Starting a corporate gift giving company requires planning and sales skills. Knowing your products and your customers' needs will help you match them with the gift that best represents their company brand. Offer quantity discounts to encourage your clients to buy more and increase your profits. Once you are known for your quality products and competitive prices, word of mouth will grow your business, and you will be fulfilling more orders every year.
Instructions
1. Apply for your business license and fictitious name certificate from your city or county office that oversees businesses. Pick a name that is descriptive of your corporate gift giving business, yet catchy and simple to pronounce.
2. Go to the federal Internal Revenue Service site -- IRS.gov -- and apply for an Employer Identification Number, or EIN, whether or not you will have employees. This is also known as a tax ID number; it acts like a Social Security number for your business.
3. Obtain your seller's permit or wholesale license from your state office. Possessing a state seller's certificate will enable you to buy corporate gifts and supplies from wholesale vendors and not pay sales tax. You will charge tax to your customers and pay it to the state after it is collected.
4. Look at retail space if you will be opening a storefront. Otherwise, use a quiet part of your home to make sales calls and talk to suppliers. If you will be stocking corporate gift inventory, make sure that you have a large, clean space to do so.
5. Determine whether you will be purchasing and reselling corporate gifts at a profit, or if you will be making your own, such as gift baskets and awards.
6. Cultivate relationships with your vendors. Either through a promotional product or gift giving association, call suppliers to set up credit terms and inquire about product cost and shipping rates.
7. Compile your list of products. Consider offering a variety of gifts in many price ranges, such as elegant etched glass awards, gift baskets, watches with imprinted faces, seasonal holiday items, boxed pen and pencil sets, crystal clocks and apparel ranging from polo shirts to expensive embroidered jackets.
8. Calculate what you will charge for each item. Based on all costs, such as whether or not the product will be imprinted, set-up fees, art charges and contents, decide the amount of profit that you would like to make, and ensure that you are not charging more than your competitors.
9. Market your company. Buy business cards and pass them out to everyone you meet. Join the local chamber of commerce to network with other businesses. Perform community service to attract your target market. Lease booths at corporate trade shows to showcase your products to those who will be most likely to buy them. Send email newsletters or mail postcards to addresses within a 10-mile radius of your business and buy ads in the local newspapers. Cold call or schedule appointments with the corporations that you want as your clients. Leave them with a catalog of your gifts.
Tags: your business, corporate gift, corporate gifts, from your, gift baskets, gift giving