Corporate Christmas Gifts That Don't Get Left in the Breakroom

Every January, somewhere in your building, there is a table.

On that table is a pile of stuff nobody took home. Branded water bottles. A stress ball. Four of those fleece blankets with the logo screened on. Somebody's assistant put it all out with a sign that says FREE and by Friday most of it goes in the dumpster.

Your company paid for that table.

I make corporate gifts, so you'd expect me to tell you to spend more. I'm not going to. The gifts on that table didn't fail because they were cheap. They failed because of one thing.

The whole problem in one sentence

Your logo on an object makes it an advertisement. Their name on an object makes it a gift.

That's it. That's the difference between the tumbler that goes home and the tumbler on the giveaway table.

A person will not carry your marketing around for free. They will absolutely carry around something with their own name on it, and if your name happens to be on the back in smaller letters, they don't mind at all. They'll even tell people where they got it.

So the move isn't spending more. It's flipping whose name is on the front.

What I'd actually recommend

For clients: the business card bottle opener

The business card bottle opener is stainless steel, sized exactly like a business card, and it fits in a wallet.

Nobody keeps a business card. Everybody keeps a bottle opener. Your contact information stays in their wallet for years instead of going in the trash on the drive home.

At $22.99 it's one of the better per-unit values I make, and it's the one I'd pick if you're doing volume for a client list or a trade show.

For employees: the desk nameplate

The engraved desk nameplate is my most-ordered product, and it's mostly companies ordering them.

Two by ten inches, engraved with the person's name and title. Not a plastic holder with a paper insert that somebody printed at their desk and cut crooked.

Here's why it works better than a generic gift: it's specific to that one person. Nobody else can use it. That alone puts it in a different category than the fortieth identical blanket.

Particularly good for promotions, new hires, and anybody who just moved into their own office. Frame and no-frame options, several color combinations.

For the group gift: slate coasters

The slate coaster set at $20 is the workhorse when you need something that works for everybody on a list of thirty and you don't have thirty individual names.

Natural slate. Engrave the company name, the year, a milestone, or the person's family name if you have it. These end up on actual coffee tables in actual houses, which is more than you can say for most of what gets handed out in December.

For the short list: the tumbler

If you've got a handful of people who deserve more, the 30 oz engraved tumbler with their name on it beats the same tumbler with your logo on it every single time.

Engraved, not printed. The promotional ones flake in the dishwasher. This one doesn't.

Four things that separate a kept gift from a tossed one

1. Their name is bigger than your name. Covered above, but it's most of the battle.

2. It survives use. Engraving is burned into the material. Printing and vinyl come off. A gift that looks shabby in six weeks is worse than no gift, because now they associate your company with the shabby thing.

3. It has a place to live. A desk. A wallet. A coffee table. If you can't picture where the object goes, it goes in a drawer.

4. It doesn't try to be funny to strangers. Inside jokes work for a team of eight. They do not work for a client list of two hundred.

Lead time, honestly

This is the part where I tell you something you'd rather not hear.

Bulk engraving takes time. Every piece goes through the machine individually. Fifty nameplates is fifty setups, not one button press.

For orders over about twenty-five pieces, I need lead time measured in weeks, not days. If you want them in hand before the holiday party, get in touch in October or early November.

If you come to me on December 15th with a rush order for a hundred units, I'm going to tell you no. I'd rather lose the order than take your money and miss the date. That's not a sales tactic, it's just how I run this.

What to send me

Make it easy on both of us:

• How many pieces, and the drop-dead date you need them in hand
• The list of names, if it's individually personalized
• Your logo as a vector file if you have one, which is .ai, .eps, or .svg
• Whether it's going to one address or shipping individually

A JPG of your logo pulled off the website can work, but vector is better and the difference shows.

Everything in this range is in the corporate and client gifts collection.

Talk to me

Email gramps@lazershack.com with your count and your date. I'll tell you straight what's doable and what it costs. If your timeline doesn't work I'll say so up front rather than let you find out in December.

I'm one guy with laser machines in a shop in Land O' Lakes, Florida. That means you deal with the person actually making your order, not an account rep. It also means my calendar is real and it fills up. October is a better month to call than November.