Corporate gifting orders for small businesses — how to win them, price them and deliver every box on time
A corporate gifting order can be the biggest single order a small brand gets all year: one company, fifty or two hundred boxes, one payment. You win it by making the buyer’s job easy, with a clear catalogue, a price per box at their quantity, a sample, a fixed delivery date and one proper invoice. You keep the client by delivering every box on time. Diwali 2026 is on Sunday 8 November, and a company ordering a hundred boxes needs time to see a sample, approve a quote and collect addresses. So the conversations start now.
Key takeaway: pitch three or four ready-made boxes at clear prices to people you already know in HR, admin or small-firm leadership. Quote a price per box by quantity slab, with branding and delivery priced separately. Put the terms in writing, take an advance before you buy stock, sort out the GST invoice question at the start, and collect every delivery address in one spreadsheet with a deadline.
TL;DR
- • Who buys: HR and admin teams for employee gifts; founders and owners of small firms for client gifts.
- • What they want: on time, looks good with their name on it, fits the budget per person, one invoice, one contact.
- • How to pitch: a short message, a link to your corporate boxes, a sample, one follow-up.
- • How to price: slabs by quantity, worked out from your cost. Branding and delivery on top.
- • How to get paid: written terms and an advance before you buy anything.
- • How to deliver: one address spreadsheet, pincodes checked, a tracking sheet sent back.
Who buys corporate gifts, and what they care about
There are two kinds of corporate buyer. Employee gifts are usually bought by an HR or admin person with a budget per head and a list of names. Client gifts are usually bought by a founder or owner of a smaller firm (a CA practice, a clinic, a law firm, an agency, a builder) who wants to thank the people who pay them.
Both of them are doing this on top of their real job. What they care about, roughly in order: the gifts arrive on time; they look good and carry the company’s name or message; the price per person fits the budget; the accounts team gets an invoice it accepts; and there is one person to call if something goes wrong. Notice that “the cheapest price” is not near the top. Reliability is what you are really selling.
How to pitch
- Start with people you know. Past customers who work at companies, friends in HR or admin roles, local firms you already buy from. A warm introduction is easier to answer than a cold email.
- Make a corporate catalogue on your store. Create a “Corporate gifting” category with three or four boxes at clear price points, each with a photo and a list of what is inside. Every category on a SitesPlaced store has its own clean link (for example
yourbrand.sitesplaced.site/corporate-gifting), so that link is the catalogue you send and they forward around the office. - Offer a sample. Send one box to a serious buyer, at cost if the order is small. Seeing and holding the box does more than any photo.
- Follow up once, three or four days later. Then leave it.
An example first message
“Hi [name], I run a small gifting brand in [your city]. We make Diwali boxes for teams: three sizes, from ₹960 a box for 100 or more, with your logo on the card, delivered to your office or to each person’s home before Diwali. Here they are: [link]. Happy to send you a sample this week. Would that help?”
If you are still putting the boxes together, how to sell Diwali gift hampers online covers choosing items, packaging and costing a single hamper.
Bulk price slabs: a worked example
A slab is a price that applies from a certain quantity upwards. Work the slabs out from your own cost, never from a competitor’s list. In this example, one box costs you ₹700 to make and pack (items ₹520, box and filler ₹120, card ₹60), and sells on your store for ₹1,200. The numbers are illustrations, not a recommendation.
| Boxes ordered | Price per box | Off your normal price | You keep per box | Example order |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 to 24 (your normal price) | ₹1,200 | None | ₹500 | Sold on your store as usual |
| 25 to 49 | ₹1,080 | 10% | ₹380 | 30 boxes: ₹32,400, you keep ₹11,400 |
| 50 to 99 | ₹1,020 | 15% | ₹320 | 60 boxes: ₹61,200, you keep ₹19,200 |
| 100 and more | ₹960 | 20% | ₹260 | 120 boxes: ₹1,15,200, you keep ₹31,200 |
Example only, before GST and delivery. Your costs and slabs will be different.
Each box earns less as the order grows, but the order as a whole earns far more, and you sell it in one conversation instead of a hundred. Three rules keep slabs safe:
- • Price branding and delivery separately. A logo card, a sticker or a sleeve is a per-box extra. Delivery is per address at your courier’s rate for that pincode. The slab discount never covers either.
- • Say whether GST is included, in writing, every time. Our free GST calculator works out the inclusive and exclusive figures.
- • Give every quote an end date, such as “valid until 10 October”. Your supplier prices can change; your quote shouldn’t stay open forever.
GST and invoices
Expect the company’s accounts team to ask for a GST invoice with the company’s name and GSTIN (its GST number) on it, and some companies only buy from GST-registered vendors. Whether you need to be registered depends on your turnover, where you sell and what you sell, so ask the buyer at the start and confirm your own position with a CA or on the official GST portal. Our guide do you need GST to sell online in India? explains the basics.
On SitesPlaced, every order placed on your store can be downloaded as a PDF invoice, free on every plan, with the items, totals, shipping and your UPI and bank details. If you are GST-registered you can put your GSTIN in the invoice’s From description and note that prices include GST. What it doesn’t have is a separate tax column. For a full GST tax invoice with HSN codes and the tax split, or for a quote-and-bank-transfer order that never went through your store, raise the invoice in your billing or accounting software, and ask your CA exactly what it must show. More in PDF invoices for Instagram sellers.
