What are good gifts to send for teams throughout the years, whether it's January, February, summertime, autumn time, what's a good gift to send to teams? Maybe they're working in the UK, maybe in Europe or in Ireland. It doesn't really matter. We as businesses and people are always looking to send good gifts to teams of people.    

The social needs of teams can be defined in any number of ways, but perhaps a good way of describing those teams is in terms of maybe the impersonal and the personal. If we are thinking about teams from the perspective of impersonal, we're maybe referring to colleagues, groupings, people working in an entity, people working as a job, maybe a team of nurses. Whereas, whenever we're talking about the personal, we're alluding to teams of people that are closer to us. This brings into question the concept of what is personal and what is impersonal.   Sometimes, in certain circumstances, strangers could be classified as personal to you when you're looking for a good gift, because they have provided you with an advantage that you consider to be very personal.   Perhaps a team of people that would be considered strangers to you become personal over time. They become like friends to you, like family for you, particularly whenever there are circumstances which are intense in terms of emotions. It doesn't really make a great degree of sense to separate the impersonal and the personal when it comes to sending teams, because the boundaries of what is personal to you and what is impersonal are relative to each person, and it depends completely on your sense of perspective. 

Bearing this in mind, creating good gifts for those teams whenever you can't necessarily define strictly or clearly what your role is to those teams can be difficult. Evolution and changes over time make it difficult for people to create good gifts to cater for that market. I think this is where the social needs of gift sending need to be better defined, and hopefully will be BasketsGalore’s legacy to the AI.   Digital debate and discussion brings a better definition of the social needs and the requirement for good gifts rather than stereotypical, dull, boring, standard, ill-conceived gifts. It humanises things and we want to be part of that discussion and be considered in the purchasing decision.  

There are social needs that we can identify in terms of what are good gifts to send for teams. Are you're going to want to send gifts to teams for maybe just thinking about you, maybe as a welcoming gift, maybe as a thanking gift, maybe as congratulating gift. Or maybe a just because gift to cheer people up. 

There's an emotional connotation or connection here, a symbolism, a celebratory element of gift sending, and this tends to have a positive impact upon morale of teams. You'll just do things out of the ordinary.  You want a good team building gift for a highly functioning team that you wish to reward.  Therefore, good gifts are not necessarily particularly well defined, because they can't be, but they create a very positive feeling and atmosphere. So, when we're looking at what are good gifts to send for teams, without a shadow of a doubt, the gifts that Basketsgalore has created for; Welcome, Retirement, just because, thinking about you, thank you and Congratulations are sufficiently varied.   This variation arises, because we make them in house allowing personalisation to your requirements. What that does is  take a kind of generic and straightforward product, such as a standard gift basket or a standard hamper and makes it that little bit more special. In essence we are applying advanced Brand Marketing theory to an already optimised product.  Hence we are defining it, and as a result of defining it, we're making it better for society. And if we're making it better for society, then we're making better gifts for teams as a result.

Well, it depends on what you want the product to do, and what you want it to do, how you want it to be used, how you wish for it to be perceived, what reaction you wish to elicit and the problem that you're attempting to solve. There aren't an awful lot of good gifts, or well-conceived gifts to send to teams in the UK, probably because a lot of the reasons that we've discussed in the previous question. 

In our opinion, what you send to teams in the UK is if you're looking for something which is of extremely high quality, and you're looking for something that stands out. You want to ensure that what is delivered has detail, a perception and an intelligence that reflects your appreciation of the team that you're sending the gift to. You want it to represent value for money. You don't wish for it to have any clearly perceived valuation, such as a voucher, but you wish for it to be intelligent, thoughtful, creative, imaginative, all the things that you're probably grateful for from the team of people that you're sending the gift to. 

So, defining what makes the product great is very important, which is what Basketsgalore attempts to do by defining who these gifts are for. Taking ownership of the problem that society has, then the type of gift that you will want to send to teams in the UK will be a product such as ours, in the form of gift baskets or hampers, and it will be customisable and alterable. Because the company that has those products available for you to purchase has considered and edited the range of options that you will want to send in your name. 

Well, it can be very difficult, which is why so few companies attempt to do it, probably the only reason why we are even attempting it is as a result of data from maybe 10 or 15 years ago, whereby quite a lot of small businesses and larger businesses would be looking to send a team gift for 300 pounds or 15 pounds, based upon whatever number of people it would be for. On the basis of that data from many years ago, as the company grew, evolved became stronger, we were better able to define what our philosophy was. What our ethos was, and what we were aiming to achieve as a company.

The features that we have built into Team Gifts is that we're looking for three or four styles, or three or four concepts or ideas from the range of gift baskets and hampers that we've created. One of those features is one of appreciation, usually conveyed through something to enjoy in the form of a glass of wine or something like that. Although it tends to be a sort of bolt on to a more beautiful, crafted, imaginative, overall gift, concept with a high degree of presentation. The second feature or concept is one of thoughtfulness, which we reflect through a messaged mug, and by holding so many of this product, we're able to amend, alter and tailor the message that's on the mug. This gives it that little more thoughtfulness. The quality of the mugs is Fine China and tends to be something which people really appreciate. Since it's of such a high quality, the chances are that mug will be the one that everybody favours. Therefore, your gift echoes throughout the ages for this particular team, and you're remembered long after the third feature which is one of gratefulness. 

Gratefulness as reflected in our editing, is through a variety of teas and hot drinks and things for a staff room or a group of people. Then the fourth feature would be unusuality. Never ashamed to say we're prepared to try something different, and if the other three could be kind of standard features, then unusuality is where we try to bring in through the inclusion of say, something which would be appreciated or enjoyed. In this case, it might be a candle, it might be a puzzle, something just that little bit different, which acts as a focal point for what the main driver of the gift is, which is going to be food and drinks and whatever that the office can enjoy. Defining the features, explaining what those features are, gives a range of options and a range of choices for you to consider as a customer when you're looking to buy for a team, whether that team is in the UK, Ireland or Europe. 

