Custom merchandise swag with company logo branding

Coming up with new and innovative ideas to promote your company can be a challenge. We know because we’ve been there.

Our marketing team spent brainstorming session after brainstorming session trying to come up with a fun and exciting way to promote our business. I mean from social media campaigns to email campaigns, we’ve done it all. And while all of these promotional strategies were great, we wanted to come up with something fresh. 

And then one day, Anne from HR knocked on the conference room’s door while the marketing team was having a meeting there. She’d come up with an idea and she just had to share it. She pitched her idea and the marketing team loved it.

Her idea was that we send out custom merchandise to our clients.

1. Apparel: Custom T-shirts, Embroidered Polo shirts, Branded Hoodies, Logo Caps and Beanies
2. Drinkware: Personalized Coffee Mugs, Branded Water Bottles, Custom Travel Tumblers, Logoed Beer Steins
3. Tech Gadgets: Custom USB Drives, Branded Wireless Chargers, Logoed Earbuds or Headphones and Personalized Webcam Covers
4. Office Supplies: Customized Notebooks and Journals, Branded Pens and Pencils, Logoed Sticky Notes and Notepads, Personalized Mousepads
5. Bags & Totes: Custom Drawstring Bags, Branded Tote Bags, Logoed Backpacks, Personalized Laptop Bags
6. Eco-friendly Swag: Reusable Straw Kits, Branded Eco-friendly Shopping Bags, Custom Bamboo Utensil Sets, Recycled Material Notebooks
7. Lifestyle & Wellness: Custom Fitness Bands, Branded Hand Sanitizers, Logoed Sunscreen Bottles, Personalized Lip Balms
8. Fun & Games: Custom PuzzlesBranded Stress BallsLogoed Playing CardsPersonalized Frisbees
9. Home & Kitchen: Custom Bottle Openers, Branded Coasters, Logoed Oven Mitts, Personalized Aprons

We’d create the best brand merch by customizing high quality merchandise and sending it to our VIP clients as a thank-you gift. Not only would this unique merchandise act as a thank-you gift to clients, but it would also act as a marketing tactic. Each time the client saw the merchandise, they’d be reminded of our business. And each time the client wore our custom merchandise in public, it’d be like free advertising.

The plan was foolproof! We just had to come up with a way to put it into action…

So marketing started looking around for a custom merchandise maker. They looked at places that could print on-demand merchandise and they also considered using a merch maker app.

Then one of the marketing team members, Gary, said that he used to make custom merch in college and sell it. He’d made school spirit merch and custom merch for clubs. He mentioned that he still had his t-shirt printing tools and that he could probably do it all himself.

The rest of the marketing team was pretty wary of Gary’s claim to being a master printer, but they decided it might be worth a shot. I mean hey, if they’re able to cut back on their marketing budget, maybe that money will go to their bonus instead they thought!

So rather than use an online merchandise store, the marketing team got to work with their DIY corporate merchandise ideas for business clients. Anne, who’d originally suggested the idea said she wasn’t sure if they were going to be able to handle printing such a large order of small business promotional items on their own, but they insisted. They still insisted even after Anne mentioned that she’d found a website that prints small business promotional items with no minimum necessary. Gary however, had already brought his merchandise printer to the office and was ready to put the marketing team to work! It was too late to back out now.

The marketing team decided that their first plan of action for creating custom merchandise for clients would be to create conference merch. Our company had an upcoming conference and marketing figured that handing out event merchandise would be a great way to get a lot of promotional merchandise out at once. And so they began to design merch for the conference.

Instead of using a design-your-own merch tool through a custom wholesale company, the marketing team began lining up all the tools they’d need to create their custom merch. They wanted to create custom sweatshirts for the event, so they ordered a ton of solid-colored sweatshirts. 

It probably would have been cheaper to just get wholesale custom sweatshirts, but Gary insisted on making this a DIY project. And so they began the printing.

Molly from Marketing had drawn up the custom logo design and the rest of the team got to work printing using Gary’s outdated printing machinery. Like I’d said, this custom printing machinery goes back to Gary’s college days – which had to be at least 20 years ago. I’m sure printing technology has come a long way since then…

The entire marketing team spent hours locked in the office working on their custom sweatshirts. But hey, we got to give them credit because whatever they were doing did not look easy. 

So after a day or two of them tirelessly printing hundreds of sweatshirts, our boss knocks on their door to let them know that she wants us to all wear those sweatshirts for the conference as well. This means that on top of printing 500 sweatshirts for the conference, they also have to print another 100 in order to give merchandise for employees.

The marketing team did as our boss asked and continued to print even more promotional merchandise. They printed these promotional items with logo, but Gary wasn’t as good at creating custom merch as he’d said he was and, honestly, these sweatshirts didn’t look that great. 

I guess the boss was happy with what they’d created and already wanted more as a thank you for all of the clients that had just placed big orders recently. So she handed the marketing team a promotional items list with all of the hats, t-shirts, and sweatshirts that she wanted to be printed. 

At this point, the entire office could tell that the marketing team was winded. Molly looked like she hadn’t slept in weeks and Bryan walked around in a permanent daze. Gary’s wife even called and asked if she should be concerned because Gary was apparently going through the motions of printing merchandise in his sleep.

We realized that the marketing team couldn’t handle the DIY custom merchandise and that we needed to put a stop to it. But Gary was stubborn and we knew he wouldn’t go down without a fight…so we did what had to be done…

One day, while the marketing team was at lunch, Anne snuck in and stole all of the printing supplies. She handed them to Gary’s wife so it wasn’t technically a crime, but we can only imagine what Gary’s wife did with his printing supplies. I guess she wasn’t always the biggest fan of that hobby of his.

Our boss felt bad that he’d taken away that project from the marketing team, so he bought them all custom gift baskets with swag. We could all tell that everyone on the marketing team was secretly relieved that the custom printing fiasco was over – well everyone except Gary.

Gary went on to quit his job and open up his own print shop. His wife left him. But his business is actually extremely successful and he just got featured in a magazine. So as far as we know, he’s living the dream.

SwagMagic is a well-known custom merchandise swag printing company offering services to 100+ prestigious clients across the globe.

Another good thing came from the whole situation too. While our boss had been browsing for custom gift baskets to give the marketing team as rewards for their effort, he stumbled across SwagMagic. 

SwagMagic allows us to design our own custom promotional merchandise. We can create merchandise for clients, merchandise for employees, promotional merch for events, or any other kind of custom merchandise. From mugs to apparel, even backpacks, the possibilities are endless.

Plus, SwagMagic takes care of all of the packing and shipping, so that we don’t have to worry about anything. They even take care of storage, in case we want to design custom merch, but aren’t ready to ship it out yet.

It’s the perfect solution to what was once a chaotic DIY mess. Though we do occasionally get ominous letters from Gary, who’s upset we’re working with his “competition” and not supporting his printing company.