Corporate gifting is a $306 billion industry, but it’s an untapped opportunity for most e-commerce brands with gift-worthy products. Why?
Because processing corporate gift orders is a painfully manual process—long email threads, tedious data entry, and constant back-and-forth with customers. In a world where consumers can order anything with a click, corporate gifting has been stuck in the past.
At Zest, we set out to solve this. Our first step was building self-service corporate gifting storefronts that automate the entire ordering process, eliminating manual work for brands while giving customers the seamless checkout experience they are used to from direct-to-consumer e-commerce.
The results speak for themselves. Take Milk Bar, for instance. Before Zest, their team spent hours each day managing corporate orders through email exchanges and tediously uploading orders into their e-commerce platform.
Today, 70% of their corporate orders are automatically processed through Zest's self-service storefronts with zero manual intervention.
As Amelia Heller, Milk Bar’s corporate sales manager, put it, "I loved waking up each morning and seeing the orders placed overnight that I didn't have to touch. I'd wake up and see $30K in revenue made while I was sleeping."
For Milk Bar, streamlining the corporate gifting process was just the beginning. Realizing the majority of people were stopping by the infamous brand’s website to buy gifts, its new self-service gifting storefront was soon made accessible on product pages to every customer, corporate or otherwise.
With Zest in its tech stack, Milk Bar is able to give shoppers several pathways to sending gifts that fit their timeline, budget, and behavior — without adding tasks to its team’s plate.
That's the magic of self-service storefronts.
But as we worked closely with our brand partners, we realized our platform needed to serve a broader range of gifting needs. Some clients, especially those placing large or customized orders, prefer white-glove treatment with dedicated support and personalized attention. These orders often represent the highest-value opportunities—but without the right tools, they're also the most time-consuming to manage.
That's why we’re excited to introduce Concierge.
Concierge is the perfect complement to our existing self-service features. It allows brands to offer high-touch experiences to their corporate clients while still automating many of the tedious backend processes.
With Zest’s unified gifting platform designed to serve every gifter regardless of how they want to order, brands are now fully empowered to scale their gifting channels and capture their piece of this exploding market.
Serving Every Type of Gifter
One of our core beliefs is that different customers want different gift-buying experiences. But for brands, accommodating unique gifting journeys is a time-intensive, high-labor effort that’s prone to error without the right tools.
Zest’s self-service storefronts have given online brands everything they need to streamline most gift purchases on their site. And now, Concierge completes the customer experience and gives brands the tools they need to cater to customers craving a high-touch option.
What's fascinating is how each brand is adapting Concierge to their unique customer base and team capacity. Some of our partners offer white-glove service for all corporate orders, believing that every corporate relationship has the potential to grow into something bigger.
Other brands have taken a different approach. Those with higher order volumes often set minimum order thresholds—typically $1,000 or more—allowing their teams to focus white-glove support on their highest-value opportunities, while politely directing customers that do not hit the threshold to their self-service portal.
Regardless of each brand’s approach, Concierge is proving to be a significant revenue driver for our partners. Whether it's a small business sending gifts to 10 clients or a Fortune 500 company coordinating a 1,000-person employee gifting program, Zest now enables brands to deliver the perfect experience to every customer—and capture every revenue opportunity.
Making High-touch Gifting Effortless
Concierge helps brands expand their white-glove service by eliminating the manual work that has traditionally made high-touch gifting so time-consuming.
We've simplified the recipient collection process with shareable upload links and real-time bulk address validation. Gifters can now resolve address issues directly without back-and-forth emails with brands, making everyone's life easier and ensuring error-free shipping.
Once orders are placed, everything runs on autopilot. Concierge customers can track their gifts, receive shipping updates, and manage their orders through a branded dashboard. Meanwhile, brands can focus on building relationships instead of answering "where's my gift?" emails.
The financial side is just as seamless. We built flexible invoicing and payment collection tools directly into the platform. And best of all, order and financial data is deeply integrated with platforms like Shopify, Magento, Netsuite, and more.
The result feels like magic. As Katie Taylor from Clif Family Winery recently told me, "Concierge has been a huge game-changer. I can't even explain how much time it saves me. Last year, big orders took me two days to get into my e-commerce platform. But this year, getting these orders into Zest, invoicing...it's all easy breezy."
Building the Future of Online Gifting
Our goal is to help e-commerce brands unlock the (surprisingly overlooked) growth opportunity in gifting.
Point solutions won’t cut it. That’s why we built an e-commerce platform from the ground up optimized for gifting. Our self-service storefronts were the first step, giving brands the tools to automate many of their gifting orders. With Concierge, we're taking the next leap forward.
With every new feature, we move closer toward being a comprehensive platform that supports every type of gifting interaction. And by being able to support both self-service and concierge orders in one platform, we're eliminating the need for brands to juggle multiple systems, spreadsheets, and apps.
I want to thank our early design partners who helped shape Concierge. Your feedback and patience through the early iterations made this launch possible. While we still have more to build, your success stories show we're on the right path.
Ready to level up your gifting game? Let's chat about how Concierge can help your brand thrive. Reach out to me directly or send an email to hey@zest.co.
— Alex
