Ready, Set, Gift!

With holiday gifts, some people are planners and others, quite frankly, are not. Personalization businesses are familiar with both types. Clearly, most businesses would prefer to create as many personalized gifts as possible—as early as possible—for the early birds who know what they want and are thinking ahead. But businesses can’t afford to turn down last-minute orders, even if it means burning the midnight oil.

Ready, Set, Gift!

Retailers share tips for managing the end-of-year holiday gift rush.

By Myrna Traylor

(Originally printed in the September/October 2023 issue of Insights.)

Personalized gifts have always been a big hit during the holiday season, and that became truer in the wake of the pandemic as consumers made an extra effort to support local businesses. Overall, the personalized holiday gift market is expected to grow by $2 billion from 2020 to 2025, according to research firm Technavio.

Shops offering personalization may find that they have two kinds of order categories at the end of the year—the one-off, individual gifts, or larger group or corporate orders.

The latter category, with large volume and minimal changes after setup, allows the team to get into a groove that keeps production humming along.

Decade Awards started wrapping up holiday orders around Dec. 10 last year.

Mike Westbrook, president of Mile High Laser Engraving in Denver, Colorado, started his business in 2014 with a single laser that he operated himself. “Now there’s four full-time staff, and at Christmas, we add a part-timer, and I’ll jump in to pick up the slack.”

Westbrook has seven lasers in his shop—three fiber lasers and four CO2 lasers. Mile High also has a sandblaster, a UV printer and dye sublimation capabilities for color jobs. He explains that the majority of his end-of-year work is made up of corporate orders for personalized client gifts. These typically are items such as Hydro Flasks, Yeti tumblers or sandblasted glassware like liquor bottles, wine glasses and whiskey glasses.

Gearing up for the holiday season starts early. “We start sending out emails around the middle of September to let all of our customers know that the holiday season is coming,” Westbrook says. “We start getting orders in the second week of October. Unfortunately, most customers procrastinate, and by November, we’re just completely slammed.”

TIMING IS EVERYTHING

Setting deadlines for incoming holiday orders is something that must be finessed. Shops have to account for production lead times and shipping. Ted DeRuyter, owner of Decade Awards in Spokane Valley, Washington, says that end-of-year orders in his shop are on a bit of a sliding schedule, especially since most of his orders originate online. “The date that we usually start cutting things off every year is a little different,” he says. “But we started wrapping things up around Dec. 10 last year. We figure a few days for production and then about two weeks to ship, depending on where it’s going in the country. We’re on the West Coast, and roughly 70% of our customers are on the East Coast. With local customers, obviously, we have a lot more flexibility.”

A look at some of Decade Awards' gift offerings.

“We ship with FedEx,” Westbrook says, “so we just look at whatever they’re telling us is the last day for ground shipping to different places in the country. We look at the order that’s farthest away, and we cut off new orders a day before that. We let people know that FedEx gets busy during the holidays; we will get their order shipped on time, but that doesn’t guarantee it’s going to arrive on the right day.”

That is why Westbrook sends out reminder emails to his customers every week leading up to the cutoff date. Nevertheless, customers dawdle. “They’re like, ‘Oh, I know I procrastinated, but I still want to get it done,’” he says.

HOT-TICKET ITEMS

At Mile High Laser Engraving, Christmas orders for personalized Polar Camels and Yetis have maintained their popularity, but the crew also handles photographs that they dye onto metal or print directly to acrylic. This year, they’re launching an Etsy site with all custom-made wood ornaments. The bulk of their Christmas sales are definitely corporate, though, Westbrook says.

But that doesn’t mean that the gifts are always generic. Westbrook recounts a time when he had a CEO looking to give something personal to his staff. “His grandma had a spaghetti sauce recipe that she had used for years, and she had handwritten it out and given it to him,” Westbrook says. “So, he had us do all these cutting boards with that handwritten recipe from his grandmother to give to all his employees. A lot of times corporate customers are just doing their logo or something like that. This project was a little more creative and kind of cool.”

