Links

Our bigger, New Delhi office!
October 11, 2005

ProGifts becomes Gold Sponsor of Heart of Florida Air Show
July 15, 2005

Area company turns more to New Delhi
July 3, 2005

ProGifts announces the opening of our New Delhi, India office!
June 21, 2005

Dacasso desk sets in the movies with Robert De Niro
February 20, 2005

Small Business person of the year nomination
January 30, 2005

Top Business Honors
September 18, 2003

Promotional Talent
August 25, 2003

 

November 9, 2005

ProGifts is proud to announce that it has been honored with two prestigious awards by our local Chamber of Commerce.  ProGifts was recognized as the 2005 Small Business of the Year in both the Business Expansion and the Overall Business of the Year categories.  Heartfelt thanks go out to all of our clients for helping us achieve this goal!  Below is the complete article, compliments of the Gainesville Sun.

In addition, we have been nominated by our local Small Business Administration for "Business Person of the Year".

Two Gainesville businesses win top awards By MARINA BLOMBERG Gainesville Sun staff writer

Two Gainesville companies - one with 16 employees, the other with more than 300 - received top awards at the Gainesville Area Chamber of Commerce's Business of the Year 2005 recognition luncheon Wednesday.

Gainesville Health and Fitness won top honors in the business expansion category for large companies, as well as overall Business of the Year. ProGifts Inc., which provides promotional products, gifts and branded apparel, won those same honors in the small business category.

The two were among 26 local firms that were finalists in the annual judging, which took into account their community/civic involvement, financial successes, economic contributions to the area, plans for expansion, the working environment of the company and innovative ideas.

A panel of five independent and anonymous judges made the selections.

In accepting his first award, GHFC founder Joe Cirulli said he plans on a $3.4 million expansion which will add a third floor to the main facility on Newberry Road and a fitness center at Town of Tioga.

When he was presented the overall award at the end of the ceremony, he said the fitness center - now with 24,000 members - began with "$1,700 and a dream."

Cirulli said when he is asked why he doesn't expand out to other communities of the state, he replies, "I came to Gainesville on Oct. 27, 1973, intending to stay 30 days. I ended up loving this place; I don't want to do business anywhere else but Gainesville."

ProGifts, which won the small business expansion award, is owned by John and Melinda Farrell.

They tripled the size of their headquarters and added a New Delhi, India, office.

From their start in 1999, they have increased their business 5,000 percent.

As he welcomed the room full of Chamber members, public officials and businesses and their employees at the Hilton hotel, Brent Christensen, president and CEO of the chamber, reminded the gathering that "profit is not a dirty word. We should encourage business freedom and free enterprise.

"We should have fair regulations (by governmental agencies), which facilitates good growth. We don't want to hear 'no,' we want to hear 'perhaps not this, but that.' "

Christensen said the recognition lunch "was to shine the spotlight on the economic engines that drive this community," noting that the majority of those "engines" are small.

"Eighty percent of the businesses in this community have 26 employees or fewer," he said.