Custom Corporate Gifting That Doesn't Look Like Corporate Gifting
There's a version of corporate gifting that everyone recognizes. A tote bag with a logo on it. A water bottle in a color nobody asked for. A gift card in a branded envelope. These things aren't bad exactly — they're just forgettable. And forgettable is the one thing a gift shouldn't be.
The best corporate gifts feel personal. Not personal like "we put your name on a mug" — personal like someone actually thought about who you are and what you'd want. That's a harder bar to clear, but when you get there, people notice. They keep the thing. They talk about it.
That's exactly what happened when Chewy came to Babe's Hardware.
The Chewy Project
Chewy's people team was planning an employee appreciation event at their Florida headquarters. About 600 employees. They wanted to give every single one of them something that felt genuinely thoughtful — not branded swag, but something tied to what their employees actually care about.
For a company built around pets, the answer was obvious: custom pet ID tags. One for every employee, engraved with their pet's name.
A month before the event, they asked employees to submit their pet's name and gender. That information came to me in an Excel spreadsheet — employee name, phone number, pet name, and two additional columns: one for font style (M for masculine, N for neutral, F for feminine) and one for a graphic (paw print, heart, star, lightning bolt, or crown). Every tag was a 1" brass disc.
600 tags. Five graphic options. Three font directions. All different.
Custom Pet ID Tags
How It Actually Gets Made
This is where the logistics matter, because a project like this doesn't just happen — it gets planned.
I design everything in Adobe Illustrator and export as SVG files for my fiber laser software, EZCad2. The first thing I had to figure out was batching. Doing 600 tags one at a time would have taken months. I can fit 30 tags on the laser bed at once, so I worked in batches of 30, designing each batch as its own file based on the spreadsheet.
The front of every tag gets the pet's name and graphic. Then I flip the entire batch and engrave the back — the owner's phone number. Keeping track of which tag belongs to which employee across 600 pieces takes a system. Each completed tag went into a Babe's Hardware zip bag with a Post-it marked with the employee's first and last initial. Before bagging, every tag got cleaned with a microfiber cloth and a little isopropyl alcohol.
Once all 600 were done, I added the brass split ring to each tag and tied on a small handwritten tag with the employee's name on it.
Start to finish: one week.
The employees loved them. When a gift makes someone think about their pet the moment they open it.
Pricing and Minimums for Corporate Orders
Corporate pet tag orders start at $10 per tag with a minimum of 100 tags. The Chewy order came in at $13 per tag because they opted for multiple font styles and graphics across the order — customization at that level takes more design and file prep time, and that's reflected in the price.
If pet tags aren't the right fit, custom engraved carabiners are another strong option for corporate gifting — functional, substantial, and something people actually use. Those start at $15 per piece for smaller styles up to $22 per piece for larger or more detailed carabiners, with a minimum of 50.
Turnaround times:
50–1,000 pieces: 1–2 weeks
1,000–1,500 pieces: 3–4 weeks
All engraving is done on a 30-watt fiber laser — permanent, precise, and consistent across every single piece in the order.
What Makes This Work as a Corporate Gift
A few things set laser engraved metal apart from typical branded merchandise:
It's permanent. The engraving is in the metal, not on it. It won't peel, fade, or wash off after a few months.
It's personal without being complicated. A pet's name, a font that matches their personality, a small graphic — that's it. Simple enough to scale, specific enough to feel like it was made for that one person.
It's useful. A pet tag is something the employee's dog or cat will wear every day. Every time they clip it onto a collar, there's a connection back to where it came from.
It photographs well. Brass engraved in gothic lettering or a bold western font looks good. People take pictures. Those pictures end up on Instagram. That's not nothing.
What to Expect When You Reach Out
For corporate and bulk orders, the process starts with a conversation about quantity, timeline, and what you're envisioning. If you have a spreadsheet with names and customization preferences — like Chewy did — that's ideal. The more organized the data, the smoother the production run.
We work with companies, brands, event planners, wedding coordinators, conference organizers, and anyone else who needs a gift that people will actually want to keep.
For corporate gifting inquiries, reach out directly to hello@babeshardware.co