#67 | 47 Gift Ideas for Interior Design Clients

Welcome to the Designers Oasis podcast. I'm your host, Kate Bendewald. If you're tired of one-size-fits-all all advice to running your interior design business, you're in the right place. Join me each week as we dive into topics to help you run a thriving interior design business. Without the hustle. We'll talk about the business of design, but also mindset and mental health because I know when you thrive, so will your life and business. It wasn't that long ago that I stepped away from my corporate interior design job to build my own design business so that I could realize my own creative dreams, have more time with the people I love, and serve my clients at the highest level, while making more money than I ever could have working for someone else. It wasn't always easy, and I made my share of mistakes along the way. Fast forward to today. And I've learned a thing or two. Since then I've built multiple six-figure interior design businesses on authentic word-of-mouth referrals with many repeat clients. And I want to share it all with you the ambitious, inspired, and I get it occasionally overwhelmed interior designer who shares this dream of transforming lives through the art of interior design, You can do this. Thank you for letting me spend part of this day with you. Let's get to it.

Hello, hello. Hello, and welcome back. I'm so excited to be hanging out with you. Today, we are going to talk about one of my most favorite things to do and to talk about which is gifting we are in the season where we are likely thinking about gifting for our clients, or for our employees or for our the other people that work in business are vendors or trades or contractors, even for friends and family, this list could come in handy. But I wanted to specifically revisit an old post about gift giving, which was super popular. So you can listen to the podcast episode today. And we're gonna I'm going to share with you not only how to organize your gifting list and how to budget for it and cover some ideas, but also ways that you can give gifts on a budget. We're talking about all of it. So stay tuned. But also, I'm going to share with you if you're watching the video version of this on YouTube, you can actually watch and see some of the things that I'm talking about. So if that's your preferred way to take in this information, check the link in your podcast episode. And it should take you to the YouTube version where you can watch as well. But if you just want to keep listening, you can also link to the show notes later. Let's say you're driving and you don't want to do that right now. I'll have links to all of these gift suggestions that I'm sharing today. available for you so you can get going on your gift giving for this holiday season. But listen, this information is helpful. There are so many occasions to give gifts to your clients. I my husband likes to joke that I'm all the love languages, right? So there's like gift giving acts of service, physical touch, quality, time, and words of affirmation. And except for the words of affirmation, he's right, I am probably all of those. I would say quality time is my preferred love language. But I do love to give gifts it's really enjoyable and fun for me. And so I like to get into this but oftentimes you might consider giving a client a gift as soon as they've signed on with you if they've signed a proposal and you're kick starting a project that's a really lovely time to give a nice gift just to say thank you. I like to give our clients small gifts whenever they are celebrating a birthday or an anniversary. I also like to treat the kids and the pups to I don't go crazy, but especially during the holidays. I also like to use that as an opportunity to thank my clients and share my gratitude for having the opportunity to work with them.

Alright, so let's get to it. I want to start by saying that there's a couple of reasons why you want to give gifts to your clients. Besides the fact that it should be fun. One it demonstrates gratitude last week's episode we did a whole episode on the business impacts of gratitude. And when you share a gift whether that's a physical gift or an experience gift and we're going to Talk about all of those in a minute. It demonstrates gratitude. And it not only makes your client feel good, but you feel good. And there's nothing, there's nothing better than that. Also, depending on the gift that you give, sometimes it can be a conversation starter for your clients. Let's say you give them a nice candle or a really unique glassware, barware. And they're serving a friend in it. And then it can be a conversation starter, where they could start to say, Oh, yes, my, our interior designer just gifted that to us. Aren't they cute? Oh, tell me about your designer. That's not the only reason to give gifts. But it is one of the side perks if you just depending on what the gift is. And I just want you to I just wanted to remind you to save this list, because you can always come back to it if you need ideas for other times throughout the year that you might want to give a gift. So today we're gonna talk about how to organize your gift giving original gifts for the home. Lifestyle. Guests are thinking about, you know, if you're a client, you've done the job and they have everything they need in the home, you might want to think about what are some lifestyle gifts, if you work with an entertainer or traveler, a big reader, what are some gift ideas there, we're going to talk about subscription gifts, which can be really fun, as well as experience gifts, and even some budget friendly DIY gifts, which are really great if you want to make a large quantity of gifts that you can pass out to to your clients and other people that you work with. So the first step really is to get organized, get yourself organized. And start by understanding and figuring out what your gifting budget is overall. That's a really important thing to start with.

