Wallauer Paint Hardware Design in New York has started a new initiative to support local real estate agents and court homeowners as new customers.

Employees at the 15 Wallauer stores create gift boxes, each containing a gift card to Wallauer Paint or its affiliated Ace Hardware stores and a coupon good for a free consultation with a Wallauer interior designer.

The gift boxes can be customized with a real estate agent’s name on the box and personalized letters from the agent to homebuyers.

Before starting the gift box program, the Wallauer team asked real estate agents what they thought of the idea.

“They all seemed really positive about it,” says Kimberly Scappaticci, who oversees marketing for Wallauer.

The boxes provide real estate agents with a convenient substitute for making or buying a gift basket they would traditionally provide homebuyers at closing. Local real estate agents can order and customize the boxes, which Wallauer Paint employees fill and package.

The service makes it easy for real estate agents to provide a gift and it allows Wallauer to promote itself to homebuyers—a demographic highly likely to need paint and other products the paint and hardware stores sell.

Because Wallauer sponsors the local real estate association, it has the option to provide two seminars per year to the association’s members. During the seminars, Wallauer representatives promote the paint company’s products and services.

The real estate association also publishes a member newsletter in which Wallauer Paint promotes its gift boxes to agents. The gift boxes are an effort by Wallauer Paint to leverage its connections with local real estate agents, promote itself to homeowners and gain new customers.