Corporate Gifts We Want to Skip This Year

As a purchasing manager of a big architectural firm in Singapore, my hands are always full especially during the Christmas season when it is the time to list down what gifts to give to our corporate and industry partners. Part of my job is to make sure we have a unique sets of gifts (or what we would aptly say are token of appreciation) to our industry partners for the Yuletide season—so normally I gather my team as early as November and we do serious brainstorming for this—believe it or not, there are tears in the war room (that’s what we call our meeting room) when we can no longer scrape the barrel and we end up going back to what we have given years back.
 
This year in particular, we decided to come up with things that we should veer away from—and this  process of making sure we outdo ourselves and just to be certain that nothing cliché will pass our very tedious screening proved to be very helpful. It is good that I have an even number of people who have been in the company for years and new breeds who were just hired just this year, ergo, new insights and suggestions were heard in the war room. And we are so happy with the result; people definitely came up with some on the most unique ​corporate gifts ideas that can be purchased in Singapore. I clearly told the team to make sure we do not include anything that would require us to cross borders—it is just too costly and time-consuming. Last year, all our gifts came from Italy because this company was our client and they wanted to give us big discounts—we ended up overspending, and we vowed never to do that again, ever.
 

So here are the some of the corporate gifts that we deliberately tick off of our list:
 
Nothing Sugary:
          Candies, chocolates, cookies, not even that mouth-watering cake. We decided to cross this out because  a few years back, we heard some feedbacks from out partners that some of the cakes we sent out came late so everyone was on Christmas break when the actual gift arrived. That industry partner of ours never seemed to have forgotten the incident that my department got often teased because of this disaster in Xmas 2012. Also, we are concerned that we might be sending these sugary products to a person who is diabetic, so, we decided to just snub this option.  And yes, even fruitcake was excluded.

No Umbrella –ella –ella –ella:
          Face it, no one really feel proud to use a yellow umbrella with a name of a brand on it on broad daylight. It seems fine on shirts, jackets, caps, yes, but on umbrellas? Uh-uh. (And I am shaking my head profusely). I told the team that we must have to think of more premium gifts that can be bought in Singapore because our corporate partners have been very loyal and graceful to our company. They deserve no ugly gift definitely.

Nothing too fragile:
          Again, we learned from experience. In 2014, we decided to give red wine and some of them spilled because the delivery team screwed up. Not that anyone would deliberately do that, but we just figured to totally forget anything that easily gets broken. One of my team member even kid “that’s why I never give my heart away on Christmas, people just break it.” Haha. But seriously, no breakable for us.

That desk calendar:
          Perhaps the one of topmost cliché corporate gifts in Singapore I received since I decided to reside in this country in 2009 was the desk calendar. I receive at least 20 pieces of different forms, color, and sizes each year. And I use none of them and just give them away instead because I buy my own organizer anyway. The team agreed that not only does it shows lack of creativity, gifting people with desk calendar is just too medieval for a dynamic and modern company such as ours.