Congrats on your achievement!!!!
Apart from your personal feelgood , it has probably been a powerful and invaluable lesson business wise , you have now put yourself in the consumers position and now "understand" more.
Even tho I work with awards every day , every one of the few I have ever won takes pride of place , as tacky as it may be. .
Money is soon forgotten and literally goes down the loo , a trophy endures. Some customers NEVER understand the concept of recognition , asking for the cheapest thing we have. I tell them I can go as cheap as the cheapest effort the recipient went into winning the event or failing that , we can take a $1 coin , drill a hole and put some string on it and the recpient will know EXACTLY how much they are worth!!
If you do the sums , awards are easily justifiable , even in monetary terms. Think about a small bus with say 20 employees , the av monthly wage will be round $3k per person x 20 , yearly this is $700k or so. If an awards scheme can get 1/2 a % increase in productivity , this is already worth $3.5k , so if a co spends lets say $2-3k on Trophies and awards per year , payback is LESS than a 1/2 a percent increased productivity - emminetly achieveable. Recognition is not a hard sell and its a product that provides REAL benefits. Apart from staff motivation , a Co that hands out awards is seen as a "caring" co and being PC these days is also a powerful marketing aid. Apart from staff productivity , if a co rewards outside suppliers , this too can bring disportionately big benefits on the supply line side of things , a double whammy.
Of course I'm totally biased as I specialise in awards and trophies;)
Profitability resides in custom designed awards etc , not the same old PDU/Freeman/airflyte/whatever thing everyone else carries.
It's really SOOO easy to motivate Award and recognition sales to customers , financially and emotively and get repeat easy business , best of all it can reflect your creativity as a designer and reward yourself too in that respect.
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