SmartGift Unveils Hero, an End-to-End Platform Designed to Transform Corporate Gifting for the Future of Work

SmartGift, the leader in gift-based e-commerce and data, announced today the launch of Hero, a robust, powerful, and easy-to-use corporate gifting platform for employee and client appreciation, and sales growth. The SaaS platform, powered by SmartGift, will make business gifting seamless and measurable for any sized company from SMBs to large enterprises. Hero will first be available through the 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, Inc. corporate gifting website, providing instant access to thousands of products from a dozen brands including Harry & David®, PersonalizationMall.com®, 1-800-Flowers.com®, and more.

SmartGift is an established leader in gift-based e-commerce and powers gifting for top brands globally in N. America, Europe, and APAC. Through its patented “Send as a Gift” technology, SmartGift transforms traditional gifting by allowing recipients to select their own product preferences before shipping. Building upon its legacy, deep domain expertise, and proven experience powering gifting for 40+ top consumer brands, SmartGift developed Hero to be the single platform for all corporate gifting.

Currently, corporate gifting is labor-intensive and doesn’t provide end-to-end visibility on the ROI. The process gets bottlenecked due to a lack of recipient gift preferences, a limited range of branded products, and a lack of customization at scale. There is no insight or data available on the business impact of spend, and a majority of corporate gifting is still managed in spreadsheets. Existing solutions only address fragmented pieces of the corporate gifting puzzle. Hero stands out by solving every one of these pain points.

With Hero, SmartGift is bringing to corporate gifting its powerful gift data graph for AI-powered gift recommendations that are informed by millions of gift interactions from top brands globally. Additionally, it will offer the most highly searched and sought-after business gifts and branded swag. Business customers of 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, Inc. will be able to scale their gifting with Hero’s multipurpose platform all the way from individual employee recognitions and appreciation to branded and personalized products for large-scale distributed teams or events attendees whether virtual, hybrid or in-person.

The strategic go-to-market partnership with Hero and 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, Inc. will make it easier for business customers nationwide to increase engagement at virtual or in-person events, simplify large-scale employee and client recognition programs, seamlessly execute one-to-many gifting, and easily measure engagement efforts with data that can be used to inform future initiatives.

“This launch of Hero with 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, Inc. is highly complementary and a natural fit based on our shared vision to make corporate gifting easy, efficient and enjoyable,” said Monika Kochhar, CEO at SmartGift. “This partnership provides a significant competitive advantage in a $250 billion market that’s poised to rapidly grow further in the new workplace era. Underpinned by our core technology, Hero positions us well to become the go-to platform for all corporate gifting needs of businesses large and small.”

With the continued shift to remote and hybrid work, it’s become increasingly challenging to establish and maintain relationships with teams, prospects, and clients. Corporate gifting helps but is in need of dramatic innovation to truly address the needs of the new workplace. SmartGift designed Hero for this new reality and integrates seamlessly with today’s most popular work collaboration platforms such as Slack and Zoom, as well as Salesforce and other leading CRMs.

“With more businesses continuing to turn to the 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, Inc. family of brands to help with their engagement and gifting needs, we remain focused on innovation and creating a best-in-class experience for our customers and their recipients,” said Amit Shah, President of 1-800-Flowers.com, who worked closely with SmartGift on the launch of Hero. “By integrating Hero into our existing corporate gifting portal, we’re providing our business customers with a comprehensive destination for engaging the workforce of today and tomorrow, helping them build meaningful professional relationships virtually or in-person.”

SmartGift developed Hero in response to increased demand by businesses arising from the pandemic. SmartGift served 50 corporations with a Hero MVP during the 2020 holiday season.

Read the full press release here or or discover more coverage on this exciting partnership at Chain Store Age.