Gifts that give back: How The Saffron Souk is reshaping Corporate Gifting through sustainability
When most people think about corporate gifts, they often associate them with mass-produced, common items that will end up discarded or thrown away in a drawer. However, these people haven’t met The Saffron Souk quite yet. In our line of work, we believe that gifts are about impact and brand-value. What you give your clients should be telling a story about your values and your legacy. This is why we specialize in incorporating sustainability as well as cultural references in our Corporate Gifting projects with clients in the UAE and all around the region.
Brand: The Jackons - Slow and ethical fashion and homewares, designed in London & handmade in Bangaladesh | Link
The Saffron Souk’s commitment to eco-friendliness goes beyond low-waste packaging. In fact, we ethically source gifts that support noble causes and small artisanal brands, helping clients tell their ethics through curated items. The independent makers we work with craft or paint their items by hand, which helps us promote traditional artisanal techniques and thereby preserve the environment.
We take pride in working with brands that are EcoVadis certified, which is a globally recognized sustainability rating platform that evaluates companies on their environmental, social, and ethical performance. We also collaborate with suppliers who meet the Sedex SMETA 4-Pillar audit standards, which provides a comprehensive assessment of a business’s ethical and responsible practices in all matters relating to labor rights, health & safety, environment, business ethics.
Moreover, The Saffron Souk supports and aligns with the UN’s SDGs 5, 8, 9, 10, 12, and 17 in its corporate gifting business. We do this through promoting gender equality, decent work and economic growth, industry, innovation and infrastructure, in particular in LDCs. We also strive to reduce inequalities and encourage inclusion, promote responsible production and consumption cycles, and create partnerships for the SDGs.
In practice, we help our clients achieve sustainability in corporate gifting through eco-conscious giftoptions. One of our clients asked for a sustainability focused gift kit for their event, so we created a custom package for them. The kit featured multiple items, such as the Ocean Bottle, a reusable water bottle that supports ocean plastic clean-up efforts, and Seeding Notebooks, which are made of plantable paper embedded with seeds. It also included the RPT Pen, made from recycled plastic, and a Change Zero Backpack, which is a sustainable backpack entirely made of sustainable materials.
This is one of many instances where we helped a brand express their values through corporate gifting. Not only do we give our clients sustainable gift options, we also place special focus on how the items are made, because we think that this is just as important as the contents of the gift. So whether you would like to support low-waste small businesses, empower women entrepreneurs in sustainable production, or even support small-scale community artisans and makers, The Saffron Souk is your number one corporate gifting go-to.
Our work is reshaping the corporate gifting scene in the UAE, the GCC, and beyond. The trend that experts noticed in 2023-2024 was a 35% surge in gifting of eco-friendly and locally-sourced gifts in one year alone. For The Saffron Souk, this is not a trend that will go away with time, but rather become more prominent as more and more businesses align with eco-conscious ethics and wish to showcase their commitments through gifting in events.
What makes The Saffron Souk special is that we see corporate gifting as more than merely transactional; it is transformational for us.
We love to support causes that make for a better world. It’s time to turn corporate gestures into conscious choices, and give in a way that makes a lasting impression on the receiving end, and a lasting impact on the planet. Tell the stories that matter by choosing The Saffron Souk for your next event!
