Hothouse to grow local corporate gift market

GIFT, an initiative of the Cape Craft & Design Institute (CCDI) and the Old Mutual Foundation (OMF), will bring the makers and this market together by bridging communication and interaction, facilitating design, managing economies of scale and ensuring the timely and efficient fulfilment of orders.

GIFT will not only direct the significant revenue from corporate gifting to the mostly informal and under-resourced micro-businesses, but also aims to also replace the dominant mass-produced, imported corporate gifts with locally hand-crafted ones.

The initiative underscores an increasing conviction in the private and public sectors that the creative industries – design, craft, film, music and so on – can make a valuable contribution to income generation, job creation and sustainable economic development.

Rose Reddy, GM of GIFT, says communication between corporate buyers and craft producers has until now been a major obstacle to trade, and has often led to buyers sourcing elsewhere.

Value of locally produced crafts

“Craft producers, often based in townships or remote rural areas, have limited logistical know-how and support and corporate gift buyers are understandably concerned about their orders being fulfilled. This creates an impasse, where local crafters are unable to get access to a lucrative market and buyers can’t access this wealth of BBBEE-compliant suppliers. Buyers recognise the value of locally produced crafts, but they lack the time and resources to ensure fulfilment.”

Reddy says GIFT will break this logjam by providing crafters with logistical support and access to product development and training while offering buyers an efficient, reliable point of contact through which bespoke gifting solutions can be developed, ordered and delivered on time and to specification. The GIFT showroom can also provide a last-minute solution with ready-made gift items off-the-shelf.

As a market access programme, GIFT will be able to draw on other CCDI programmes: Its Product Development Clinic and AMTS Fabrication Laboratory^[1] is on tap to support product development and bespoke solutions. Its Enterprise Development programme – incorporating skills development and a business mentoring service – is available to support the development of craft entrepreneurs.

OMF head Kate Miszewski says: “As anyone involved in corporate social investment work knows, it’s simply not enough to provide skills training; for those skills to change lives we also need to open markets to those who’ve been trained. Achieving that requires partnerships and we found a partner in CCDI.

Tangible difference

“This project will help provide a sustainable living for people in the most economically depressed and marginalised communities in our country. The GIFT project is exciting for so many reasons – it is important from a creative perspective, but even more so from the point of making a tangible difference to the lives of South Africans who need it the most, providing dignity and livelihoods.”

Erica Elk, CCDI’s executive director, adds that the research behind the establishment of GIFT indicated huge potential for craft items as a corporate gifting solution, particularly in the conference industry and the government sector: “There is a window of opportunity in SA – and probably globally too – where public and private sector companies are increasingly seeking sustainable ways to ‘give back’ to communities. GIFT provides companies with a socially responsible gifting solution that will help them meet CSI and BBBEE targets while at the same time supporting the development of indigenous design and the creative and social capital of SA. And it’s not charity – the products are beautiful and hold their own in the marketplace.”

^[1]One of a handful of ‘design labs’ worldwide, FabLab was developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is sponsored by the Department of Science & Technology.