Otherwise, you can find yourself very quickly spending way more money than you intended. So setting a budget is important. You want to think about are you going to give all of your gifts all of your clients the same gifts? Or will you budget your gifts based on their level of engagement with you? So for example, I've had a handful of designer for a day clients this last year, would I give them the same type of gifts that I would my full service clients? Probably not. So think about if you want to sort of have a couple of different options, depending on your client, and how they what level of engagement you had with him. If you're going to customize gifts, which I love and recommend, meaning if you don't want to give all of your clients the same exact gifts if you're going to personalize the guests be really thoughtful about who they are, what do you know about them? What are they into? What are they enjoy? What have you heard and gifting personalized gifts? Really show somebody that you get them and that you know them and you care about them? And that's a really good feeling. Think about how you're going to deliver it? Is this going to be in person? Or are you going to ship it and so you want to just give yourself enough time if you're going to mail things to make sure that you have time to get it to them in time. And if you're going to do it in person, are you going to hand deliver it? Are you going to ask somebody else to do that for you? And if so just set aside time to make that happen. Get all of your mailing addresses together. I don't exactly have all of my clients email mailing addresses in a single spreadsheet. But I need to do that each year for any new clients. Think about your packaging, are you going to use traditional packaging or are you going to put together some branded packaging if you are I love Paper Source is a great place for pretty much every color under the sun of different types of packaging. So that could be one place where you shop for unique packaging that showcases your brand colors if that's something that you choose to do. Also thinking about a card what kind of a card are you going to include I highly recommend just a simple handwritten note to your client with whatever gifts you might share. Also be thinking about what other gifts you might be giving related to your business whether that's people that are referring you like your referral partners. Anybody that you have partnerships with your trades, your contractor, your architects are you going to be sending them any sort of gifts or just making sure that you're really using this opportunity to touch base and connect with all the people that are in your business world.

Alright, let's get to the fun stuff. We are going to start by talking about gifts for the home and if you are watching on YouTube, you will be able to see some of the gifts that I'm talking about. But if if you're not watching, it's okay still listen because we're going to I'm going to share a whole lot of ideas so you can just jog your memory and if you hear something you like you can always have a show notes to go back and find the links. So I love monogrammed gifts and Mark and Graham is a company that does every kind of monogrammed item under the sun and so I'm going to start with a couple of theirs. I love table linens. Here they have some really cute scalloped table linens that come in to so many different cute block prints. They are really fun and they're only $49 So super great price beautiful little gift also a wood and cheese board. So this is a cute The long oval a cheese board and you can put your client initials on the wooden part of the board and that is also a really there's three different variations really beautiful way to do that. And what would be super cute is to deliver this with some, you know a package of unique olives, some different salts or oils and vinegars you can. If you wanted to make a bigger package out of this, you certainly could but I love the the monogrammed feature there. Here's a cutting board with your clients initials monogrammed or this one says Watson established 2020. So if you have new homeowners this could be a really cool one. I love this one because it has a cellphone holder if you're cooking at the recipe I would, I would totally use that. Also really beautiful cocktail glasses with your clients monogram on them. I'm looking at some gold rim rocks, glasses that are absolutely stunning. You can also think about outside of the kitchen and entertaining space letterpress. Here you can get a number of different colors and fonts in it's really just a beautiful set of stationery that you could share with them. The other idea is candles which is nothing unique, right candles are one of the most obvious gifts to give. But I want to really encourage you to go Luxe with your candles if you're serving high end clients, something that maybe even they wouldn't splurge on and something just a little bit more elevated steer clear of target. You know, those are gifts that they you know stuff that they're maybe likely to buy themselves or there's just nothing unique about him. So find some that are really cool.

