To Buy or Not to Buy

Every year it's the same: It's the first week in December when we realize we're behind the 8-ball again with regards to our annual gifts for our professional friends and need to figure something out. Fast. I've never been a big fan of buying gifts for clients who have bestowed business on us over the year, for a couple of reasons. If we give them anything, I want it to be something meaningful, and while I know most of them well on a professional level, I don't know enough about their personal lives to do justice to a gift intended for that part of their world. Plus, once you buy something significant (and if it's not significant, it's not worth doing), clients will certainly remember you for it... and also notice when you quit doing it. It's a conundrum. We certainly appreciate our client relationships, and certainly, the business that they send our way. Our solution has been to give a little homemade something to those on our list. Something that is hopefully still edible by the time it arrives. This year it was jalapeno jelly. Why? I think it was because we fell in love with how we would package it, and before we'd chopped the first pepper, we'd committed to the silk screening and enough boxes and Ball jars to start a jelly business. Definitely not the way to go at it, in retrospect. Actually, "retrospect" started to set in about midway through the first of many batches we concocted in the S+A kitchen, but by that time, we were swimming in pectin and out of other options so there was no going back. The results were mixed, so clients got the ones that looked most like jelly, and the rest of the recipients got jalapeno "sauce". So far, we've not got any complaints from the health department so for now are considering it another successful season. Maybe next year we'll resort to one of those "a donation has been made in your name to..." gifts. Naa.