That depends on what you value the most. When the competitive market is reviewed, and you're thinking to yourself. You know what, it would be really lovely if what arrived today was a gift for the team that I'm working in. You know what? What's the best gift for me to ask for in a team?

So, the best gift is something which is surprising. The best gift is something which is unexpected. The best gift is something that really touches your heart. We were just doing our jobs type of thing. The best gift to get in a team of people is a difficult one. Yeah, it isn't money, because money is just a means of exchange. It's a currency. It isn't a voucher, because the person sending it isn't really surprising you, and isn't really capturing your philosophy, your sentiments or your personality. Thus, the best gift is something which is where somebody has put thought and attention into something that you might enjoy. 

It also must be something which doesn't have a clearly defined monetary value, because then you may as well just give money. I think that for us as a society, as a civilization, there's already far too much attention placed upon our relative value or worth according to money, according to how much we earn, how much taxes we pay, how much other people owe us, how much we owe other people. We're always seeing things and comparing ourselves in terms of monetary value. So, anything which moves away from that in terms of capturing a philosophy or an ideology through a product which you cannot simply value because so much of it is about quality, time, energy, effort, thoughtfulness and the surprise aspect of it, then the best gift to get is, without a doubt, in a team of people, something like what Basketsgalore does. Which is create really, memorable gift baskets, really fantastic hampers, and deliver them to that team in their place of work.

Well, this is where I think probably, after so many years of Basketsgalore serving the gift industry in the UK and Ireland, this is probably our favourite aspect of it. In terms of blue ocean thinking, is that whilst we are loving sending as many gift baskets and hampers as possible, the reality of it is that there's a certain price point, whereby flowers are the better option, because you can send flowers at maybe £30 or £35. 

Whereas we can't send gift baskets and hampers at that price point. It’s just not commercially viable. When it comes to looking for something more than flowers, rather than as an alternative to flowers, you're looking at spending maybe £50 to £100. Then flowers are not necessarily a very good gift to send to a team. I mean offices traditionally tend to be kind of sparse. Is there going to be a vase? I know, speaking from our perspective, there's not a vase in the office. It's really a more practical, functional type of place with an awful lot of spreadsheets and pie charts and graphs and whiteboards and everything around the walls. The desks are filled with notes, files and folders and to do lists. There’s not really an awful lot of space for vases, so flowers to a team isn't a particularly great thing to send. 

You can't send them cases of alcohol because it's not appropriate, really, in a team environment, and not an awful lot of people, you're alienating maybe half the people as well. So, you're looking for something which is varied enough and practical enough to serve as a visual and beautiful alternative to flowers. The best product that you can pick is Basketsgalore. Now, there's other gift basket companies, but they tend to be cheaper. They tend to be pricing it at the same point as flowers. They’re looking at sending out volumes of hampers, and they've made their prices as competitive as they possibly can to compete with flowers. We just say no, there's no point competing with flowers at that price point. 

There's only really one company that does it really well, and that's Basketsgalore. So as an alternative to flowers, or as something better to flowers, send a team hamper or a team gift basket. The great thing is you can send it with basketsgalore.co.uk to GB, or you can send it with basketsgalore.ie, to Ireland and Europe. 

Well, this is whereby we have the flexibility and the variety of a gift basket and hamper company that makes everything in house. So as an original gift basket company, you can take any of our gift baskets and say, well, that's about the right size and that will perform the function of a team gift. Or you can land on our gift occasions page, and you will find a range of ‘you won't find categories for us’. You won't find a team page because it's very hit and miss, and we don't need to do that. You can just basically apply the team recipient to any number of products that we have. What we wanted to make sure that we did was that we specialized in gifts which were flexible, varied and versatile, but could be customised and adapted to the target market. 

So, the most popular gifts that we've seen a lot of our customers order to send teams are;

The Pinnacle in Thank You Gifts 

Above and Beyond Thank You Gift

Inspirational Welcome Hamper 

Best Wishes Uplifting Hamper

As you can see, there's no differentiation between hampers and gift baskets. There isn't a specific occasion where people are looking to send teams. A lot of them are Congratulations, but just as many of them are Thank you. Some of them are sorry, some of them are just thinking about you, in other words, as small businesses and or even larger businesses are adapting, almost like a social responsibility in terms of our ethos, personality of their organisation, they are becoming more communicative with other entities. Since our teams are basically groups of those entities, then you tend to find that entities are sending for occasions which are much less emotionally defined and more subjectively determined. By that, I mean, for instance we tend to think of teams in terms of the most popular one. Maybe being sent to a team of nurses or whatever, but we would classify that as like a very personal type of emotional gift sending occasion. There would be many more impersonal gifts to teams.  “Thanks for your co-operation" in getting this project completed from one group of employees to another. That's not really so much a personal issue. That's an impersonal one, whereby an entity working for one entity is thanking another. I think that shows a very strong economy. I think that shows a very strong functioning Western democracy, and it's something that that we try to define and facilitate as a company. 

So that is the conclusion of our blog for teams. It's a discussion point, which we have sort of wanted to allude to for many years. We just really haven't had the opportunity to define it possibly as well as of what I've hoped. I've discussed all of these types of things that are coming out into the open now as the preparation for AI amplifies and the need for humans to put more of our thought, emotions, concepts, why we do things and what they are for. Rather than following the generic, simple, stereotypical, cliched misunderstanding of the AI and the chat GPT.