1. Creative and Innovative Product Ideas
2. Good Price
3. Excellent Service

Being a participant of the fair, we too were somewhat confused with a sheer amount of exhibitors and corporate gift catalogues we received. It is hard to tell which companies are the best by looking at the booth designs – some spent a lot of money on their designs, and some just gave out catalogues. However, some innovative companies stood out among the crowd such as IPC Gifts Sdn Bhd which did some promotional activities, giving out lucky draw gifts such as Power Banks, Lipstick Highligters and many more by just simply liking their page! In fact, we also liked their page too >>http://www.facebook.com/ipcgifts. From the level of service received from their booth, I too expect them to be the excellent in the level of service to fulfil my promotional gift needs. I am very intrigued by the specialized product pages for some of their products with product specific websites such as www.usbdrive.com.my for flash drives, www.diarymalaysia.com for diaries & organizers and www.ipcbags.com for custom bags.

Other notable mentions include I Precious Collections that showed to be a creative premium business gift solution company. Their dedicated sales staff based in KL ensures that their client’s door gifts and business gifts needed for their events and marketing needs are fulfilled in a fast and timely manner. Here are some photos of the two events:

As described in the Premium Gift Blog:

“Premium gift is the term commonly used to describe souvenirs or corporate gifts in Malaysia and Singapore.  In general, the premium gift industry refers to the corporate gifts or door gifts industry that includes the wholesalers, suppliers, agents and the customers that requires these products.  Accurately described, “premium gift” should refer to gifts that are unique and exclusive and generally carries a higher value than the “normal” gift products.  A more accurate description of the term premium gift would probably be promotional products or souvenirs or momentos or even giveaways.  If they are used as giveaways as a token of appreciation to clients, staff or other stakeholders, the term used would be either corporate gifts or company souvenirs.”

Source: http://ipcgifts.wordpress.com/premium-gift/

Please read our previous article on corporate gifts vs retail gifts in the article link below. It is displayed in a table and is a very good resource for read:

http://www.gimc.com.my/analysis-of-the-gift-industry-in-malaysia/

Sample of premium gift mug:

Premium Gift Mug

Below is a video of the trends of flash drive in Malaysia:

Also shown below is a laser engraving video of a metal surface thumb drive:

For more information on flash drive manufacturers, click here.

Other materials: http://www.ffpam.org.my/custom-usb-drive/

There are generally two distinct gift industry category in Malaysia, namely the corporate market and the retail market. The main difference is that the corporate gift market purchases items in bulk and will typically need personalization of the company brand on it while the retail gift market involves purchase of products invididually. The summary is shown on the table below.

Whichever market your company is in, the gifts industry is definitely a growing market especially in a fast developing country in Malaysia. A rough estimate will put this industry is not less than RM1billion in this country alone. Plenty of opportunities for everyone.

• Ta-Q Bin (Yamato)
• Pos Laju (Pos Malaysia)
• DHL
• Fedex
• UPS
• Skynet
• Nationwide
• City Link
• G-Dex
• Kangaroo

However, for the corporate gift industries, on the other hand, these items are not as easily delivered as promotional gift suppliers sell in bulk. On top of that, the goods that are delivered may not be at their own premise because they are sent to the location of printing or engraving or embroidery. Delivery method depends on:

• Timeline – Most companies have their own delivery guys and they pickup from the location of logo printing and send directly to client, especially those that are in a rush. This can be done within the same day (if they are at the same area)
• Location – If inaccessible by these companies own delivery lorry, then it will normally be sent via courier service. There are many that serves the entire Malaysia and some are quite cheap especially if you do not need 3-day delivery timeline.
• Fragility – A lot of promotional gifts are fragile, especially glass and ceramic items. Hence you must choose carefully which provider can ensure safety of your product. Otherwise you may need to deliver it yourself.

To ensure a successful gift marketing, you must ensure that you deliver to your clients on time and goods in perfect condition.