Here's just a couple of ideas. diptych has some of the most stunning fragrances out there. You can buy those through Neiman Marcus. I also love the candles from nest New York, their packaging is gorgeous. And their containers just look like little jewels, little pieces of art. So no matter where they put them in the home. They are they're really beautiful. And they last a long time. So they are expensive, but they do last a long time. And these are just super elevated, elegant fragrances that put off a lot of sent way more than you get from your typical big box store candles. So you know you get what you pay for with these things. And when you've been able to experience a really nice candle you kind of know the difference. And so I think these nice candles are are beautiful. I also love the I don't know if I'm gonna pronounce this right, Malin and goats Marlon and goats, they have a whole bunch of different types of candles. But for the client who might not want a floral fragrance that wants something more earthy, they've got some really cool fragrances. I personally have their leather and their cannabis one. And they both smells so good. I love although my oldest kid does not like the leather when they walked in, and they're like, What is that smell, but my husband and I love it. So that's a really good option for those that might not be once something more masculine, more earthy. All right, um, some other home gift ideas, a hand painted watercolor portrait of the home. So you, I don't know if y'all can see this on here, but I'm gonna try to make it bigger. You can send in to the artist a picture of your client's home and share that with them and they will produce a watercolor image picture of your client's home which can be a really special way to sort of celebrate and showcase a home a really lovely thing to do especially at the end of a project so that that can be a really great end of project gift to give as well. There's also a real putting in a link here to a pencil sketch, which is just a different sort of variation but also really beautiful houseplants if you've got a house plant lover, there's a couple of really great resources out there for you, Leon and George have ready to go you sort of pick your plant pick your pot, they're very minimalist, but they do have some really high quality and beautiful plants available. et Cie actually has insane, weird wild plants house plants with colors and textures you just have never seen before. But usually that's just for the plant and not for the packaging. So you might have a little bit of more work to do there. But the idea of giving a super unique rare house plant to I have a client in particular who's a house plant lover, they would go bananas for something like this, especially if it came in a really beautiful container. The sill is another one that has beautiful trees and potted plants and bushes. So those are as is another great option as well. Throws I think are really beautiful, luxurious gifts that you can give to your client. I love this ribbed knit cashmere throw from Keens. I have put this throw in some clients homes before and it is just absolutely luxurious and soft and it comes in some really beautiful subtle colors that will work in any interior. Also anthropology has these solid herringbone throws that are they come in just about every color and they're so beautiful, so beautiful. All right. Trays are also a great gift idea. Artemis is a company that I love. I have put some other light fixtures in my home but their decor and accessories and trays are beautiful Artemis is AR AR t e n e s t m they have so many different kinds of trays. I'm currently in love with this yellow oval tray that has a B on it. But if you just look at the trays category, there are so many trays and trays are so practical to because they can be used to corral things and make tabletops look put together. But there's just so many varieties from optimist, like leather, marble, stone, wood, acrylic, printed vintage, contemporary, they have it all and I really love their selections. So trays are a really beautiful gift idea, especially if you want to put something nice inside of it. A Katy climb is another 1k I M E. I hope I'm pronouncing that right Katie came she has some super cute acrylic glasses, excuse me acrylic trays in all different colors and varieties. The other thing that this that she offers is these city Tuol print printed prints that come in all different sorts of products. So for example, some of the city twelves that she has is Austin, Atlanta, California, Charleston, Chicago, Dallas, Florida, Fort Worth Hamptons, Houston, Marfa, Nashville, New Orleans, New York and San Antonio. So if you have clients in any of those cities, come check out her 12 shop. I'll just pop it into the Austin Tuol. And you can see if you're watching some of the examples, they come, they have trays, they have mugs, they have tea towels. So if you've got a client who is partial to the city that they live in, these can be really cute gifts as well. And then also mark and Graham has beautiful little ceramic catch all trays that you can monogram with your clients initials. So those are all gifts for the home so many to choose from. Next we are going to look at lifestyle gifts. So we're going to think about outside of the home. Well what are some gifts that you can give clients such as the traveler, the entertainer, the foodie, the folks that love game nights, the gardener, the tea lover, the book reader, right, we've got something for all of them. So we're going to go through these really quickly. Forthe traveler. Hold on. Make sure I got this right. Yeah, I do. Okay.

