By Evelyn Choo | Posted: 04
February 2011 1550 hrs
SINGAPORE: Recent price hikes in raw material may
have hit businesses but luckily for consumers, there are some that
have chosen to absorb the costs.
One of these companies is Noel Gifts. With a 20 per cent surge in
sales this year, it is making sure its deadlines are met.
Winnie Tan, General Manager of Strategic & Business Development
at Noel Gifts International, said: "We start our production as
early as beginning of January so that we can produce large
quantities of hampers to meet the needs of our customers. And of
course these two weeks would be the peak of the deliveries, whereby
hundreds of vans will be [delivering] the thousands of hampers to
our customers."
The gift company said customers who had dropped out during last
year's downturn have returned. Profits, however, won't be as
promising, with rising costs in packaging material and food
products.
However, the company has not transferred these costs to corporate
and individual customers, preferring to boost sales through some
creative marketing instead.
Kim Wong, Manager of Business Development at Noel Gifts
International, said: "We actually have faced an increase in most of
our goods, our prices. Even packaging material costs have gone up.
However, we have come up with various promotions in trying to deal
with this increase in the cost of everything, basically.
"We have had a few promotions to date, and we've just rolled out
our fourth one because the rest were taken up with such enthusiasm.
So we've figured out ways to work around the inflation without
increasing the costs to our customers."
As companies like Noel try to cope, Singapore's domestic supply
price index has registered increases over the past three months
from October to December - an indicator of how much the price of
manufactured and imported goods for domestic use has risen.
December saw a jump of 2.6 per cent from November. It is not known
how much this would affect current inflation rates.
However, the Monetary Authority of Singapore said inflation is
likely to remain high in the next few months.
-CNA/ac
