Diwali, the festival of lights, is celebrated all over India and around the globe where NRIs are settled in larger numbers. Diwali, also known as ‘Deepawali’, originates from the word ‘deep’ meaning the light from a row of tiny diyas in order to brighten the lives of each and every one as well as to spread positivity around. In essence, Diwali is celebrated to spread the light of love and hope.

To add value to your gift giving ritual, The Mint publication unveiled more than hundred enterprising ideas. It carried a special edition of the Lounge section devoted entirely to the tradition of gift giving in Diwali.

A series of special features covered a whole gamut of ideas - from environment-friendly products and almost-free gift ideas to splurge-worthy goodie. The idea was to find festive bounty for every budget.

The introductory essay noted: “No matter how lean the year, this is not the time to scrimp. In fact, it’s the season for some serious retail therapy. That’s why we went shopping for some beautiful goodies. There’re price tags suitable for every pocket.”

They made a conscious effort to steer clear of the diyas and candles. Their list covered the whole gamut of items from nice eco-friendly products and jewelry to beautiful handicrafts and fabulous almost-free gifting ideas.

Enlarging the spirit of gifting and giving, the Lounge team noted: “We also believe Diwali is not merely about exchanging gifts. It’s also a time to share our good fortune with those who may not perhaps have as much. Hence they also covered various ideas on giving gifts that have the power to change lives.

The Mint accumulated for readers to gift your near and dear ones to bring smiles on their faces. Click on the link below to check about enterprising gift ideas:

http://www.livemint.com/2009/10/09203732/104-ideas-to-be-everyone8217.html#

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Raksha Bandhan sure is the most awaited occasion siblings look forward to. Apart from being an opportunity to show their deepest feelings for each other, the festival also presents an exciting opportunity to exchange heart-felt gifts. Insightful articles appearing in the mainstream newspapers tracked this trend.

Take a look what this ToI report has to say, “There has been an evident transition in the gifting trend on Rakhi. Forget those 1,000 bucks brothers dished out from their pockets. Rakhi gifting is much bigger now.”

Owing to several exciting promotions, the concept of gifting has clearly changed, Attractive sales ‘n’ deals are now arranged to lure discerning siblings on the eve of d Rakhi.

New Delhi based model-cum-DJ Barkha Kaul was quoted as saying, “Earlier it was only some cash sisters got from their brothers. Now things have changed. It’s more about showing off. One can say that sisters have become much more demanding because the advertising industry is getting stronger with several new packages and promotions designed for Raksha Bandhan. In my case, my brother being ten years younger to me and not earning yet, I didn’t really expect anything from him. Instead I like buying stuff for him.”

Another interesting report, titled ‘unique gift this raksha bandhan’ listed some off-beat ideas that brothers considered to please their sisters. Among them were gift ideas such as pampering package at the spa, an exclusive trip to foreign shores, a dental care package, a hamper with beverages, confectionaries, and health food items, as well as cell phone coded with vouchers that can be used to buy a wide range of items at various online and retail outlets.

Take the case of a new job aspirant Devarshi Shag who gifted his sister a unique spa experience at Udaipur’s Angsana Spa (Radisson Plaza). “She loves pampering herself, so I felt this would be the perfect gift for her,” the proud brother was quoted as saying.

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In our previous blog, we carried details of a news report, stating that the Zoozoo creator Vodafone Essar intends to release official Zoozoo merchandise with the help of leading retail chain Shopper’s Stop.

Branded character merchandise is a territory not many retailers want to tread upon because of the peculiar market conditions. One of them is intellectual property issues. Customer care associate & chief executive for Shoppers Stop, Govind Shrikhande, elaborated that character merchandising is rather easy to copy. There isn’t much control over violation of IP rights.

According to him, film merchandise has a shelf life of roughly two to three months whereas character merchandising is more challenging, particularly if the official merchandise is costly, thereby prompting the demand for their cheaper knock-offs. He estimates that the branded merchandise market is in the region of around Rs 1,050 crore.