So let's see. Doodle. Let's go to the beginning here. Make sure y'all can see that. Okay, the commute clutch from Mark and Graham. I might buy this for myself because I'm absolutely obsessed. I love organizing tools and supplies. But this is a leather pouch that zips up and it's got little pockets inside to roll up your all of your tech cords and phones and all of that and you can also monogram it so that's fun. Also, for the traveler, a monogrammed luggage tag would be a beautiful fun, simple gift and super affordable to moving into the entertainer. So I love to sort of bundled gift baskets together. So taking sort of similar items and taking two or three things and putting them into a gift basket together. So one bundle for an entertainer that I came up with was these cute little scallop trim cocktail napkins. It's a set of four. I love these from Schoolhouse electric. They won't sorry, it's only called schoolhouse now. They come in all different colors. You can also find these on Etsy but I think they're super cute especially if you are going to pair them with say some glass stirs for your drinks to sort of mark the different drinks. And also I love love love these stemless martini glasses from toss wear. So if you haven't heard of toss wear, check them out. They're so cool. I'm gonna read this they're made of ultra durable, super resilient and nearly indestructible Triton material. It's crystal clear and feels just like glass and with a superb hand weight. And so basically it looks like glass it feels like last, but they're not breakable and I think they're really cool and the mix colors that stemless martini glasses are really fun. So if you wanted to mix together some of those items to make a cute little bundle let's say your client is a is a mixologist. I think those will make some cute gifts for them. For your whiskey enthusiast I am so interested in this corkcicle Whiskey wedge glass basically you freeze the glass with this little wedge in it and so it creates it's hard to explain if you're not watching it but how half of the glass is a wedge of ice you can pour your whiskey in it and it stays chilled without watering down your whiskey. So for the whisky enthusiast, that is a fun one.

Next we have for your foodie, the I love, this would be a gift I would personally love. But all of oil and vinegar sets are so cool, bright land if you've never heard of them, they make really cool infused olive oils and vinegars, but their packaging is so fun and so, so beautiful. And during the holidays, they put together these mini Art series where it gives you a little like mini sets in my ni mini sets of their different flavored olive oils and its flavors like garlic, chilli, lemon, basil, all of those food baskets you can pre purchase ready to go food baskets. So if you're short on time, this is something that is a really wonderful gift because let's think about it. A lot of times clients have more guests than usual around the holidays. So having these things that they can pull from and pull out quickly if they've got guests over is a really lovely idea. Now if you've got more time than money and you want to put together a food basket, I recommend world market they have baskets with all of the packaging that you need to create a gift basket ready in their store or you can buy them online. But then their food section is just so fun. You can find all kinds of jams, crackers, meats, olives, cheeses, sea salts, teas, you name it, so you can really come up with a custom gift basket for your clients much more affordably than those ready made ones and still have it look super nice.