Branding and custom notes
“Branding” can mean a printed card with their logo and message, a sticker or sleeve on the box, a branded ribbon, or printing on the product itself. Each adds a printer and a few days to your timeline. Ask for the logo as a PDF or a large, sharp image, send a proof (a photo or mock-up of exactly what will be printed), and don’t print until the buyer says yes in writing. Check the spelling of every name twice.
For smaller corporate orders that come through your store, a product can do some of this for you. Under Personalisation & extras on any product, you can let the buyer add a text note (a card message, a name to engrave), upload a photo or logo that travels with the order so you can print it, and tick paid extras such as “Logo sticker +₹40”. All of it is free to set up.
Terms and advance payment
Put the deal in writing before you buy a single item. An email or a WhatsApp message they reply “confirmed” to is enough. It should cover:
- • What is in the box, with a photo of the approved sample
- • Quantity, price per box, and whether GST is included
- • Branding: what is printed, where, and the date artwork must reach you
- • Delivery: to one office or to many addresses, the date addresses must reach you, and the delivery charge
- • Payment: the advance, when the balance is due, and your bank details
- • Changes: what happens if the quantity changes after you have bought stock
- • Damage: you replace anything that arrives broken, if they send a photo within a set number of days
- • How long the quote is valid
Take an advance large enough to cover what you must buy and print before delivery. A simple, fair structure is half on confirmation and the balance before dispatch; for a client you already know, the balance on delivery. Large amounts usually move by bank transfer to your current account. UPI apps and banks set their own limits on a single payment, which differ from bank to bank, so check before you ask a company to pay a big order by UPI.
If the company orders through your store, it can pay online through your own Razorpay, PhonePe or Cashfree account, or choose “Pay the store directly”, which shows your UPI ID and bank details after the order is placed. Both are free.
Delivery to many addresses
- Ask early: one office or many homes? It changes your price, your packing and your timeline more than anything else.
- Send an address spreadsheet with columns for name, phone, full address, pincode, city, state and card message, plus a deadline for filling it in.
- Check every pincode with your courier before you promise a date. Flag any that aren’t served while there is still time to fix them.
- Book each parcel from your courier’s panel, or ask your courier or aggregator whether it can take the addresses as one upload from a spreadsheet.
- Send back a tracking sheet: each name with its tracking number (the AWB) and link. The buyer will forward it to their team, and it saves you fifty calls.
- Office deliveries around Diwali: confirm which days the office is open to receive parcels and who will sign for them.
- Keep a few spare boxes for breakages and the names that get added at the last minute, and agree who pays if a parcel comes back because nobody was there.
For the dates, work backwards from your courier’s Diwali cut-off, as in the Diwali 2026 checklist for online stores.
Looking like a supplier a company can trust
Your store is the thing the HR person forwards to their manager, so it is worth making it look established. Your own domain (yourbrand.com instead of yourbrand.sitesplaced.site) and removing the SitesPlaced badge come with Starter at ₹199/month. So does speed: on every paid plan, a store’s pages answer about 4× faster than on the free plan, about 75 ms instead of about 330 ms in our 28 September 2026 measurements on live paid stores. “Answer” is the moment the page starts arriving, before the photos load. That matters most when an office forwards your link and several people open it at once. Code FREE7 gives 7 days free on Starter or Growth when you set up autopay; cancel before the first charge and you pay nothing.
Frequently asked questions
How do small businesses get corporate gifting orders?
Start with warm contacts: past customers who work at companies, local firms you already know, friends in HR or admin roles. Send a short message with a link to three or four corporate boxes at clear prices, offer a sample, and follow up once. Make the buyer’s job easy: a price per box at their quantity, a delivery date, one invoice and one person to call.
How much discount should I give on bulk corporate orders?
Work it out from your cost, not from what others offer. In our worked example, a box that costs ₹700 and sells for ₹1,200 goes down to ₹1,080 at 25 boxes, ₹1,020 at 50 and ₹960 at 100. Each box earns less, but the whole order earns much more. Price branding and delivery separately, so the discount never covers them.
Do I need GST registration to take corporate gifting orders?
It depends on your turnover, where you sell and what you sell, and the rules change, so confirm with a CA or on the GST portal. In practice, expect a company’s accounts team to ask for a GST invoice with their GSTIN, and some companies only buy from GST-registered vendors. Ask the buyer early so it doesn’t block the order at the end.
Can SitesPlaced make invoices for corporate orders?
Every order placed on a SitesPlaced store can be downloaded as a PDF invoice, free on every plan. It shows the items, totals, shipping and your payment details, and you can add your GSTIN and “prices inclusive of GST” wording, but it has no separate tax column. For a full GST tax invoice with HSN codes and the tax split, or for a quote-and-bank-transfer order that never went through the store, use your billing software or ask your CA.
How much advance should I take for a corporate order?
Enough to cover what you must buy before you deliver. A simple, fair structure is half on confirmation and the balance before dispatch. For a company you already know, you might take the balance on delivery. Never buy stock or print branding for a large order without an advance and written terms.
How do I deliver corporate gifts to many addresses?
Send the buyer a spreadsheet with columns for name, phone, full address, pincode and card message, and a deadline for filling it. Check every pincode with your courier before you promise a date, book each parcel, and send the buyer back a sheet with every tracking link. Agree in advance who pays if a parcel is returned because nobody was there to receive it.
Give corporate buyers a link, not a PDF
A store with a corporate gifting category, invoices for every order, and UPI, cards and bank transfer through your own accounts. Free to publish, 0% commission.
