How to Start Personalized Gift Business Online

Summary

Are you looking for a business idea that’s both profitable and meaningful?

Personalized gifts could be the answer.

The market for personalized gifts is predicted to grow at a rate of 5.75% annually from 2023 to 2030, according to Market Research Future.

The market was worth USD 28.4 billion in 2022 and is expected to reach USD 42.003 billion by 2030.

But the real value of personalized gifts isn’t just financial!

They create emotional connections that go beyond the act of buying and selling.

Think back to the last time you received a gift that was truly made just for you. Remember the joy you felt as you unwrapped it?

You can create that feeling for others by starting a personalized gift business.

Offering custom-made gifts like engraved jewelry, photo albums, etc. allows customers to express their love and appreciation for their loved ones.

Each gift becomes a tangible reminder of the special bond between two people.

As the creator of these unique and meaningful gifts, you can make a real difference in people’s lives.

So, if you are thinking of starting a personalized gift business, it can be your win-win solution for starting a new venture in this ever-growing industry. Here it is, literally everything you need to figure out the question: “how to start a personalized gift business?”

Find Product Ideas for Your Target Audience

First thing first, gifts are for everyone! So, when starting a customized gifts business, it is important to have clarity on your target audience. As it will help you to understand your audience better and on the basis of that, you can decide your products. You can either target B2B or B2C business or both of them. B2C means dealing directly with end customers. Whereas B2B segments include business audiences that you want to target.

According to me, it is better to start with B2C as it will help you to learn more and create your profile. Then later on you can move to B2B easily. Knowing your market and target audience gives you more clarity about your business and knows the market value of that business. It helps in having more focus and knowing customers’ better.

Gift Ideas to Inspire You

Here are a few business ideas that will help you choose the right one for your business.

1. Wellness Gifts

With the major lifestyle shift in the last year, there is no surprise that self-care and wellness take the lead even in gift options. In fact, between 2019 and 2020, Google Search Trends shows a 250% increase in self-care-related searches.

From gratitude journals to skin-care subscription boxes, there are different product ideas you can consider.

Idea in Action: Birchbox offers a gift box subscription with high-end beauty and grooming products.

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2. Gifts for Gardening & Nature Niche

Home gardening is blooming right now. Gardeners spent 42% more time gardening in 2020. With that there is also an increase in plant lovers and plant parents looking for gardening-related products.

Personalized mugs and t-shirts with plant designs, a box of gardening tools, plant seed gift set, are some popular ideas.

Idea in Action: Gift for Gardener shop’s best-seller product salsa seed gift set. It is a collection of heirloom seeds that includes everything a gardener needs to grow salsa essentials like peppers, onions, and chiles.

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Try out our product design software and let them create their own custom gifts with plant designs or gardening puns!

3. Productivity Gifts

In 2023, with the increasing trend of working from home, productivity gifts have become a popular choice for businesses to show their appreciation to their employees.

Idea in Action: SwagUp is a promotional products supplier that offers various high-quality branded items bundled together. Companies can purchase packs as a gift for employees.

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4. Customized Home Decor

With people spending more time at home, personalized home decor items can be a great gift idea. Consider offering customized throw pillows, wall art, and doormats that feature unique designs or personalized messages.

Idea in Action: Personalization Mall offers a variety of customized home decor items, including throw pillows, canvas prints, and doormats.

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Looking to offer customized home decor items?

5. Customized Travel Accessories

As people start traveling again in 2023, personalized travel accessories can be a unique and thoughtful gift option.

Consider items like customized luggage tags, passport holders, and travel journals. You could even create customized travel bundles that include items like travel-sized toiletries, noise-canceling headphones, and portable chargers.

Idea in Action: Paravel is a sustainable travel brand that offers a range of customizable travel accessories, including luggage tags and passport holders.

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Interested in offering your customers the ability to create their own customized travel accessories?

Try out our bag design software and let your customers design their own personalized luggage tags, passport holders, and more!

6. Gifts that Appeal to Enthusiasts

When people are passionate about something, they are more likely to invest in getting or giving those products to like-minded people. Gadget lovers, chefs, fitness enthusiasts, car lovers, etc. – once you figure out what niche you want to cater to, you can start selling.

Idea in Action: Buy Olympia is perfect for people interested in art. This online store brings together renowned independent artists from around the United States. Shoppers can buy gifts like Gift Cards, keychains, mugs and glassware, postcards, and more.

