How to Sell Personalised Engraved Gifts in Your Shop

To sell personalised engraved gifts without making them yourself, stock pieces with an engravable base, take the wording on a simple order card that the customer checks and signs off, and agree the ordering process with your supplier in advance. Jodie's Wood Studio has nine animal pieces with bases that can be laser-engraved with a name, a date or a short message, and trade enquiries are open to UK shops.

Why add personalised gifts to a shop range?

A personalised gift answers a question that plain giftware cannot: how do I make this present feel chosen for one particular person? A name or a date on the base turns a small animal into a keepsake, and keepsakes are bought for weddings, anniversaries, new homes, retirements and the loss of a pet. For a shop, that means a customer has a reason to buy now, rather than to browse and come back.

Personalisation also helps a shop stand apart from online sellers. A customer who can hold the piece, choose the animal and talk through the wording with a person is getting something a web page does not offer. It supports a shop's role as a place to ask for advice.

The practical difficulty is that most independent shops cannot engrave on site. The simplest solution is to stock pieces that arrive with an engravable base and to arrange the engraving through the supplier, so your team only has to take the order accurately.

Which wooden animals have a base that can be engraved?

Nine pieces in our range are tagged as engravable. For pets, they include the Smiling Ginger Cat, the Black Bombay Cat, the Border Collie on Paw Base and the Dog with Bandana, which comes in three coat colours. The Dog Couple Gift Set is a pair of dogs on a shared base that can be personalised, and is popular for weddings, anniversaries and Father's Day.

Beyond pets, the Snowy Owl on Engraved Base is a white low-poly owl whose base can be engraved with a name, a date or a short message. The Natural Wood Fox, the White Horse, Head Up and the Capybara also have bases that can be engraved. Only pieces tagged as engravable should be sold as personalised, and the others should be sold as they are.

Our personalised gifts page lists the engravable pieces as customers see them, which is useful when you are explaining the idea to your own team.

• Pets: Smiling Ginger Cat, Black Bombay Cat, Border Collie, Dog with Bandana
• Gift sets: Dog Couple Gift Set
• Other animals: Snowy Owl, Natural Wood Fox, White Horse, Capybara

How do you take personalisation orders accurately?

Accuracy is everything with engraved gifts, because a spelling mistake cannot be undone. Use a simple order card with three fields: the exact text, the product and the customer's contact details. Ask the customer to write the wording in capital letters themselves, and to confirm it by signing the card.

Read the wording back to the customer before they leave, and check unusual spellings, apostrophes and date formats. A date written as 03/04 can mean two different things in different countries, so write the month in words. Keep a copy of the card with the order, so that any query can be settled by looking at what the customer wrote.

Keep the text short. A name, a date or a short message is what the base is designed for, so steer customers away from long sentences. Ask the supplier about any limit on characters before you promise a particular wording.

What should you agree with your supplier first?

Before offering personalisation, agree the process in writing. Ask how orders for engraved pieces are placed, whether they can be combined with standard stock orders, how long engraving takes and what happens if a piece arrives damaged or the wording needs correcting. We do not publish a timescale in advance, because it depends on the order, so ask in your enquiry.

Decide how you will explain timing to customers. Customers will accept a wait if they are told clearly at the point of sale, and they will be unhappy if they are not. A line on the order card saying that personalised pieces take extra time and are not available the same day is sensible, and the length of the wait should come from your supplier.

Be clear about returns. A personalised item is made for one person, so agree with your supplier and put in writing how your shop will handle a change of mind or an error.

How should you display and describe personalised gifts?

Show customers what personalisation looks like. Keep one sample piece on display with a name and a date on the base, if your supplier can provide one, and put a short card beside it that says what the options are. A customer who can see the finished idea is far more likely to ask about it than one who is only told it exists.

Group the engravable pieces together and label them clearly, so that customers know which animals can carry a name. Pieces that cannot be engraved should be kept in a separate group, because a customer who falls in love with an animal and then learns it cannot be personalised will be disappointed. Our retail page at personalised gifts uses the same split.

Suggest occasions in plain words. The Dog Couple Gift Set is popular for weddings, anniversaries and Father's Day, a Black Bombay Cat suits a black-cat owner who has lost a pet, and the Snowy Owl suits a name or date on a quiet, wintry piece. Do not stretch the claims further than this, and keep the card short enough to read in a few seconds.

How do you start trade orders for personalised pieces?

Send a trade enquiry and say that you would like to offer engraved pieces. Tell us which animals you are interested in and how many customers you expect to ask for personalisation. We reply with trade prices, which are not published, and with the next steps. Pieces ship from our UK warehouse.

Read the wholesale page for more on the businesses our trade service is for, including gift shops, garden centres, pet shops, vet practices, museum shops, online shops and corporate gifting.

Frequently asked questions