Character merchandise has worked successfully in case of the Disney and other you can make your brother, both a cricket and Zoozoo fan, happy with a ravishing Zoozoo rakhi like SpongeBob, SquarePants, Ben 10, and Hanuman etc. The official Zoozoo fan club page on Facebook has over 3 lakh fans. Such branded merchandise works well for brand promotion. It reinforces the image of the brand.

E-commerce site Indiangiftsportal.com stocks products that feature the Zoozoos. Its MD Manan Sharma claims that his efforts to get an official license for Zoozoo merchandise failed. But he is not worried about infringement of IP rights? According to him, they are simply making the Zoozoos popular so there shouldn’t be a problem?

On the other hand, online merchandiser Myntra Designs Ltd has been a tad more cautious. Their creative designers contribute their own ideas and the site has rejected several Zoozoos based T-shirt designs owing to copyright issues.

Irrespective of pros and cons of the debate, the good part is that you can make your brother, both a cricket and Zoozoo fan, happy with a ravishing Zoozoo rakhi.  

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After making their dazzling debut on television during the Indian Premier League (IPL) second edition concluded earlier this year, the highly adorable and popular egg-headed Zoozoos have found their way onto birthday cakes, T-shirts, shoes, comic strips, newspaper mastheads, wedding cards, key chains and now even rakhis. Smart local and Chinese marketers are fast cashing in on their rapport with fans.

E-commerce site Indiangiftsportal.com stocks products that feature the Zoozoos. In a span of fortnight, the website sold over 100 Zoozoo rakhis, according to its MD Manan Sharma. The Zoozoo rakhi costs Rs300 and includes a handmade box, a card, along with credit card and courier charges. The cute Zoozoo characters are made and sourced from China, whereas the attractive rakhi ribbons and threads have been added here.

Meanwhile, their original creator Vodafone Essar will soon come up with official Zoozoo merchandise in collaboration with retail chain Shopper’s Stop. A senior official from the shopping chain was quoted as saying in The Mint publication that they are already in discussions and are very close to finalizing the deal.

The development was confirmed by a sr. advertising executive, according to whom Shopper’s Stop was scouting for reliable suppliers to make quality Zoozoo merchandise. Shoppers Stop is most likely to manufacture as well as market zestful Zoozoo T-shirts, clocks, dolls, bags, mugs etc. These are sure to be among the most popular gift items once they are released in the market, depending on their price range.

The merchandise should be possibly within a couple of months, the report mentioned executive creative director (South Asia), O & M, Rajiv Rao, as saying. Incidentally, Rajiv Rao created the much fancied Zoozoo campaign.

Shoppers Stop has already produced branded accessories and apparel for films like Om Shanti Om and the Saif Ali starrer Love Aaj Kal. They are giving branded character merchandise a try.

The Zoozoo rakhi and other merchandise – branded or otherwise - should make memorable collectibles.

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For the design-conscious person, a good looking mobile phone does not necessarily mean that he or she would compromise on its features. This factor should be kept in mind while selecting a device for the purpose of gifting.

Thankfully, there is no dearth of options when it comes to pick good-looking devices with handy functionalities.

Samsung Ultra Touch
An example of this is Samsung Ultra Touch, which is a step up from the plastic slider phones previously released by the company. This one is a nice mix of a full touchscreen interface, a physical T9 keypad and an 8 megapixel camera.

Priced at Rs 27,500, the Ultra Touch model sure has the potential to warm the hearts of the elite fashion-seekers. On the flipside, 2.8” display might feel a bit compressed for internet surfing and e-mailing but other multimedia needs, such as videos viewing and music listening/streaming are well served on a display of this size.

Asus P565
Another option is available in form of the Asus P565. Retailing at just a little more than Apple iPhone, it costs Rs 35,000. Asus P565 gives the same touchscreen you see on iPhone.

Asus has forced out some fairly impressive smartphones in the mobile phone market, till date. It comes with a fairly huge flash memory (256MB, to be precise). P565 has also thrown in a nice program that allows uploading videos and photos to Flickr and Youtube.

