Gift baskets, customized items prized presents at holiday time

Items customized with business logos, gourmet treats and Colorado products are driving holiday gift-giving trends in the coming season.
Gift baskets stuffed with goodies to share remain high on the list of popular items for business-to-business giving.
The holiday season offers a built-in reason to contact clients, thank them and wish them well. Business experts advise steering clear of gifts that are too expensive or too personal when planning business gift giving.
Louise Creager of Aspen Canyon Gift Baskets said she encourages clients to look at holiday gift giving as a chance to market themselves. “Think of this as one more opportunity to touch your clients.”
Even so, keep expectations out of it, others note.
“Review your motivation,´ said Debra Benton, founder and CEO of Benton Management Resources. Benton, an executive coach, is author of “Executive Charisma.”
“There are no obligations. You give a gift with no expectations in return. That holds true whether you give it your Aunt Mary or your Boss Larry.”
Avoid gifts that are inappropriately intimate or personal. Something too costly becomes inappropriate as well, Benton said. It’s the gesture of thought and care and giving, not the price tag you’re trying to convey.
“A good gift to give is something that the person can share,” Benton said. “Instead of giving your boss a tie clasp, maybe you give him a fruit basket that he could then share with more people, or a box of candy.”
Benton sometimes sends out boxes of locally produced Vern’s toffee at the holidays. “Not even a big box, kind of a small box,” she noted. “Giving something that’s outrageously expensive, that’s just such a faux pas.”
Eileen Heusinkveld, owner of A Taste of Class, a cooking and kitchen-supply store in Loveland, said gift baskets remain strong as holiday gifts of choice. Heusinkveld has been packaging gift baskets for 15 years.
Filling baskets with a variety of food items is always a good idea, Heusinkveld noted. “Because who doesn’t eat?”
The baskets she creates typically follow a theme such as breakfast, Colorado products, pasta, the Southwest or snacks.”
Snack baskets are among the most popular right now, Heusinkveld said. Filled with snack products such as candies, cookies, crackers, cheeses and salamis, they’re a “hands-on” gift the recipient can open and dig into.
With the events of 9-11 still in mind, people are staying home more, cooking more and entertaining at home more. Those are all gift cues, Heusinkveld said. People are focused on sentimentality, she said.
Pottery, wineglass charms, cookie plates “anything that has something special to say on it has done very well for us.”x09
Marketing expert Pam Danziger, president of Unity Marketing and author of “Why People Buy Things They Don’t Need,” thinks consumers are shedding the “cocooning” trend that has engrossed them in recent years in favor of a connecting trend.
“Consumers are reconnecting with the outside world and reaching out to establish true connection with others,” Danziger said. “Gifts, then, become a means to express one’s emotions and feelings.”
Danziger said research into gift trends for 2003 would likely hold true through the 2004 holiday season. Items like luxury stationery and photo albums; seasonal decorations; aromatherapy items; baskets and storage containers and art and wall decorations should remain strong.
Louise Creager’s gift basket business has clients that range from bankers and hoteliers to real estate agents and roofing companies. They order up baskets with a wide spectrum of contents. “It runs the gamut from soup to nuts basically.”
Colorado products are popular basket-stuffers, Creager said. The selection is varied including salsas, game products such as elk jerky or bison sausage, cheeses, chocolates and even wine jellies. A popular item right now is gold- and silver-dipped aspen leaves from Buena Vista.
Creager also uses products from all over the country to fill her gift baskets.
A trend among business gift givers right now is to customize their gifts. “Putting messages or logos on gifts is getting to be much more popular,” Creager said. “People want to stand out.” Including mugs customized with a business logo or refillable candy jars – again, customized – is a good way to stay in front of the recipient even after the basket is empty.
Creager’s advice is: “Always customize. I think more and more people are trying to find something unique that leaves their name behind.”
Decision-challenged gift givers can look to the Internet for assistance in the form of gift finding search engines. Bob Zakrzewski’s Atlanta-based findgift.com, for instance, puts visitors in touch with 580 companies and 17,000 gifts.
Gift search engines, such as Zakrzewski’s, typically offer gift ideas in a variety of categories. Findgift.com offers more than 180 subcategories for Christmas giving alone. The site tracks the popularity of gifts and lists its top 25 gifts monthly.
Zakrzewski said the gifts that seem to do best through findgift.com typically are “creative, they’re unique and they are personalized to a certain event. Those do really well as do gifts that express a sentiment like thinking of you or good luck.
Personalized gifts such as decorative cookie plates or Christmas ornaments with family names are popular. Humorous gifts also are enjoying a run, Zakrzewski said. “One of the popular ones in our humorous category right now is an electronic dartboard with a heckler feature. If you make a bad shot it will razz you about it.”

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