Corporate Gifting Jumps 45% As South African Businesses Head Into Year-End

For many businesses, the final months of the year are when corporate gifting moves from an occasional gesture to a planned part of the business calendar.

New sales data from NetFlorist suggests just how concentrated that activity can be. Corporate gifting revenue increased by 45% during the company's 2025 year-end period, from mid-October through December, compared with its average sales for the rest of the year.

The data also shows that businesses approach employee and client gifting quite differently, with the average amount spent on a client gift reaching R850 during the year-end period, compared with R250 for employee gifts. Premium gifts for key clients and senior stakeholders exceeded R1,000.

At the same time, personalisation has become a significant part of the corporate gifting experience. NetFlorist says 85% of its corporate orders included some form of personalisation, whether through a recipient's name, a message or company branding.

The figures come from NetFlorist's internal sales data covering the period from 1 September 2025 to 31 August 2026.

According to Ryan Bacher, co-founder and managing director of NetFlorist, the sharp increase in sales from October reflects how quickly businesses move into year-end gifting mode.

“From mid-October, corporate gifting shifts very quickly from occasional orders to planned year-end programmes,” says Bacher. “Businesses are often buying for very different groups at the same time, from hundreds or even thousands of employees to smaller groups of valued clients.”

That difference in scale also influences how companies allocate their budgets. Client gifting tends to involve smaller quantities and higher-value products, including premium hampers, gourmet treats and personalised combinations. Employee gifting generally involves much larger volumes, with chocolates, mugs, water bottles, lunch bags and smaller gourmet or bath and body hampers among the more popular choices.

“The difference in spend shouldn’t be read as a difference in importance,” says Bacher.

“Employee programmes are generally much larger, so businesses are balancing the cost per gift against the need to recognise a much bigger group of people.”

The scale can be substantial. NetFlorist's largest corporate order to date consisted of 4,500 branded snack tins for employees at a company in the automotive sector.

Larger employee programmes also require more preparation. According to the company's data, these orders are typically booked four to six weeks in advance, compared with one to two weeks for individual corporate orders.

That longer lead time becomes particularly important when businesses are managing recipient lists, personalisation and deliveries across multiple locations.

“A business may place one order for thousands of employees, but each person experiences that gift individually,” says Bacher. “The challenge is to manage the scale without making the recipient feel like another name on a distribution list.”

While corporate gifting can encompass everything from hampers to branded merchandise, flowers remain the largest category in NetFlorist's 2026 corporate sales data to date.

Flowers accounted for 41.4% of corporate gifting spend between 1 January and 1 September 2026, followed by snacks at 18.4% and personalised gifts at 16.7%.

Together, those three categories represented 76.5% of the company's corporate gifting spend.

Chocolate and nougat accounted for 7.2%, followed by plants at 4.9% and alcohol at 4.3%. Other categories, including baby gifts, stationery and apparel, made up the remainder.

The figures provide a snapshot of where corporate gifting spend is going, but they also point to the continued importance of relatively tangible, easily personalised gifts in business relationships.

Perhaps the more interesting trend is not what businesses are buying, but how they are presenting it.

Around 85% of NetFlorist's year-end corporate orders include some form of customisation. That can be as simple as adding the recipient's name or as visible as incorporating company branding.

There is a balance to be found, however. A heavily branded corporate gift can easily begin to feel like promotional merchandise rather than a gesture of appreciation.

“No one wants their year-end gift to feel like an advertisement,” says Bacher. “The company’s identity can still be present, but the experience should centre on the person receiving the gift.”

Branding remains particularly common in larger employee programmes, where practical products carrying a company's identity can also contribute to a sense of shared identity.

The growth of hybrid and geographically dispersed workforces has added another layer to the process. Businesses that previously delivered hundreds of gifts to a single office may now need to send individual packages to employees across the country. That makes the logistics of corporate gifting almost as important as the gift itself.

The data suggests that corporate gifting is becoming less of a last-minute December exercise and more of a planned business activity.

With most year-end activity taking place between mid-October and December, companies that start earlier have more time to manage large recipient lists, customisation and deliveries, particularly when employees and clients are spread across different locations.

“Before deciding what to buy or where to put the logo, businesses should think about what they want the recipient to take away from the gesture,” says Bacher. “Once that is clear, the gift, message and delivery can work together to say it.”

The numbers suggest that South African businesses continue to place value on recognising the people around them at the end of the year. But they also show that the corporate gift is becoming less about simply sending something out and more about getting the details right, from the value of the gift to the personalisation and the experience of receiving it.