Premium Mooncake Packaging

For most corporate gift items in Malaysia, it is a industry wide standard that basic white and black boxes are used to pack these goods. This is the most basic of all packaging and even though it makes the gifts less premium looking, it is common as the boxes are cost effective. However, the industry is changing and more and more premium companies are making nicer boxes to suit higher customers’ demands. Here are some of the packaging that are used commonly:

• Corrugated Carton Boxes
• Cardboard Boxes (White and Black are common)
• Cardboard Gift Boxes with Full Colour Printing or Spot UV
• Metal/Tin Boxes (More common for expensive items such as USB Flash Drives)
• Plastic Boxes
• PU Leather Box (For Ultra-Premium Items)
• PP Bag (Some items does not need boxes, just a sealed plastic bag)
• Wooden Boxes

As the industry develops, more and more companies are demanding higher quality gift packaging and as a corporate gift company in Malaysia, it is essential that you keep yourself abreast with all the latest trend in packaging. Go to packaging and printing trade shows or just open yourself to ideas through the retail market to see how people pack gifts. A very good example are Mooncake boxes where things are getting really exiting – from paper packaging to cardboard packaging, Mooncake boxes for the Mid-Autumn Festivals are now trending towards wooden and premium printed metal tin boxes.

If your clients has the minimum quantity required (MOQ) such as a large volume, then it is essential that you propose various packaging methods available to them, and of course within their budget.

Shown below are what you can do for your corporate gift clients – just make it to their required size!

• Rounded Surfaces – This will typically involve pad printing as silkscreen printing involves a need of a screen placed on flat surfaces. Typical examples are golf balls.
• Rounded Bottles/Mugs – For a symmetrical rounded cylindrical surfaces such as bottles and mugs, silkscreen method can also be applied using a roll-print contraption where the screen rolls the bottle on the screen.
• Large Areas – For large areas, silk screen is the preferred method of printing and is only limited by the size of the screen you can make.

As shown, may different types of gift materials are available

A few more factors besides those mentioned above and previous posts that affects the choice of printing method includes the following:-

• Number of Colours – As screen printing involves printing one colour at a time, if the screen printer has no 4 or 6 colour machines available, it is printed and manually adjusted spacing one at a time.  Any misallignment will cause inaccurate printing of the gift products. For flat surfaces like tshirts, there are available machines (at a high cost) that are able to process 4-6 colours but is not available easily for uneven surfaces.  As such, pad printing is used. The only problem is now, pad printing area has a limited size and may not be able to print cylindrical surfaces nicely.
• Print Quality – As mentioned earlier, some materials can be applied different types of product printing methods on its surface. However, the quality for each of it is different. The best example is frosted glass mugs. Both silkscreen method and decal heat firing method can be used. Heat fired mugs are much higher priced than silkscreen printing but the printing is much longer lasting.
• Desired Effect – Each individual has a preference for a certain type of logo branding. For example, on flat metal surfaces such as name card holders, some people like to have it laser engraved but some does not like their logo to be monotone. Hence some will laser engrave and some will do silkscreen print with colours.

This ends the series on branding/personalized gift products. Coming up next – Packaging and Presentation of Gifts.

Guide to Successful Gift Marketing – Logo Branding 1

Printing on Various Materials

To be a successful wholesaler of corporate and premium gifts, you need to be very clear on the logo branding methods on a wide range of materials. Clients do not always understand why certain printing method can be done on certain products while some cannot. You need to highlight to them all the limitations and problems in printing for each material. The printing method used for the various types of materials are as follows:-

• Plastic - Plastic is one of the easiest to print as they can use various type of methods including pad printing and silkscreen printing to create your logo. Ink is easily bonded on plastic products so just the normal ink will do for printing. This includes plastic pens, plastic containers, mugs, etc. For plastic, laser engraving is not preferred as the effect does not look as good as metal.
• Metal - Metal products are fairly easy to print, but not as easy as plastic as a special type of ink together with a ink resin hardener is required to be mixed together to create a permanent bond on metal items. If you use the normal ink for plastic, the printing will easily comes off. As such, the cost of printing is slightly more expensive than for plastic materials. Uses also the pad / screen printing method or can be laser engraved as well.
• Ceramic/Porcelain/Glass Items - These materials are one of the toughest material to print as inks does not cure easily and be permanently affixed onto ceramic and glass products. This includes ceramic mugs, glass cups, vases and other glass and ceramic ceramic items. To fully print a permanent and long lasting logo onto your souvenirs, the best way to print is via decal printing with heat firing process, that is fired in a kiln for 1 hour or so at temperatures around 400 degree celcius. This will create a permanent bond on ceramic items.  This method of printing is much more expensive compared to the rest.
• Leather/PU Leather - As silkscreen printing does not look very classy on leather products, embossing with a hot stamping machine and die is the preferred method for leather products. If colour is required, a foil in colour can be used (typically gold or silver) to stamp your logo on the leather gifts. This method is called hot stamping.
• Silicone - Silicone material is one of the hardest material to print as most ink do not bond on silicone. As silicone is also flexible, there tend to be flaking if the silicone is stretched. For printing on silicone, silk screen printing can be used but they must use a special type of silicone ink to be fully cured.
• Cloth/Fabric – For fabrics, heat transfer and silkscreen can be used to affix your logo on the product. Even though expensive, thread sewn embroidery is typically the preferred method of fabrics such as tshirts, bags and towels as they are very long lasting even when washed many times.
• Paper/Cardboard - Paper is the easiest to print on and most methods can be used (except those with firing).  If they are in a sheet form, it can even be printed using a home inkjet printer.   For items such as gift boxes, foil hot stamping and silkscreen is the preferred option.

