Corporate spending on promotional gifts rises

Monday, Sep 19, 2011

Gulf News

Dubai As corporate gift budgets tighten, retailers are looking to offer more creative, innovative products to keep sales up.

“The trend we’re seeing is a shift to promotional gifts instead of corporate gifts to incentivise the staff or advertise. Since budgets are tighter we are having to come up with a more innovative way for them to spend it,” said Damion Stamp, manager of corporate sales at Damas.

Their latest products are the 24 karat gold-plated iPad2, iPhone4 and BlackBerry Bold 9900. The items, limited to 250 per region, attracted a lot of interest yesterday at the Gifts and Premium Exhibition under way in Dubai.

Despite a tightening of purse strings, Stamp says sales have been steadily increasing. From 2008 to 2011 they saw a 30 per cent increase in sales.

Customised

Other retailers are reporting steady sales. According to Reza Sahebalfosul, managing director at Mission Media Electronics, which specialises in customised USB products, sales are increasing each year.

“We have three types of USB, jewellery and key chain USBs, rubber USBs and customised USBs. Among corporate clients, customised key chains are the most popular. In the UAE, rubber key chains are popular, however in Oman and other GCC countries, jewellery is the most popular,” said Sahebalfosul.

According to Stamp, customised items remain the most popular.

“Local companies like to buy things related to the UAE such as clocks, gift sets etc,” he said.

By Aya Lowe?Staff Reporter