New Unspectacular 2010 Award Merchandise Catalogs

We just finished reviewing three of the most used incentive merchandise catalogs in the industry. What we found was unremarkably nothing much different from what we've seen in the past several years. The same categories, the same basic merchandise, although there now seems to be more emphasis on "green" items, what ever those are, and unfortunately the same high pricing.


If you are contemplating a merchandise award program this year it would behoove you to first check the pricing. It appears, as in the past, that the merchandise is priced substantially above retail. Now we realize that these companies do provide a service and also include shipping, handling and sales taxes in their pricing, but even with that we found their pricing on average to be 30-50% higher than what you can find the items for at retail. Should any company awarding their employees for any performance improvement merchandise that is priced that high??? Especially in these very troubling economic times?

If you are interested in why merchandise pricing in these catalogs is so much higher than retail , this article might be of interest.