Engraving - the best engravable promotional gifts2024-09-03

Engraving is one of the most popular branding technologies, allowing us to decorate wood, metal, glass, ceramics, and even synthetic leather, genuine leather, cardboard, or silicone products with your company logo or corporate message. The popularity of this method is no coincidence: its durability and timeless style have long made it superior to other techniques. Historically, engraving was a labor-intensive manual process, so when the opportunity arose to mechanize it, its use quickly expanded to an industrial scale.

Today, with the development of laser engraving machines, the process involves burning or etching the material rather than traditional physical engraving. The durability of engraving sets it apart from all other decoration or branding methods. Are you planning for the long term? Do you want your company gifts to be admired in a museum centuries from now? That might be an exaggeration, but if you're aiming for long-lasting marketing impact, choose engraved gifts for your colleagues or clients that they will enjoy using. Engraved gifts guarantee lasting use, increasing the chances of your brand making a lasting impression.

The Engraving Process

What do you need to provide your company with durable, decorated items such as engraved metal keychains, engraved wooden pen sets, or engraved leather wallets for your employees or clients? First and foremost, the decision, as an engravable glass or keychain is no more expensive than items decorated using other methods. Engraving creates an elegant effect that gives a sense of timelessness. When choosing a product to use as a promotional item, consider the dimensions of your logo and the intricacy of your design. For instance, an engravable wooden ballpoint pen offers limited surface area, but if your logo's size permits or if you want to give personalized pens engraved with employees' names, it can result in a beautiful gift. If you need a larger surface area, you can also request engraving on the wooden or bamboo pen box. Laser engraving on metal pens yields sharper lines. Smaller fonts and intricate graphics can be engraved on metal surfaces due to the homogeneity of the material, unlike wood or bamboo products.

To begin, select your product and provide us with your logo or the text you want engraved. We will then create a design draft, which we will adjust as needed until you are satisfied. Once the draft is approved, we program the engraving machine. The engraver will then inspect the product-whether it's a glass or metal thermos-determine the appropriate engraving intensity, set the logo size, and prepare the product holder. During this process, the engraver may inform you about the color that will appear beneath the engraved surface. For example, the yellowish hue of copper in certain pens may not align with your company's branding. Our sales team will highlight this to ensure the final product meets your expectations.

Depending on the fragility of the products, the unpacking and repacking processes can involve varying degrees of complexity. The large size of some items may prevent them from being placed inside the engraving machine. In such cases, a metal plate can be used for branding wine sets or glassware. After engraving the plate with a name or logo, it can be affixed to a large wooden or metal box. BBQ set metal cases are a good example of this. When this solution is chosen, there's no need to unpack every component of the promotional gift; the engraved metal plate can be attached directly.

The time required for laser engraving depends on the material of the product and the size of the engraving. Harder materials take longer to engrave; for example, engraving a stainless-steel water bottle is more time-consuming than engraving an aluminium pen because of the material's hardness and the larger engravable surface area available, which should be fully utilized. Glass and crystal can also be engraved, but the process takes longer due to the material's fragility.

Why Invest in Engraving?

Most engravable gifts are not only made from noble materials, making them durable, but they also convey a sense of premium quality. Metal and wood materials often suggest a higher-end product. Giving a bamboo pen or keychain, for example, signals that the company cares about the environment and values sustainability. Engraving these products is not only aesthetically pleasing but can also be cost-effective, as engraving does not require the preparation of stencils or screens, just setting up the engraving machine. The setup process is quicker and more resource-efficient than other methods' preparation steps. Engraving is particularly recommended for smaller quantities, where the lower preparation costs offer the best return on investment.

Personalized name engraving deserves special mention. Displaying names on corporate gifts is almost exclusively achieved through engraving. If you want to ensure that your corporate gift is never discarded or regifted, engrave the recipient's name on the product alongside your company logo and message. If someone is buying metal ballpoint pens for their employees, engraved with each person's name, there is virtually no alternative to engraving. A pen engraved with a personal name will likely be cherished and used for a long time.

Engraving metal pens and keychains offers additional benefits: there's no drying time, so the product can be packaged and shipped immediately, unlike pad printing, which requires a 4-day drying period on metal surfaces before repackaging is possible.

Engraving is also durable. Engraved wooden or metal keychains will never lose their engraving, unlike printed designs that can wear off, providing a result that lasts a lifetime.

The Best Engraved Gifts

The best engraved gifts are those carefully chosen for a specific target audience. For example, you can give engraved gifts to men by choosing a toolset with sufficient metal surface area for engraving. Various tape measures are available if you want to surprise male employees or clients whose work or hobbies align with your product. You can gift your colleagues custom engraved wooden or metal keychains. If your target audience is related to sports, metal water bottles or flasks can be engraved, even around the entire surface. If you want to present a company introduction or other data at a conference, you can do so on a USB flash drive, engraved with your company logo, the event logo, or information relevant to the data being presented. Our laser engraving machines can bring any technically feasible idea to life.

Conclusion

From a marketing perspective, laser-engraved pens, keychains, bottles, flasks, and wine sets convey classic elegance and reliability. A metal pen set engraved with your company's logo creates a prestigious, timeless impression. A bamboo speaker engraved with your logo communicates durability.

Get in touch with us, and with over 30 years of experience, we'll take care of everything from product design to packaging and delivery. Thanks to our significant inventory, you'll surely find what you need, whether it's an engraved wooden pen, metal thermos, or any other promotional gift to enhance your brand. In our workshop, we can print, burn, and engrave anything on just about anything.

You can read a comprehensive guide on other available branding technologies in this blog post.

Featured image source: Freepik. All other images are our own photos.