Some businesses absorbing rising costs this festive season
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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 -
wat joke is this?
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Hahaha, lazy journalist, interview only one company and say so much, hahaha, like that also can arh?
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nice to pretend.
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CNY Mood.... Interview one company say some.
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wayang journalist....... pui!
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This reporter has probably been told by her boss: "Go get some news and info about how rising costs have been absorbed by businesses." If her boss had told her the opposite, surely the article would also carry a different tone right.
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Nice to pretend.