What you purchase your clients and employees speaks volumes. The big question is – what are your gifts saying? Do they say you care about the environment? Do they say you support diversity initiatives? Do you care about health and wellness?

Do Your Corporate Gifts Line Up with Your Company Values?

Perhaps surprisingly, the gifts a company purchases, specifically if they are branded business gifts, often say more to the recipient than any level of marketing, so it’s crucial to put some thought into these gifts.

Before you purchase corporate gifts, here are some of the questions you should ask yourself:

  1. What are your business’ core values?
  2. Who are you as a brand?
  3. Who is your recipient?
  4. Does this gift match what you as a company stand for?

Do Your Corporate Gifts Line Up with Your Company Values? At beCAUSE minded, our core values are:

  • Transparency
  • Passion
  • Take the Best Path, Not the Easiest
  • Equality

So, when we purchase gifts (besides our own boxes of course), we likely aren’t purchasing from big box retailers or Amazon. That’s the easiest way…but is it the best? We strive to purchase gifts that give back from small, sustainable businesses. We ensure our supply chain, including our corporate gifts, are full of all different kinds of people and choose products from anti-discrimination companies more often than not. Why? Because we practice what we preach.

If you work for General Electric, shopping local may or may not be important to your recipient. But if you are a small local business in Austin, your network is going to expect you to support fellow small business owners.

Here are some tips for shopping your company values:

Do Your Corporate Gifts Line Up with Your Company Values? 1. Shop early. Small businesses often have earlier cut-offs than companies like Amazon. So, to avoid getting caught up in the shipping deadline frenzy, shop 3-4 weeks prior to the event if you’re buying just a few gifts, and longer if you are buying in bulk.

2. Look deeper. One thing that shocked us at beCAUSE minded when we were looking at corporate gift suppliers was that many companies that claim to be sustainable, cause-focused, or diverse often give very little resources to the projects they promote. Take a deeper look, past their marketing initiatives, into what their business practices actually look like and evaluate if this lines up with your company’s values.

3. Choose retailers, then gifts when possible. Are you a sustainable-first company? Find 5-10 companies who share this value so you have a list of places you can look for gift ideas, rather than getting overwhelmed with the process of shopping your company values every time. Finding companies first can help you generate ideas, which can often be the hardest part of gift-giving!

Sometimes identifying corporate gifts based on your company values can be tough. At first glance, company values like integrity and quality, don’t give you much to work with. But, even with these – you would buy high quality (often higher price point) gifts. You’d look at the integrity of the company that produces the products. Do they pay fair wages? Do they have a good standing in their community? Even just these few criteria will narrow the scope of your potential gift options…in a good way.

Can you identify your company’s values? Share them in the comments!

Personal and Corporate Gifts