A user can directly share pictures and videos from anywhere with an internet connection. A 3 megapixel camera plus the auto-focus feature guarantees good pictures.

Blackberry Pearl Flip 8220
The new Flip is lighter than most other RIM devices. The smooth curves, metal trim plus a glossy embedded front display along with the bundled 2 megapixel camera make it a good pick. It’s priced attractively at Rs 21,990. The new built-in web browser is better than that on Blackberry Curve & Pearl handsets.

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Sports and fashion have an integral link. Young sports fans are equally fashion conscious, and event organizers well know this. In fact, for most popular sports teams globally, the mark-up for high-end memorabilia is well justified by the brand value. It usually works when a team or its star players tend to achieve cult status (just as, say, Liverpool or Manchester United charge hefty premiums for an official embossed T-shirt.

The ongoing IPL cricket tournament is another example of this. The cost price of an IPL T-shirt manufactured in the factories of Tiruppur, Bangalore and Chennai is between 15-20 per cent of the final cost, according to an estimate. Brands such as Puma and Adidas have a fixed cost sharing ratio with the teams. Though the marketers are unwilling to divulge the revenue-sharing arrangement with the cricket or football teams, teams roughly get up to 20 per cent by way of royalty.

Last year, KKR had launched actor and KKR owner Shahrukh ‘Khan’ special jersey with Reebok. It was priced at Rs 1,999, with King Khan’s name on the back. This time - for the second edition of IPL - franchisees have increased the scope of their portfolios to introduce more categories to gain from the IPL fever. The products range from Rs 50 to 2,000 plus.

Most of the IPL teams retail caps, mugs, badges, key chains and flip flops, all of which bear the insignia of all the participating IPL teams. IPL merchandise is slowly becoming a rage as fans are not averse to paying premiums.

The team owners know there are enthusiasts who consider all these items a prized possession than mere another piece of clothing or accessory. As you would read in one of our upcoming posts, sports memorabilia is becoming popular for gifting purpose. Of course, you should be able to get the choice right as each sports fan has different favorite teams or players.

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Multi-touch is now the must-have feature for coveted digital devices. In fact, ‘touch’ is the new buzzword for all electronics devices today in the market.

If you’re looking to gift them to one of your tech-savvy family or business friends, there is no dearth of options. Here, we provide some clues. For instance, the craze for the Apple iPhones launch has now become all pervasive! The gizmos that are available with the touch feature latest technology features s by way of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, haptic feedback, GPS, accelerometers, etc.

Take, for instance, the new Microsoft coffee-table-sized computer, known as the ‘Surface’, is meant for retail stores and hotels. It is based on handy multi-touch finger gestures for moving digital objects like play games, photos, and to browse. Hewlett-Packard (HP) has already developed a prototype of a multi-touch coffee-table computer to be used at home.

Samsung’s latest P3 portable media player is based on true haptic feedback. Having a fantastic 3 inch TFT-LCD touch screen, it provides widescreen enjoyment of photos and video without the requirement for letterboxing. The P3 reacts with a various physical sensations with every command gesture. The 8GB and the 16GB versions cost Rs 11,900 and Rs 14,900, respectively, making it quite affordable.

The digital still camera range from Samsung sports Touch 2.0 features. The NV100 Full HD digital still camera at Rs 22,990 lets users explore commands on screen with swift finger movements.

For high-end gifting, there’s Apple’s MacBook Air touchpad allows one to move the cursor and simply click just like a mouse. It has several functionalities, making use of multi-touch gestures. One can rotate photos just by touching two fingers and shifting the images on the screen.

One may move back n forth quickly through web pages and photos by swiping fingers on the touchpad. It is possible to expand or shrink a photo, or by pinching the image, even zoom in and out on a web page. An Apple MacBook Air starts at Rs 95,000.

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Play Clan is place tucked away in a glassy mall in the capital city that offers experimental and alternative gift ideas. It is not a commercial enterprise; it’s a rather small-scale retail venture.