so some other gift basket ideas, self care for that homebody who just likes to sink in and take care of themselves on the weekends which who doesn't love to do that you can make or buy gift baskets. So box flex is actually a company that makes all kinds of gift box gift boxes. I've received one I received a tea box from them from somebody that I worked with and it was lovely. So I've seen their packaging firsthand. It's really It feels heavy duty like everything feels really substantial and really elegant. So box Fox is a great A Gift Box option. But you can also make your own gift boxes. Think about putting in teas, bath salts, and books, lotions, potions, essential oils, eye pillows, you can really have fun with it. But for the for the person, the client in your life that you know loves to just get and take some time for themselves. A self care gift bought gift basket would be a really fun idea. I could certainly have a lot of clients who are big tea lovers. A couple of options. Again, you can DIY and make your own gift basket and some fun ideas would be put in some really beautiful high end unique, yummy teas. But along with some local honey and maybe it was a really beautiful handmade mug from a local Potter that you know of. I think just those three things together would be a really beautiful gift basket. But you can also find collections and gift boxes online. This one from T drop has different sampler kits that you can purchase. So thinking about your T folks there. Another really fun gift box idea for your clients is a game night box. And what you could do here is find a really unique game, party game, adult game or a family game just depends on who your client is. And put that in there with some gourmet popcorn and some gourmet chocolate or some fun throwback candies. Think about your client, what do you think they might like? And put in a game some popcorn and some candies and really make it fun but some fun games that you might consider is happy hour edition from actually curious, which is kind of a light hearted get to know you kind of game monitors I have not played monikers. But New York Times calls this the perfect party game.

So I'm intrigued by that. Esther paroles. Where should we begin game a game of stories is one that we own. And we absolutely love we play it with friends. We play it my husband and I play it together. We've played with our kids too. And it is just a it's a it's a game where you pull out cards. And it I'm butchering this, but basically, it helps these stories to come out and stories that help you learn more about the other person. And it's a very personal game. So we we play it with people that we're really close with not strangers. But if you know Esther Perel, she is an intimacy expert. So that's what this game is. And I think it's a wonderful gift for any couple last little bit is I want to talk about subscription gifts. So subscription gifts are a really great idea because you can send a gift that they receive monthly, and they typically start with three months subscriptions and then or you can choose more 612, whatever. But a three month subscription to any of these could be a really, really fun idea. So the first one, you know that comes to mind is floral, floral arrangements, you can send your clients monthly floral arrangements, you can send your clients monthly house plants, there's one from a company called rooted that offers monthly subscriptions. You can do a wine and cheese pairing. So Harry and David do a three month wine and cheese pairing where each month they'll get a bottle of wine and a cheese to go with it. I think that sounds like a ton of fun. Oh, Jenny's ice cream. I just found this and I already have a client that I'm like, they're definitely getting this if you have not tried Jenny's ice cream that you are missing out. It is so delicious. So she has her pint club and you can choose three, six or 12 months and every month, they receive four flavors. So that was really fun idea. Again, William Sonoma offers a three months of cheese and charcuterie subscription, which if you guys haven't guessed, I love cheese. So I love this and I know a lot of my clients would Atlas coffee club. If you have a coffee connoisseur. Consider Atlas coffee clubs gift subscription. Again, you can do three months. And you the packaging on these are so beautiful. So if you're a package junkie like I am, you will really enjoy the Atlas coffee club subscription. This is probably one of the most creative gift subscriptions that I saw that I thought was so fun. It's from uncommongoods. It's called the blind date with book subscription. And essentially, if you've got a client who is an avid book reader, they will get I think they get to pick the genre, right and then every month for three months they get a secret book plus some snacks and so I just thought what a fun thing to get in the mail. Okay masterclass. So if you've got a A client who is an avid learner just constantly learning, consider giving them a subscription to masterclass if you don't want master classes, it is essentially instructors, famous instructors teaching topics of their expertise. And I have taken Sara Blakely. He's self made entrepreneurship class, Ron Finley is gardening class, I've taken tan Francis style class. I've taken so many classes. I absolutely love master class. So these are really fun. And it's I think it's a really unique gift idea. All right, alright, we are almost done here. Next, I wanted to just think about experiences. If you know that your client doesn't want physical things, and you don't want to give physical things, maybe you want to give an experience. Consider some of these options. Create Academy offers a floristry class. So if you've got a client that you think would love to learn how to make their own floral arrangements, that would be really fun. Crit Academy has so many different classes, so you could look and see what they might have that might be a good fit for your clients. You also might consider a membership to a local art museum. Zoo, Botanic Gardens, think about you know, if you're if you have a client who has kids getting them a zoo membership. Oftentimes, these memberships are less than $100. And I think that is something that they can use throughout the year. And every time they go, they're going to think of you and so I think memberships to those kind of local places is a really fun idea. Another idea for experiences is to give them like a certificate to a cooking class. So we have a place here called stir. I'm sure you guys have them. Probably no matter where you live, you could probably find a cooking class. I know William Sonoma was doing them for a little while. But what a fun way to help, like you know, give them a fun experience. They can learn any skill, they connect with one another. If you've never done a cooking class, they are so much fun. They are absolutely just a blast. But you can also look there's mixology classes, there's candle making classes, what kind of local classes are available, that you think your client might like. Okay, so that's the list but I just wanted to say a couple quick things before we wrap up. Maybe you also need to make a whole lot of gifts, you need to provide a whole lot of gifts. Doing all of these individual gifts for everyone in your business world might not be necessarily affordable, or budget friendly. And so I think there are a couple of homemade gift options that you could think about. One would be a food bundle so you can I'm going to just open this up you can DIY herb infused oil, so you can infuse olive oils with different tastes like garlic, rosemary, lemon, thyme, chili. So find some recipes for that online put them in some really beautiful packaging and pair that with let's say an herb butter, you know that you make there are recipes for herbs butters, Oliver herbs butters are really lovely for putting onwarm biscuits are our bread, especially during the holiday season.