Stay Tuned for Part 3 – Logo Branding

Sample Logo Branding on Sticky Notes

Logo Branding or Personalization of Gifts

Wouldn’t it be a whole lot easier for the corporate gift industry if the client does not require logo to be printed on the products? Of course! However, this is not the case for this industry as for promotional items, logo branding is essential for the gift items to be included a company name, logo, slogan on the item. Each product with different shape and sizes use a different method of printing and depending on material, type, size and location. There are many issues and limitation arising regarding the logo printing on promotional products including:

• Material of Product - There are certain issues arising from the wide range of materials available of promotional products, including plastic, metal, ceramic, glass, silicone, etc. You must be aware the material of the product to determine the printing method and ink you use.
• Size of Product - Some products such as those with large print areas will require different method of printing as compared to small items such as pens.  If you are new in this industry, there are some headache on which type of printing methods to use.
• Shape of Product - Sometimes if the shape of the gift is odd or rounded, there is limitation in printing especially rounded surfaces.  If the shape is odd, there may be a maximum print size that is applied or sometimes cannot even be printed at all.
• Printing Quality - Most of the time client reject the items is because of low quality printing including crooked logos, peeling or easy coming off of logo and incorrect colour.
• Number of colours - Not all logos are easily printed on products especially if they have many colours on the logo.  The traditional pad printing and silk screen printed methods uses a print-one-colour-at-a-time method and may be highly troublesome if there are overlapping colours.

To ensure printing issues doesn’t happen you must be aware of each of the issues above when meeting client and highlighting the issues to your client even before they confirm the logo required for printing.  Please stay tuned to our gift resource blog for each of the limitations highlighted above.

Sourcing of Gifts

Gift sourcing is one of the most tedious and difficult part in the corporate premium industry. Most of the time, clients does not have a clear idea what type of products they want to give out to their targeted market. In many cases, they will have a budget per piece and quantity (e.g. $2.00 per pc for 10000pcs) but have no idea where to start. It is essential for any gift company to be extremely resourceful in searching for the required goods they need. It is easier if your company has a wide range of selection of goods, but it only helps a little bit if your gift client is very demanding.  There are some issues in choosing the right product even if you have a large available ready-stock because of the following constraints:

• Quantity Required – The client may want a quantity that is not matching to the items available in the country (ready stock).
• Colour - Certain companies with strong corporate branding may require the items to be in a particular colour of their choice because of branding policies, and the stock may not be available in sufficient quantity for the colour they require.
• Uniqueness – Clients may think that the stock available is not unique as the gift items is already available here, and prefer something very unique that other companies do not give out.
• Deadline – In general, most clients wants the goods as soon as possible, and many last minute orders with personalization is required. These may benefit ready-stcok companies as they can meet their deadline but not necessarily the first three constraints mentioned earlier.

So the tips here for corporate gift companies for sourcing of products is as follows:-

• Resourcefulness – Due to the constraints as mentioned above, it is very difficult to get exactly what client wants unless you have all the gift products in the world.  So you will have to be very resourceful and well-equipped by knowing as many gift stockist as possible in your area or country. Do extensive research on websites, or go to gift and premium exhibitions locally and throughout the world to learn about available products and once you get to know every products, the sourcing becomes much easier.
• Network with Other Stockist/Wholesalers – Even if you are yourself a stockist, you must also be closely networked with other gift stockist to meet the client requirements.  Better still if you can get a good reseller price from the other stockists.
• Sourcing agent from source countries – You need to also rely on good sourcing agents from the source of the product, mostly from manufacturing countries such as China, India, Cambodia, Vietnam and Indonesia.  Better still if you have source from local manufacturers.

Stay Tuned for Other Topics of Guide to Successful Gift Marketing coming soon including:

• Branding/Logo Personalization on Gifts
• Packaging and Presentation of Gifts
• Delivery of Goods

Please contact us to learn more from GIMC, your preferred web business networking for gift association.