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Take your personalized gift business a step ahead by enabling customers to design for themselves using a Gift Design Tool. Ready templates, text editor, artwork, live pricing – click to read more about all the features.

(Enable Product Customization To Reach More Shoppers, and Create a Loyal Customer Base)

It’s Time to Create Your Gift Business Plan

When planning, deciding the budget for your business is a crucial phase. Here, the more detailed you are with a gift business plan, the better it is for your business. Because it helps you get the necessary insights and make better decisions for your personalized gift business. You can know which verticals require more investment. On the basis of your budget planning, you can define your next quarter’s plans.

Some of the major reasons for planning a budget are:

• You know the flow of investment
• Decreases unnecessary expenses
• Have more clarity on your business verticals
• Take better decision in regards to future trends
• Can help in attracting the right business investors.

When you are starting a customized gift business, you will have to take care of a lot of things, like knowing your market, launch website, marketing, offline store (if needed), each product cost, etc. Proper planning will give you a better understanding of where your attention should be.

Just imagine, if you have multiple things on your plate but don’t know where to focus more, invest more, customers’ needs, and more. It can become chaotic when your planned budget will come to your rescue.

Legal Work

Starting a personalized gift business means you need to be ready to do lots of paperwork. Every business needs to have necessary licenses and registration work to be done. So before starting out any business it is important you reach out to business registration offices and complete all formalities.

Get all the necessary licenses needed in your district to carry out business. Once this is done you can reach out to needed logistics and vendor management companies. Your business will be online and so timely delivery is necessary. This is when logistics and vendor management will come to your rescue.

Have an idea for a personalized gifts business? Our team has helped numerous gift businesses. We can help you too! Our Web to Print Solutions is just what you need! Ready-to-launch store along with a Product Design Tool; start your custom gift business today! Click to know more!

How to Take Personalized Gift Business Online

Once you are done with all the necessary business registrations next comes taking business online. It is safe to say that with COVID scenario, everything is going online. With economical investment, you get good returns. For that, multiple things go into taking things online. Let’s see each of them one by one:

1. Select e-Commerce platform

Today there are thousands of platforms available which help to create an eStore platform. Each of them has their merits and demerits. Some of the famous and most used platforms are: Shopify, Joomla, Drupal, etc.

As per your requirements, you can choose the platform to create an entire eStore from scratch. For example, do you self-host your store or want a platform that provides hosted eStore? The same way, compare the features and of course the pricing. Let’s say Shopify plans will be a little less heavy in pocket than the Magento ones. However, if your budget allows, Magento is one of the best platforms to go for!

2. Finalize Features

Once you have selected your suited solution for developing a website the next step is finalizing features. Depending on your business model and recent market trends you can define various features for your website.

Some of the basic and much needed features for your personalized gift business are: payment gateway for online transactions, add to cart functionality, adding items in wish lists, detailed product description, clear images of various personalized gifts, and more.

One of the best ways to define your features is doing thorough market research, studying your competitors, etc. this will help you know in depth and exact things your customers need.

3. Choose Development Partner

When it comes to developing your eStore for your customized gifts business there are two options available:

• Freelancing
• Choosing the right technical partner

Of course, each of them have their benefits but I prefer reaching out to the right technical partner. Getting in touch with the right technical partner can help you with their expertise. They have been in the industry for decades with a strong client base to show.

Their set of experienced employees guides startup companies in the right direction. This is what sets them apart from freelancers. Lastly, security being the main concern with the IT companies you don’t need to worry at all. As they have a strong infrastructure of security.

Being a founder of a startup company, it is better to get in touch with the right technical partner and give your business wings to fly.

PrintXpand is a one-stop solution for all your needs to take your business online.

(Features of Our Web to Print Storefront)

Our team of business analysts, designers, developers, and marketers can assist you at every step of building a successful business.

If you do not want to invest in building a website from scratch, we have a solution for that. With our Web to Print Storefront, you can take your online with minimum cost.

(A Glimpse of What Your Web Store Will Look Like)

See for yourself the magic of a web-to-print store.

Once you have finally found your technical partner, it is time to decide the most important thing for your store. The products.

This section will guide you on how you can provide personalized gifts and make your custom gifts business a success.

