GuideCorporate gifts for clients: ideas that don't end up in a drawer.

• It's useful: on the desk, at home, when travelling.
• It's well made: real material, careful details, the right weight in the hand.
• It tells a story: your place, your product, your history.
• The logo is discreet: engraved, small, elegant.
• It comes with packaging and a card that explain why it was chosen.

These are starting points: the best gift is usually designed from scratch, tailored to the company.

1. Solid wood letter opener, engraved, with a leather strap.
2. Engraved pencils with logo and name: small, useful, always in hand.
3. Key ring shaped like your product, for example a fan for a fan manufacturer.
4. Watch with a custom dial and engraved caseback.
5. Metal bookmark with a leather sleeve.
6. Scale model of your product or your building.
7. An object shaped like your landscape: the mountains seen from your office, the outline of your city.
8. Christmas decorations in wood, engraved with the logo.
9. Numbered series for an anniversary, with the number engraved on each piece.
10. Object in recycled plastic, perhaps from bottle caps collected in your company.

A gift for guests should speak about the property and the place: local materials, shapes inspired by the landscape, texts in the guests' language. It's also a keepsake that keeps people talking about the hotel once they are back home.

For Christmas, projects usually start between September and October; more complex ones even earlier. Design, sample, production and packaging of several hundred pieces take weeks; for a few dozen pieces, a few weeks are often enough. Rush orders are possible, with a dedicated quote.

Material, complexity of the shape, type of personalisation, hand finishing, packaging and quantity. Larger series lower the cost per piece, because design and setup are spread over more objects.

• A huge logo: the gift becomes advertising and doesn't get used.
• A cheap gadget: it says the opposite of what you want to say.
• Ordering late and delivering after the holidays.
• Forgetting the packaging and the card.