As always, helping customers select the right process to achieve the best product is part of the service. “They don’t always know what they want, and they don’t always know what can be done,” Westbrook explains. “So, we try to educate them. Sandblasting glass is better than using the laser because the glass ends up getting real chippy and pops off in the dishwasher, and then you get these clear areas.”

Westbrook describes a corporate order the shop had a couple of years ago that benefitted from their expertise.“We had an order for about 1,000 battery banks,” he says. “They were initially thinking of engraving them, but we recommended applying their color logo with the UV printer. We take time to educate the customer on the different capabilities and what we think is going to look best, then let them make the decision.”

DeRuyter’s team at Decade Awards is ramping up their personalized holiday offerings, but there are still hurdles to overcome since most business comes to them online. “The real challenge that we’re working on right now is to have templates set up so customers can just add a name or date to an existing template, so it would be quick and easy for us to produce and quick and easy for the customer to make a decision,” says DeRuyter. “We’re working on some software right now to make the process more dynamic, so the consumer can upload templates, type in different text or even upload an image of their own.” This functionality should boost the production of singleton gifts like presentation boxes, leatherette items and some of the pieces on display in their retail space.

ALL HANDS ON DECK

“The big challenge for us isn’t so much the work we’re doing on the products but that we end up working a lot of weekends and overtime by the first of November,” Westbrook says. “By mid-November, it’s all hands on deck working until seven, eight o’clock at night. Most trophy and award shops experience high volume in the spring and early summer. Our busy season doesn’t hit until the fourth quarter, and then it’s just it’s insanely busy.”

Decade Awards has a slightly different production timeline around the end of the calendar year. While other gift personalization shops are winding down, DeRuyter’s staff is gearing up for their major season: fantasy football.

“Fantasy football is huge for us,” says DeRuyter. “We probably sell over a million dollars’ worth of fantasy football trophies right at Christmas through the end of January. While most companies like ours are done by Dec. 20th, we’re just getting into our busy season. It’s a bit of a challenge; we’re usually working overtime. Typically, during that time, we’re going to work Saturdays and a couple of hours overtime a day to keep everything moving when we’re dealing with 400 or 500 orders a day going out.”

With a 5,000-square-foot production center in the back and a 3,500-square-foot showroom, Decade Awards is a large facility with a 10-person staff. Still, making sure that there are enough skilled workers is a concern. “I hate to hire staff or temps and then have to worry about how much work there will be after the holidays,” says DeRuyter. “Plus, labor is just very difficult to find. Before COVID, you would put out a job posting and get 100 resumes the next day. Now, you’re lucky to get three or four in a week. And the quality of workers has dramatically dropped. Luckily, during the holidays, I’ve got some family members who help while they are on break from college or high school.”

“It definitely makes Christmas stressful,” says Westbrook. “Christmas is not as fun for the family anymore because you’re pretty burned out by the time the season’s over. That part’s a little hard. You don’t really like thinking about gift-giving for your own family. Even though we aren’t a retail shop, it feels like one at Christmastime—that kind of volume and that kind of workload. But we probably make almost half of our entire revenue in that fourth quarter.”

Fantasy Land

Fantasy football is big business. Like, really big: The entire market is predicted to grow to $84.9 billion by 2032, with a 14.5% compound annual growth rate over the next decade, according to Market Research Future.

Many fantasy football leagues have cash prizes, but a lot of them also do awards, says Ted DeRuyter, owner of Decade Awards. These awards are typically handed out at the end of the year or in January. “We make those and fantasy football rings that are like the Hall of Fame rings. People love them. And whoever wins [their league’s] Super Bowl gets the championship ring for the year, and there’s tons and tons of trophies.”

He preaches one note of caution, though: “The NFL came down on all of us for having anything similar to the Lombardi trophy. It’s been an ongoing battle.”

One thing is for certain: For personalization shops, fantasy football is the real deal.