How to pitch a gift store, and a corporate gifting buyer

The gifting year, counted backwards

Diwali 2026 is Sunday 8 November. Eight weeks before that is the first week of September, and that is my rule of thumb rather than the trade's. Arrive in late October and the no you get is about your timing, not your product.

Early September

First message. The buyer still has room for one more small label.

Mid September

A sample on the counter and a price list they can forward.

Early October

The order, so delivery finishes before the store's own worst fortnight.

Late October

Too late to list. I ask what moved and offer a top-up in two days.

December

Collect the unsold units if you promised to. That visit gets me the next season.

I count back the same way for the rest of the year. Raksha Bandhan 2027 falls on Tuesday 17 August, so rakhi ranges get picked in June. CAIT, the traders' body, put the 2024 wedding season at 48 lakh weddings between 12 November and 16 December, so wedding stock gets bought in September alongside the Diwali order. I use January to March, when nobody is buying, to open accounts.

What a gift store checks

I lead with shelf life, because it is the one thing here that costs the store money after I have gone home.

• Shelf life against the season. A box billed in September with four months on it is near-expiry, inside its last unsellable stretch, by January, and the store eats it. Under six months I say so in the first message.
• Packaging. It gets wrapped and couriered before anyone sees it, so peel your own price sticker off once before you promise it comes away clean.
• The price band. A gift store stocks to two or three price points people ask for by name. I ask which band moved most last Diwali before I send any price.
• A GST bill in the firm's name, meaning a proper tax invoice. A company booking its Diwali spend needs one, so say in the first message if you are not registered.

Hamper arithmetic, and one tax rule

Most of what a gift store sells at Diwali is a hamper it packs itself, and the store makes most of its money on the packing. I quote a loose per unit price beside the boxed one, with an MOQ, the smallest quantity I will bill, of one carton.

One rule before you quote. Under the CGST Act, items that could each be sold on their own, put in one package and sold for a single price, are a mixed supply, and the whole package is taxed at the highest rate that applies to anything in it. The Act's own illustration is a package of canned foods, sweets, chocolates, cakes, dry fruits, aerated drinks and fruit juices. If yours carries the higher rate, you are the reason the box got dearer, and a buyer caught by this once will ask. Know your HSN code and rate, and put both in the price message.

Outright, consignment, or sale and return

For a first Diwali I offer sale and return with the collection week written into the message. Leave the week vague and that is the part that sours in January.

Outright

They buy, they own the stock, you get paid, and they want a deeper margin on MRP, the cut counted against printed price, for carrying that risk.

Consignment

You own it until it sells and they pay for what moved. Gift stores take this more readily than cafés do, because they have the floor space and no reason yet to trust a label nobody knows.

Sale and return, with a date

A festive quantity, and you agree in writing to collect the unsold units in a named week.

Set the MOQ from what the store clears in six weeks, not from your production run. One carton that sells out buys the second order, so break the case if it is too big. The margin calculator shows what an MRP leaves at different case sizes and cuts.

Three messages to copy

Brackets are yours to fill. Under eighty words each, no link, and then nothing until they answer.

The corporate gifting route

A corporate buyer wants the same boxes for a different reason. They decide earlier than the stores do, order in hundreds, and pay by transfer against an invoice.

Start with the people you already know. Most of them work somewhere that buys Diwali gifts, so ask who chooses and in which week. Keep a per box price ready at 50, 200 and 500. I would rather have a no in September than a maybe in October.

One rule sits on the buyer, not on you. Schedule I of the CGST Act lists what counts as a supply even when nothing is charged for it, and a proviso there says gifts by an employer to an employee are not treated as a supply up to ₹50,000 in value per employee in a financial year. That is a limit on their books, not on your invoice, where you charge GST as usual. It is one reason a buyer asks for a per head price rather than a total. The other is section 194R of the Income Tax Act: a business that gives one person perks or gifts worth more than ₹20,000 in a year must deduct 10% TDS on them, so the buyer counts per head to stay under it: Income Tax Department, section 194R.

Three things founders ask

I have missed Diwali. Is it worth writing now?

Write for the next thing. A late October message asking what moved, with a top-up offered in two days, gets read. Pitch cold that week and you are asking a buyer to list a new label mid-hamper.

Should I make a gift box, or sell my normal pack?

Sell the normal pack and let the store build the hamper. A gift box is a second SKU and a second thing to write off. I would make one only after a store tells me what it should hold.

Do I need to be GST registered?

For corporate gifting, yes in practice, because the buyer needs the invoice. A small gift store buying outright will often manage without one.