What swag should a startup make for launch day?
Make a launch tee: one design, one or two shirt colors, the logo or a single line of copy that captures the product. Launch day is the one time the whole team wears the same thing in the same photo, and that photo lives on the website, the careers page and every social post for a year. Keep it simple, print it on a shirt people would buy, and order a few extra for the first customers and the people who helped.
The Premium Soft Tee is the launch garment most startups pick because of the retail fit and the softer fabric (it is comparable to a Bella+Canvas 3001 / Next Level 3600). A full front print, or a small left-chest mark with a slogan on the back, both work.
What goes in an onboarding box for new hires?
Put a shirt in the right size, a hoodie if the budget allows, a handwritten note and one useful thing (a notebook, a good pen, a sticker sheet) in the onboarding box. The shirt matters more than the extras: it is the thing they wear to the first all-hands and the thing that shows up in the team photo. Ask for the size in the offer paperwork, not on the first day.
Because Merch to Order has no minimums and saves every design, the onboarding shirt does not need to be stockpiled. Order 24 at the screen-print price, keep spares in medium and large, and reorder the design from your account when the stack runs low. A back print with the company values or the founding year costs $3.50 a shirt at 24+.
What should the team wear at a conference booth?
Wear one bright, high-contrast shirt color that nobody else on the floor is wearing, with the logo large enough to read from ten feet. Booth shirts have one job: make it obvious who works here. Orange, royal blue, lime green and red all do that; black and grey disappear in a hall full of black and grey. Print the website or a short question on the back so people in the queue have something to read.
Order one for every person on the stand for every day of the show, plus a couple of spares. A three-day show with four staff is twelve shirts minimum, and sixteen is safer. Send the staff home with them afterwards.
Is swag a good investor gift or update?
A shirt or hoodie is a fine investor gift when it is good enough to wear, and a poor one when it is obviously the cheapest blank. Investors get a lot of swag, and the items that survive are the ones that fit well and look like a real brand. Pair a hoodie with a short printed update or a photo of the team wearing the same thing, and it becomes the reminder that the quarterly email is not.
Send one in the right size (ask, do not guess) and skip the box of branded pens. One good garment beats five small things.
What do founders get wrong with swag?
The two classic mistakes are ordering hundreds of shirts in one size and choosing the cheapest shirt to stretch the budget. Five hundred larges means a closet of larges: use a size split (roughly 10 percent small, 30 medium, 30 large, 20 extra large, 10 2XL) and order less than you think, because reorders are two clicks. A thin, boxy shirt saves a couple of dollars and guarantees nobody wears it, which makes it the most expensive shirt you can buy.
- Ordering one size for everyone. Use a split and keep spares in the middle sizes.
- Cheap shirts. Pick a garment you would wear; each product page lists the fabric, weight and the wholesale shirt it compares to.
- Too much text. A logo and at most one line reads; a paragraph does not.
- Skipping the proof. Check spelling and placement on the proof; it arrives within a day and costs nothing.
- Ordering 500 for a 40-person company. Order for the next quarter, then reorder from the saved design.
What does a realistic startup swag budget look like?
Fifty Premium Soft Tees printed front and back cost $762.50 before tax, and 24 hoodies with a front print cost $718.80, so a launch-plus-hoodie budget for a team of a few dozen is about $1,481.30. The tee number is $11.75 a shirt at 50 plus $3.50 for the back print, giving $15.25 a shirt. The hoodie number is $29.95 each at 24. Shipping is free over $150, there are no setup fees, and sizes 2XL and up add a little.
Those are today's published prices, which is the point: you can put the number in a budget before you upload a logo, and the price calculator gives you a total for any other quantity.
Why do hoodies work better than tees for retention?
Hoodies get worn more often and for longer than tees, so they carry the brand for years instead of a season. A fleece hoodie at 8 oz is what people reach for on a cold morning, on a plane and on a weekend, which is where a company tee rarely goes. They cost more ($44.95 for one, $29.95 at 24, $21.95 at 250+), so many startups give tees at launch and hoodies at the one-year mark or after a milestone, which makes the hoodie feel earned.
The hoodie front print area is 11" x 10" because of the pouch pocket, so a left-chest logo or a compact wordmark works best on the front, and the back has the full 12" x 16".