Today, Singapore is simply booming !
Its cultural adaptability, trade-friendly policies and geographical location make it very attractive for all businesses and this is great for the promotional products industry!
Influenced by both British and Chinese culture, Singaporeans perfectly blend East and West.
Distributors of the Promotional products industry mix both style of negotiation: they are very contractual in their dealings like Westerners, while paying great attention to the relationship like Chinese people.
They are as comfortable in posh offices of multinational corporations as they are in the factories of their Chinese suppliers, where 90% of their products are made.
Thanks to the free-trade policy, the country can very easily import and export from almost everywhere.
A World Bank report named Singapore the World’s easiest place to do business!
There is no official tracking of the revenues for the gift market, but they are estimated at around 700 million US dollars for the advertising specialties segment.
Distributors have special relationships with their Chinese manufacturers and regularly visit the factories to clarify standards and set expectations.
Large orders are proceed in China and smaller ones are finished in Singapore.
This kind of arrangements is what makes possible to produce high quality products in a very short time
As an example: a thousand T-shirts with logo can be produced in less than 72 hours!
In Singapore, major markets are banks, IT, Pharmaceutical and food and beverage.
Serial promotions are especially popular: gifts are attached to the products and linked to a story developed over time, the gift changing as appropriate.
Pharmaceutical companies, which are prohibited from advertinsing, rely on the gift industry to facilitate their relationships with medical professionals.
These are opportunities for distributors to partner with marketing managers and design products to meet unique market demands.
An quite funny example of partnership is when Tredan Connections, a marketing company, designed an erectile dysfunction promotional display on behalf of a large pharmaceutical company manufacturing the E.D drug.
The Singapore Government is also an important customer in the promotional products industry.
Every August, the Singapore National Day
is highly covered with free gifts bags containing items such as flags, noisemakers, tattoos…
Schools also have an ongoing Entrepreneur Program that helps students learn marketing skills by running small gifts shops on-site at their local schools.
The most popular items are textiles like T-shirts for 1-day events and writing items.
On the contrary, clocks of all kinds are not in vogue as they are associated with death.
The Gift Association Singapore, founded in 1997, is a group working in harmony, wich hopes to grow, incorporating more lifestyle products.
Membership has 3 major benefits:
1. Access to the Association’s Website listing all the products and directs potential buyers to the appropriate distributors in each category.
2. The Gift’s Buyers Guide: complete catalogue published and distributed throughout Singapore each year.
3. Entrance to the Annual Gifts and Stationery Show, attracting around 5000 people each August at Suntec Convention Center.
Through their alliance with MIS, they seeks to inform and educate buyers about the advantages of partnering with their promotional products distributors to select products that will integrate brand personality, create perceived value and attract customers.
To have more information about the Gifts Association Singapore, click here !