How You Can Offer Personalized Gifts in Your Store

Personalized gifts include a wide spectrum of products like Mugs, Greeting cards, Pillows, T-shirts, Jewelry sets, etc. Based on the audience for your customized gifts business, that you can finalize.

The important part is how you want to go about personalization in these products. Because when it comes to personalization, people have different choices. How would you accommodate them in your offerings?

Imagine, your customers want to send a personalized gift to their family members or friends. They call you at the shop, or while placing orders online they write down specifications like designs, colors, etc. On the basis of this, you create the needed design.

This is the conventional way but often comes with a risk of going wrong with the given directions.

This is when PrintXpand can help you. We have two options for you:

1. Product Design Tool

Integrating a product designer tool to your website provides your customers with the freedom to create their own designs from the range of given products. This decreases unnecessary redundant communication with your customers.

Benefits of using product designer tool:

• Customers can show their creativity and design products on their own
• Easy navigation and appealing UI/UX makes it easy to create designs and use tool efficiently
• Feature rich library with multiple font types, images, clip arts, object handling, and more
• Design range of products like t-shirts, gifts, mugs, cushion covers, mobile back covers, pin buttons, and more.
• Compatible with all eCommerce platforms and multi-language websites

2. 3D Configurator

Our 3D Configurator gives a 360-degree configuration approach. You can configure various products like apparel, jewelry, shoes, auto parts, watches, etc. The 3D configurator lets your customer perform customization on any part of the product. It lets you try different styles, textures, and colors on different parts of the product. As you keep customizing, the live preview shows how the product will look.

Benefits of 3D Product Configurator for Your Customers

• Provides a real-time 360° 3D product view
• An engaging platform for the customers
• Builds customers trust
• Enables price transparency

PrintXpand Expertise

Custom Photo Prints enjoying a happy customer base after integrating our Customization Tool

Trend Setters Ltd. is a USA-based company. Their website – Custom Photo Prints, offers a range of gift products like mugs, photo frames, wall arts, and home decor products. They partnered with PrintXpand to offer customization on your store. Start your online gift business today! See how our ready-to-launch Web to print Store can help take your business online.

How Providing an Online eStore Will Help Your Business to Grow

Having an eStore for your personalized gift business is an essential thing. This will let your customers know about your brand and get exclusive insights about your products. Additionally, you can know details about your loyal customers, their needs, feedback, and more.

Let’s see some of the major reasons of having your own eStore for your personalized gift business:

1) Brand building

This is one of the major benefits of having your own website. Customers and your market will be aware of your brand. This in turn, helps your custom gifts business to flourish, make more connections, better marketing, and branding of your services.

2) Avoid price war

Personalized gift offerings help you to reach customers better. It will help you save majorly without a need to share it with any partners. You have full authority to decide prices of your products, delivery charges, shipping charges national or international, and if any additional charges are needed.

3) Complete business autonomy

This will give you more freedom to set your own rules for your personalized gift business and other services you provide. Rather than following other marketplaces’ rules and regulations, having this option is better.

4) Faster and better customer service

Providing better customer service is very important. Many third party platforms will help you with services but in many cases, it is not up to the mark. This is when setting up your own personalized gift business eStore using effective third party services for customer service is better. This will provide faster and better services to your customers.

5) Better customer loyalty and retention

Your customized gifts business eStore will not only give your better reach but will also help you in knowing your customer loyalty and retention. To make your business known it is important to have a loyal customer base and having an eStore will help.

Using different marketing tools, you can inform your customers about new products or services. Apart from this, you can also introduce new loyalty programs like discounts on products, free delivery, some vouchers on shopping above mentioned limit, etc.

This will help you to have loyal customers and better customer service will help you to retain customers.

Related Resource: How to Build Customer Loyalty

 
6) Services available round the clock

Physical location comes with restrictions of having restricted areas of services and business working hours. But, taking your personalized gift business online will be devoid of all these issues. You can provide customer services around the clock. They can place orders anytime from anywhere. Additionally, having international customers will give your business more exposure.

Select the Right Gift design tool

There are multiple tools available to create different designs for your mugs. But, there are some basic features which these tools need. Let’s see some of them in brief:

1) Multilingual Support

Having a tool which supports a multi-language website is important. You need to make sure that your tool supports multiple languages. This will help your personalized gift business to stand out of the crowd and have an international customer base.

