Hardbound notebook
The item most likely to stay on a desk for a year, which is why it took the longest to specify.
- Size
- A5, 192 pages
- Paper
- 100gsm ivory, dot grid
- Cover
- Soft-touch laminate over board
- Decoration
- Debossed, blind
- Quantity
- 1,200
Twelve hundred gifts that arrived as approved
Corporate gifting fails at the sample stage, when what turns up is a slightly different colour to what was signed off. This one was specified to Pantone.
Twelve hundred gifts that arrived as approved: what we did
Insulated drinkware
Pad print rubs off a mug in a month. This one was specified for the dishwasher and tested in one.
- Body
- 304 stainless, double wall
- Capacity
- 450ml
- Decoration
- Laser etch, single position
- Colour
- Pantone 2767 C
- Quantity
- 1,200
Canvas tote
Twelve ounce canvas rather than the eight ounce that quotes cheaper and folds in the hand.
- Fabric
- 12oz cotton canvas
- Handles
- 70cm, reinforced
- Decoration
- Screen print, two colours
- Quantity
- 1,200
Presentation box
The box is the first thing twelve hundred people see, and the only item that has to survive a courier.
- Structure
- Rigid, magnetic closure
- Board
- 1200gsm greyboard
- Finish
- Soft-touch, spot gloss mark
- Insert
- Die-cut foam, four wells
- Quantity
- 1,200
1,200
Sets
4
Items per set
None
Colour rejections on delivery
Twelve hundred gift sets for a private commercial bank's annual conference, four items each, delivered to a venue on a single morning.
Gifting does not fail at the design stage
It fails at the sample stage, and then again on delivery. What turns up is a slightly different blue to the one that was signed off. The print rubs off the mug after three washes. The box arrives crushed because nobody specified the board weight. By then the event is in nine days and there is no second run.
So the whole programme was run as a specification exercise rather than a design one. Every item is specified in writing: material, weight, decoration method, colour reference, quantity. Those five lines are the only part of a gifting quotation a buyer can actually compare between suppliers, and almost nobody publishes them.
Physical samples, approved before the run
One of each item, produced and signed off in the room, against a Pantone chip rather than a screen. A colour approved on a monitor is not a colour approved; it is a colour everybody has agreed to be surprised by.
The bank's procurement lead kept the approved samples in her office until delivery day and checked the cartons against them. That is exactly what the samples are for.
The decoration method is the decision
Pad print is what a cheap quotation assumes, and it is why most corporate mugs are blank within a year. This drinkware is laser etched, which cannot rub off because it is not on the surface. The notebook is blind debossed rather than foiled, because foil lifts at the corners. The tote is screen printed at two colours rather than transfer printed, which cracks along a fold.
Each of those is slightly more expensive per unit and removes an entire failure mode. That trade is the job.
One delivery window
Twelve hundred sets, packed and palletised, delivered to the venue in one window on the morning of the conference, checked against the approved samples on arrival. Nothing was rejected on colour, which is the outcome the whole specification exercise exists to produce.
Want this run for you?
Tell us the date and the scale and we will tell you what it takes, including the parts a first quotation usually leaves out.
Or call +880-1711-045500. Replied within one working day.