Your giftware business has grown. Has your marketing kept up?

I’ve spent a significant part of my career working in the giftware industry, both within businesses and alongside the people running them. During my time as Chair of the Giftware Association, I had the opportunity to work with businesses of very different sizes and backgrounds, which gave me a valuable perspective on the opportunities and challenges facing the industry. It’s an experience I’ve carried with me throughout my career, and one that continues to influence how I approach marketing today.

One of the things I’ve always admired about giftware is the entrepreneurial nature of the people involved. There are some remarkable businesses that have grown through excellent product development, long-standing retailer relationships and a strong instinct for what their customers want. Many started relatively small, built their reputation over years and developed into substantial wholesale operations, often without having anything resembling a formal marketing strategy.

This isn’t a criticism. If you’ve built a successful business by developing products that sell and establishing strong relationships with retailers, there’s an understandable tendency to concentrate on doing more of what works. The business grows, the team expands and new opportunities emerge, but the focus generally remains on delivering the next collection, securing the next account and keeping the operation moving.

Over time, though, the business becomes considerably more complex, and the way marketing operates doesn’t always develop alongside it. There are more products to manage, different types of retail customers to support, longer planning cycles and an increasing number of people involved in getting everything to market.

The marketing team is probably busier than it’s ever been, yet senior management may still be questioning what marketing is actually contributing to commercial performance.

Having seen businesses at different stages of growth, and now working alongside established wholesalers through Marketing 101, I think this is something the industry should be paying more attention to.

When growth outpaces the way marketing operates

One pattern I’ve encountered repeatedly is how organically marketing departments tend to develop. Someone originally joins to manage brochures, exhibitions and marketing materials. As the business grows, they take on social media, email campaigns and website updates. Product photography becomes a bigger undertaking, the number of collections increases and the sales team needs more support for different types of retail customers.

Before long, there’s a marketing department with a significant workload and responsibility for a considerable amount of the company’s external communication. The people within it may be delivering excellent work, but the department can still be operating in much the same way as it did when the business was half the size.

I’ve seen how frustrating this can become. Senior management starts asking what return the business is getting from marketing, while the marketing team can point to an enormous amount of work being completed. There’s a perfectly reasonable argument on both sides, although neither necessarily addresses the underlying issue of how marketing is being directed and what the business expects it to achieve.

For me, the question is whether marketing has been given a sufficiently clear commercial purpose.

A business might invest heavily in trade shows, produce impressive catalogues and maintain a strong presence across its digital channels. These activities can all be valuable, but their contribution needs to be considered against the company’s wider objectives.

If the priority is developing larger retail accounts, marketing should be helping the business make progress with those customers. If independent retailers are ordering less frequently, there should be a conversation about customer behaviour, communication and retention. If the company is investing in a new product category, marketing needs to understand that opportunity early enough to influence how it’s introduced to the market.

These are the sorts of discussions I’d expect to see shaping the marketing plan, rather than taking place after the activities and budgets have already been agreed.

Has marketing become the department everyone sends their requests to?

I suspect this scenario will be familiar to quite a few people working in wholesale businesses. Sales needs an updated presentation for an important customer. Product development has samples arriving that need photography. The next major exhibition is approaching, with a stand, brochure and promotional campaign to organise. Meanwhile, someone is asking for more social media content or another customer email.

None of these requests are unreasonable, and most are essential parts of keeping the business moving. The difficulty comes when the marketing team’s priorities are determined almost entirely by whichever request is most urgent, leaving very little time to plan properly or consider how the work fits into the bigger picture.

I’ve worked with some very capable marketing people who spend so much time responding to the immediate needs of other departments that they rarely have the opportunity to question a brief, suggest a different approach or contribute to the decisions that shape the work. The business is paying for their experience but isn’t necessarily making the best use of it.

It’s also one of the reasons I’m cautious when I hear that a company needs to recruit more people into marketing because the existing team is struggling to keep up. Sometimes additional resource is absolutely the right answer, but I’d want to understand why the team is under so much pressure before assuming headcount is the problem.

It may be that priorities aren’t being agreed properly, there’s insufficient forward planning or different departments are making conflicting demands because nobody has established which activities matter most. These are problems that won’t automatically disappear when another person joins the team.

