Ordering tiles for a whole team

Ordering forty personalised tiles is not forty times harder than ordering one. It is a different task altogether: mostly gathering data, checking it, and working backwards from a fixed date that will not move.

What a volume order really involves

Production is the easy part. The work that decides whether it goes well happens before anything is made: agreeing on what the tiles say, collecting the variable details, proofing them, and having one person who owns the list.

That last point matters more than it sounds. Orders that go wrong nearly always have two people half-owning the spreadsheet.

Occasions that suit a batch

• Company anniversaries, where the same year appears on every tile and only the name changes.
• Retirements and long service awards, presented together at one event.
• Christmas, as the alternative to another hamper.
• Onboarding, where a new starter gets one in their first week with their start date on it.
• Team milestones: a project shipped, an office opened, a hard year finished.
• Client thank-yous at the end of a financial year.

The common factor is a fixed date and a known list of people. Where either is missing, order in smaller batches instead.

Collecting the data without chasing people

Do not ask forty people to reply to an email. Half will not, and you will spend a week chasing the other half.

1. 1Start from a system you already have: HR export, payroll, the team directory. Names and start dates are usually already correct there.
2. 2Build one spreadsheet with one row per tile and one column per variable field. Nothing free-form.
3. 3Fill in everything you can yourself first, so what is left is genuinely unknown.
4. 4Only then ask, and ask specific people a specific question with a deadline.
5. 5Have a second person read the finished list out loud against the source. Typos survive silent proofreading.
6. 6Freeze the list. Late changes are the single biggest cause of a missed date.

What varies per tile, and what should not

Keep the design constant and vary as little as possible. One layout, one style, one size across the batch. The personal element should be a name, a date, or one short line, not a different concept per person.

This is not only about cost. A set of tiles handed out at one event should look like a set. When each is individually designed, the group reads as forty separate gifts rather than one gesture, and the person who received the plainest one notices.

If you are writing a shared line that appears on every tile, spend real time on it. Our guide to writing the text applies, with one addition: it has to work for every person on the list, including the one who joined last month.

Plan backwards from the date

Fix the hand-over date first, then work back through each stage: distribution to the venue or to home addresses, arrival, production, proof approval, list freeze, data collection, and the decision on what the tiles will say. Ask us for the current lead time for the batch size you have in mind and put that in the middle of the sequence rather than at the start.

Two buffers are worth building in deliberately: one for the proofing round, which always finds something, and one at the end, so the tiles arrive before the week of the event rather than during it.

Before you hand them out

Open the box and check the batch against your list before the day, not on it. Read every name. Check the dates against the source rather than against your memory of the spreadsheet. If something is wrong, tell us immediately, because there is far more that can be done a week out than an hour out.

Then decide how they are presented. Tiles handed over individually land better than tiles stacked on a table, and a stand makes the moment easier because it gives the recipient something to do with it. For quantities, options and getting a quote, start at the business page, and for the thinking behind the gift itself see the tile as a corporate gift.