
Order early. Everyone remembers corporate gifting in the first week of December and then discovers that stock and couriers have both run out. October is not too early.
Decide who is packing them. Twenty gifts that need individually addressing is half a day of someone's time. Ask whether the supplier will pack and send direct with a card, because most will and it saves you the afternoon.
Handwrite something. One line, not a printed compliments slip. It is the difference between a gift and a transaction and it costs nothing.
Check the alpaca percentage. Plenty of products sold as alpaca are 5 or 10 percent alpaca and the rest acrylic. If a composition is not published, assume it is low. That matters more in a gift than in something you buy for yourself, because you are staking your judgement on it.
Where alpaca fits
It is a material most Australians have heard of and few have owned, which is exactly the position you want a gift to occupy. It is not so obscure that it needs explaining, and not so common that it feels ordinary.
The provenance also gives the recipient something to say. Ours is a family farm at Mulgoa in western Sydney, and where a product is made in Peru or Australia we say which, on the page, every time.
Talk to us for a real order
If you are gifting to more than a handful of people, ring or email rather than putting twenty items through the checkout. We can talk about quantities, packing, sending direct to recipients and timing.
Browse the gift range and the boxed sets.
See also: best alpaca gift ideas for every occasion.