I’ve also noticed that marketing can become an easy place to direct frustration when commercial performance isn’t where the business wants it to be. Sales may be slower than expected, a product launch hasn’t delivered the anticipated orders or an exhibition hasn’t generated the results everyone hoped for. Marketing is one of the most visible functions in the business, so it’s understandable that people look there for answers.

However, those outcomes are influenced by decisions across product development, pricing, distribution and the wider sales operation. If marketing is expected to make a meaningful contribution to growth, it needs to have enough understanding of those decisions to support them effectively.

You probably don’t need to rebuild the marketing department

When a business recognises that its marketing needs to develop, the temptation is often to look immediately at what needs to be added. Perhaps another person is needed, or a new CRM platform. Maybe the business should change agencies, invest in more automation or recruit a senior marketing director.

Some of those changes may be appropriate, but I’d be reluctant to recommend any of them before spending time understanding how the business currently operates.

Through Marketing 101, we’re increasingly working with established businesses that have already achieved significant commercial success but recognise that their marketing function needs to mature. Our starting point is generally to understand the business itself, rather than arrive with a predetermined list of marketing services.

That means looking at the company’s ambitions over the next couple of years, where growth needs to come from, how marketing priorities are currently agreed and how much of the team’s workload is planned in advance. It also means understanding where the gaps sit, how people work together and identifying the things that are already working well.

I’ve always felt that last point deserves more attention. Established businesses often have excellent people and processes that have developed through years of practical experience. There’s little sense in disregarding those strengths simply because somebody has arrived with a new strategy.

Our approach is to understand what the business needs for its next stage and introduce the necessary improvements in a sensible order. We might begin with a proper review of the marketing function and the commercial priorities it needs to support, followed by changes to planning, reporting or team responsibilities. Improvements to digital systems, customer data and automation can then be considered as part of that wider programme.

An established wholesale business can’t simply stop operating while somebody redesigns its marketing strategy. Trade shows still need organising, products still need launching and retailers still need supporting, so any changes have to be introduced alongside the everyday demands of the business.

In some cases, that work benefits from experienced marketing leadership without requiring a full-time marketing director. A fractional Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) can work alongside the existing leadership and marketing teams, helping to establish priorities, challenge assumptions and guide the development of the marketing function.

I also think there’s real value in having that support involved in implementation rather than simply producing a strategy document and leaving the business to work out what happens next. The strategy needs to be realistic for the people, systems and resources available, with enough ongoing involvement to make sure the improvements become part of how the business operates.

The next stage of growth deserves a different conversation

One of the things my time as Chair of the Giftware Association reinforced was just how varied the businesses within this industry are. There are founder-led brands, long-established family businesses, international wholesalers and companies supplying everything from independent gift shops to major retail groups.

A business with £3m turnover and a strong network of independent stockists may need a very different marketing approach to a £15m wholesaler managing multiple brands, international distribution and national retail accounts. What they have in common is the need for marketing to support the way their business actually works.

I also think we should give more credit to the experience that already exists within these companies. The people who have built successful giftware businesses generally understand their products, customers and markets extremely well. The commercial knowledge is often there, even if it isn’t always reflected in a formal marketing strategy.

The opportunity is to bring that knowledge into a more coordinated approach, with marketing having clearer priorities and a greater contribution to the direction of the business.

If you’ve grown a successful wholesale business over the last five or ten years, I think it’s worth considering how much the marketing function has changed during that time.

Are the team, structure and processes still appropriate for the size and ambitions of the business today? Does marketing have enough opportunity to plan, challenge and contribute, or is most of its time spent responding to requests?

The answers may reveal that you already have much of what you need. It might simply be time to manage it differently.

About Marketing 101

At Marketing 101, we work with established UK giftware and wholesale businesses to develop marketing strategies that support their wider commercial ambitions.

Our team brings extensive hands-on experience of the giftware industry. We provide strategic consultancy, fractional CMO support and phased marketing development, working alongside existing teams to improve planning, commercial alignment and marketing effectiveness.

If your business has grown considerably but your marketing approach hasn’t quite kept pace, we’d welcome a conversation about where you are now and what needs to change.