2) Feature rich library

Make sure the tool has a thousand plus font types, variety of images, clip art support, object handling, and more. This will let your customers give more ideas and support to create an array of designs. Additionally, you can even make sure to have a better customer experience.

3) Compatibility with eCommerce platforms

Your website can be made using any programming language. This is one of the major reasons why you need to have your tool which integrates with any platform.

4) Support thousand plus products

Being a custom gifts business owner, you will have to give your customers multiple products to design. Thus, you have to make sure that your product design tool can provide multiple products to your customers. This will eventually lead to having better customer service and satisfaction.

5) 3D Preview

Today most of the things have gone online and this is when you provide your customers the feel of offline shopping. 3D preview makes the job easy. Once the design is ready your customers should be able to preview it in 3D view. This will provide customers with better judgment about their product design, look and fill.

Our gift designer tool is the perfect solution you need to take your gift business to the next level. Our tool comes with all the features that we talked about and makes customization easy for your customers. Additionally, its backend functionality ensures you get complete control over the tool. Get a personalized demo now.

Select Product Supplier

Once you are done with setting up your eStore, the next step is connecting with suppliers. You will be providing an array of products to your customers. This is when you will need the right supplier that fulfills your needs.

Reach out to various suppliers in your area and tie a deal with them about different products. Simultaneously, also know your customers’ needs and get product deals accordingly. Meeting suppliers will help you have a better supply of products.

Selecting Printing Methods

There are various printing methods available for printing your product. Majorly 3 types of methods are used for printing services. The type of products you use also influences your printing method. Below are some of the common printing methods:

1) Screen printing

This type of printing is most commonly used while printing t-shirts and taking bulk orders. The benefit is its prints last longer and provide consistent printing. However, it takes a bit more time to print.

2) Digital Photo Mug Printing

It is a process that prints an image or design directly onto a specially coated paper. It offers a full-color and permanent artwork look, it is an excellent method to print images or text in high quality, let’s say for mugs.

3) Embroidered printing

This is the oldest printing method used to carry out printing. It uses sewing machines for designing. People prefer this type of printing as it looks original, regal, and there are very less chances of design coming out.

You can also reach out to other printing vendors, tie up business deals with them, and send them printing orders. This will require less investment, give some share to vendors, and also make your customers happy. Reach out to various known vendors in your proximity, ask them certain questions like:

• Which printing methods do they have?
• Can they print designs on products you provide?
• What will be their cost per product and design?

Lastly, if things go well for you and your customized gifts business, then you can sign a business agreement with them. Hence, on the basis of your budget decide which method is suitable for you and move forward with it.

Marketing Strategies

Marketing strategies play a vital role for any business. Once you are done with creating an eStore for your personalized gift business, providing a wide range of products and services, integrating product designer tools, etc. Then comes marketing. It is important to market your business via different channels.

There are many methods to market your customized gifts business and make it reach a wider audience. Some of them are: PPC, SEO, influencer marketing, collaborating with brands, partnering with other popular eStores, social media marketing, and more. Each of them has their merits and drawbacks.

If you are looking to rank your website on Google then you can go forward with either PPC or SEO strategies. Go with PPC if looking for instant results and ranking or SEO for 6 to 8 months of duration.

Influencer marketing is a new way to promote your business. You can reach out to various social media influencers and tie up a promotional deal with them. They have a very huge impact if your target audience is GenZ and millennials.

Apart from this, you can start social media marketing and reach a wider audience. Lastly, collaborate with other popular eStores, upload your product images, and increase your sales.

We assist businesses with our conversion-focused marketing services. Bring more visitors and more conversion rates with us.

Ready to build an online gift store? See how your Web to Print Solutions with a ready store, and customization tool can help you!

Over to you

Starting your own personalized gift business can be difficult. But, following the above discussed steps will be helpful. Additionally, seeking help from experienced IT businesses will ease the process.

PrintXpand has served since over a decade to businesses like yours to help them make a remarkable impact with personalized offerings. Stepping up in starting a personalized gift business is certainly a great idea, but you need the right tools to succeed.

The Product Designer tool is our flagship product available with major features to ease the process of customization for end users. Additionally, our other web-to-print solutions like inventory manager, print job manager, and print ERP enables businesses to streamline their daily operations. To see how you can take your gift business online with a personalization tool, you can get in touch with us and take a demo to see for yourself on how a gift personalization tool works.

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