This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of ProformaGreen, an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy. John’s blogs are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry.
A number of clients and readers have asked us about ideas for eco-friendly customer gifts – it’s the season after all. I wanted to write a couple of posts talking about items that have done well in the past for clients or that are new for this year and doing well so far.
I also wanted to break this blog into categories so I will start out with BAMBOO.
Top 3 Bamboo Ideas.
1) Flash Drives – Bamboo flash drives, along with their less green brethren in maple, cherry and walnut have been very popular as client gifts this year. At about $9.50 for a 1GB drive with your company or organization’s logo they are a low cost high perceived-value gift. Some clients have gotten very creative and recorded greetings or short videos to their customers and placed them directly on the drives. Again, no one ever throws away a flash drive, they are very useful for office and home, business and recreation.
2) Bamboo Robes – 100% bamboo robes (in common colors like sand & sage) have a velvet soft finish and provide instant warmth and incredible absorbency. A little more pricey at around $65 with your embroidered logo, this is a gift that really stands out. Also is it an item that is going to end up in the home and be used nearly every day. We often embroider client logos on towels and robes in the color of the towel or robe itself so that the client’s logo is very subtle and folks don’t feel like they are wearing a billboard. We have also had clients ask for just “THANK YOU” to be embroidered on the towels.
3) Cutting Boards – Like the robes, cutting boards are a practical, if not so glamorous gift. They normally stay in the customer’s home and are used everyday. There is a very wide selection of Bamboo boards available as promotional items. Most are laser engraved with the client’s logo. You can get plain boards, boards with cheese sets, boards with carving sets, .etc. There is really a wide selection here. Expect costs between $18 – $48.
Please share with us and our readers any items that made your client gift list. If you want any further information on items mentioned here please contact info@proformagreen.com.
Adventures in Green Marketing 
how do i order the bamboo flash drives?
i think its a BRILLIANT idea. Thanks for this posting!!
Hi, the wooden/bamboo usb flash memory drives are cool. We a varity of them in stock, you can view them here http://www.hdc.uk.com/flash_memory_usb.shtml. They are growing in popularity.
Thanks Sam. For those in the US, we have a flyer on the drives at http://proformagreen.com/eco-flashdrive.shtml.
Nice article. Bamboo flash drives are certainly a great gift idea. We offer a large selection on our site, http://ecopromosonline.com/flash-drives-c-52.html. As Sam mentioned, they are definitely growing in popularity. Over time, hopefully more and more people will go green!