Eccentricities that expressed in ink & paper in the form of illustrations in popular graphic novels spill onto accessories showcased here. They represent age-old icons, urban pop culture, and other symbols of everyday life. These are Wonderful artifacts with a contemporary touch!

You get to see a sage from Kashi on a colorful, classy mug — with the Ganges ghats illustrated over his body, or a DTC bus as an illustration in a small frame, or a rickshaw colored in with letterings ‘Taxi no. 9211’, ‘CNG’ and ‘Roses are red, violets are blue’. The ravishing rustic metal kettle and captivating chai glass cups are iconized here.

T-shirts and formal shirts sport a larger picture, with the Indian “Hum do hamare do’ family sharing a Bajaj scooter, an Old Delhi nook flush with kites flying high on Independence Day,  or superstar Rajinikanth posing with his bike. Mumbai’s towering skyscrapers and VT (or CST) are etched in cushion covers and frames. Snatches of Kolkata are also there. The Presidential House is splashed on other curios

Himanshu Dogra started Illum Designs almost eight years ago. He unveiled the first Play Clan retail store in 2007. He has mentioned in an interview: “Our themes change every couple of months.” Their current theme is India images, across cities. They will soon introduce a Goddess Saraswati theme.

The wonderful artifacts in this store are politically correct and at the same time entertaining and humorous. They will help you to strike a chord with the person whom you opt to gift them.

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Ensuring that quality is available at affordable prices is the prime goal of Swiss Military Products S. A., a renowned organization that has come up with Premium Swiss Lifestyle Products in the country. Their team has hit on a unique marketing formula, which along with the exquisite quality of Swiss brands has helped them carve a niche for themselves in the corporate gifting industry.

The product range is identified with precision, finesse and quality. It reflects their commitment to customers. Their exclusive positioning in the marketplace has allowed them to enjoy a huge success in the domain of corporate gifting. In its first year of operations itself, the company opened quite a few Swiss Junction exclusive retail outlets in New Delhi and other metros of the country.

Some of them are noted below: 
Westend Mall Ludhiana
72, The Great India Place, Sector-38, Noida
M-7, GK, M-Block Market, Part-I, Delhi
G-7A, Mega Mall, Andheri (W), Mumbai

With their spectacular product spectrum, they also are looking to establish their brand in the Corporate World by positioning their products as high-end gifts/ promotional items at truly affordable prices. Their intention of providing best quality allows them to assure customization services like Laser Engraving, Vacuum Gold/ Silver plating, Vinyl cuts and High quality printing and Embossing for their esteemed clients.

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As Christmas approaches, Santa Claus is eagerly awaited by children and so also the goodies and gifts he brings along.

It is interesting to note that the popular view of Santa we all have today - with the sleigh, the reindeer and the chimney – was derived largely from Clement Moore’s ‘The Night Before Christmas’, the 1822 book, further reinforced further by an advertising campaign.

The Santa Claus story combined with the modern retailing phenomena and consumer culture has grown since the turn of the century to make gift-giving an integral element of the Christmas celebrations. Incidentally, there was no elaborate exchanging of gifts until late 1800’s.

The Christmas tree – apparently a German tradition – began in the early 700AD century. The tradition of a Christmas Tree gradually moved to the UK and US. Since Victorian times, people had been decorating trees with candies and cakes hung with ribbon, ornaments and candles. The first electrically lighted Christmas tree appeared in 1882. Mistletoe, representing the goddess of love (Frigga - Scandinavian), was used as a decoration in houses for thousands of years and is also associated with many pagan rituals.

The 12 days of Chistmas are the ones that separate Christmas day (December 25) from Epiphany celebrated on January 6, marking Christ’s baptism (the Catholic tradition) or the day when the wise men visited baby Jesus with their gifts. This includes great fanfare and singing. The Anglo-Saxon tradition revolved around gathering together for small, serene choirs on the scenic village green lawns to sing carols and popular Christmas songs that would entertain and please the passers-by.

This joyous festival truly enlivens our hearts with warm revelry that extends well into the new year! Gift your near and dear ones, the little children, your friends and colleagues to spread the joy of Christmas.

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