But you know putting that with olive oil with a nice loaf of rustic bread in a basket is so special and so lovely. And you can easily you know make a batch of 25 of these and then pass them out to the people in your business world. And other ideas body care if that's something that excites you make see.com ma ke S Y. I'm just going to warn you if you end up spending hundreds of dollars on their websites don't blame me because it is so hard not to you will just okay, here's what happened to me. I went on their website about this time last year. And I got so obsessed with the idea of making candles. I bought the starter kit all the things and we made candles and it was a blast at but it's really high quality stuff. It's not cheap, but it's also really well. I mean, it's a really high quality stuff. It's not cheap paraffin. So, makes you.com has some super cool DIY kit material so you can get everything from the vessels. You can get the different kinds of wicks they have the woodworks that crackle right? They've got them in wood. They've got them in black. So you can totally customize these you can make them look like your brand if you want. And then of course they've got the fragrance kit so you can pick fragrance that's a customized fragrance that's your brand so that's something that you can do. But in addition to the candle Making kits that makes the offers they also offer all sorts of perfume room spray face lip Bath and Body haircare and and just a huge variety. So you can really go crazy if you wanted to make a whole bunch of perhaps bodycare gifts as well. But I love Mixi, because it's really a one stop shop.

They've got everything and their vessels are so beautiful. They're so beautiful. That's all I've got. You know, I think that this is a different type of episode. It's Malta, Malta, what am I trying to say? Multimedia? Right. So if you've heard me, if you've just been listening today, go back to the blog post, find the link. And you can find links to everything that I talked about today. You can also find the YouTube video where you can see all of the things that I shared with you today. But I hope most of all, you have fun gifting. I hope that you can find joy and gratitude in the process of doing it and that it doesn't become this burden, or this big expectation. You don't have to spend a ton of money on these things. But I do feel strongly that when we share our gratitude through gifting with clients and the people that we work with, it's it's just a it's a good feeling. And it makes you feel good. So you know, think about your budget, get yourself organized, and get out there and start gifting. And I hope most of all you have fun with it. And don't forget to get yourself a little something because you have worked hard this year, too. I know it. I know what are you wouldn't be here. Alright, that's all for now. See you soon. Bye. Hey, friend, thank you so much for letting me spend a part of this day with you. I'm so passionate about helping designers like you. And I believe in a rising tide that when one of us does well, we all do better. So if you share this attitude of abundance with me, I want you to do just one little thing. Please share this episode with someone using might love it. And if you're feeling extra generous today, go ahead and take just 30 seconds to open your podcast app and leave us a five star rating and review. It's free for you to do and it helps me to be able to keep making more episodes and resources for you. However you choose to help please know I appreciate you so very much. Thank you, my friend. Have a wonderful rest of your day. I'll see you soon.