Van Bavel is one of the industry leaders in promotional items. Since 1955, the company has been importing business gifts, giveaways, POS-material,… and guiding its customers towards the ideal promotional product media mix. We met up with Michel Van Bavel, CEO, to tell us more about his trade.
Hello Michel. Van Bavel, your name, has also been a company name for three generations…
Yes indeed. It’s amazing to think that for three generations, we’ve been giving! For more than 70 years, customers have been receiving and we’ve been enjoying giving.
That’s also your business signature: ‘enjoy giving’. What does it really mean?
It’s all about the personal contact with your customer. Whatever the outcome of your encounter, when you give him something, he will smile and thank you for it. You’ve created a positive contact with the customer and that’s very enjoyable.
In a numeric world, what is the added value of a real gift, such as a mug, a notebook or a new tote bag, for example?
Well, in the digital world, everything goes very fastly. It comes and it goes. But with a personal gift, it’s different.: you can use it for a long period of time and even if you lose it, someone else will pick it up. This means that the brand that’s displayed on the object will have a very long exposure time and a lot of people will see it.
What advice can you give to marketeers about choosing the best possible gift?
They should definitely choose a sustainable item: one that’s long term and that a lot of people can use. Cheap gadgets should be avoided at all costs because they don’t have any real use and they don’t last longer than a day.
What is trending at the moment?
Currently, recycled items are very popular, as well as electronics and everything that has to do with cellphones.
Thank you Michel. As you said: I’m smiling and I say ‘thank you’.
Thank you!
