In days gone past, it was a very usual thing for companies to make corporate ties or company ties and at the same time order corporate jewellery in the form of cufflinks or tie clips for the men and bar brooches or scarf rings for the ladies.

These items were especially popular when it came to the awarding of long service awards and gifts.

On these special occasions, corporate ties or company ties would be given out as custom ties with a special design or should I say custom designed to celebrate a certain year that the employee had achieved with regards to service.

These events were generally called long service awards and believe me, for those of us who have never really experienced such a thing, these events could be magnificent.

It has to be said that this was also back in the day the bottom line looked a bit healthier or perhaps the share holders were not soe demanding or spoilt.

It was also a time where staff really did come first and for institutions such as the mining houses, they went to great lengths to ensure that their staff were happy and content.

Long service awards were one way of achieving this by recognising their staff and rewarding and awarding them with custom ties and custom scarves aswell as corporate jewellery items.

The psychology behind this was extremely well thought out because those companies who realised that there was a benefit to long service awards also understood that staff relied and related not only to monetary rewards but also to recognition which is a long discovered concept or principal spoken about very much by Donald Maslow also back in the day and long before long service awards in the form of custom ties or corporate jewellery were thought about or introduced.

As we know, custom ties and custom scarves are manufactured by tie makers or tie manufacturers and for many years, long service awards formed very much a part of the production in the tie makers factories, not to mention the corporate jewellery.

I would go so far as to say that in the 80’s and 90’s long service custom ties and custom scarves would have made up 10 to 15 percent of production which was a massive number back the.

And after all, if the mining houses and stell companies were building towns for their staff such as Welkom and Klerksdorp, Stilfontein and Carltonville then I guess some long service custom ties and custom scarves were not exactly a major drain on resources.

These days, long service awards still take place but not nearly so much as they used to and we as a company still do many long service custom ties and custom scarves but nothing like we did in the past.

Today, perhaps it may be corporate socks or something similar that might be handed out- its just not taken as seriously any more as it used to be at one time.

Similarly, school scrolls could be likened to long service custom ties but that discussion is for another day alas!!